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Seeker: Quest Preview – Collection Meets Action (Early Access)

Seeker: Quest Preview – Collection Meets Action (Early Access)

Platforms: Windows PC, Steam

Game Name: Seeker: Quest

Publisher: Jestercraft

Developer: Jestercraft

Genre: Action, Adventure, RPG

Release Date: December 12th, 2024

Seeker: Quest by Jestercraft

Seeker: Quest is a hybrid of top-down bullet hell action and classic monster-collecting, mixing up an assortment of adorable creatures with pacey combat that gets surprisingly tough at certain points during its – for the moment – short campaign. Seeker: Quest is currently in Early Access with the first chapter available now.

Seeker: Quest is set in a world called Naturia populated with an array of wondrous creatures called Seekers. A group of humans find themselves stranded on this world and must use the Seekers to learn more while finding their way to freedom. One of these characters can be selected – each comes with some special abilities and a starting Seeker – but all can eventually be unlocked for play.

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Catch ’em All

The Seekers themselves all come with their own stats, and each has a single special ability that can be replaced with certain items. Seekers can be raised and leveled up to enhance their strengths, and new ones can be discovered through adventuring. The levels themselves are relatively small but generally dense enough with challenging arenas to make them last a little while. Enemy Seekers patrol these areas and are sometimes spawned in groups to produce especially tricky moments.

The action is, as mentioned, reminiscent of bullet hell games, but veterans of the genre will find only a moderate challenge in this opening chapter. Each level is framed with a return to a protected base with a few structures that can be built to open up new options like storing items and buying more playable characters.

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A Jones for Drones

There are a few aspects of Seeker: Quest that need a little refinement; I found an item that taught a “drone” ability pretty early on and found I could spam it to generate a considerable number of these pets to do much of my work for me. This might be by design (their attacks weren’t that strong), but the result was a tad visually cluttered and might benefit from a tweak (perhaps a drone limit with the minions being a little bit stronger to compensate). Small quirks like this are to be anticipated at this stage, and I expect they’ll be smoothed out with time.

The design and aesthetics themselves are all colorful and rather adorable. Much of the art actually comes from the developer’s children before being tweaked for the game, a charming touch and a source of some quite quirky designs for the many collectible creatures. This is all set to the backdrop of a bouncy and cheerful soundtrack that works well to reinforce the tone.

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The Verdict:

Seeker: Quest is a delightful monster collector and action game mash-up that makes good use of its joyfully created art assets and playful setting. It provides a decent challenge with a few difficulty spikes that could do with smoothing out into a gentler curve, but overall this is a fun snippet of what will hopefully be a much broader adventure to follow. If you enjoy collecting monsters or fast-paced bullet hell action then it’s worth keeping an eye on Seeker: Quest as it grows.

Seeker: Quest is available via Steam Early Access.

Watch the trailer for Seeker: Quest below:

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