Review by Dogg

"Ape Ass? Pirate Booty? Weird?"

Progress Quest is a weird game… or is it a game?

Progress Quest was something new made from some web-junkie called Grumdrig. This ‘game’ is a new twist to the many experiences we (gamers) have had in the past. More appropriately, Progress Quest is a MMORPG, or more simply a massively multi-player online role-playing game. This game is free and can be downloaded from . The file is small (about 346 KB) so anyone at anytime can fully go out, download it, and then start playing it right away.

Like many Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing games, Progress Quest, at first, allows you to pick what Race and Class you want. Races include stuff like talking pony’s, panda men, and the always-weird DemiCanadians. Classes include some more stuff like Bastard Lunatics, Shiv-Knights, and Tickle Mimics. Once you pick your race and your class you can then roll to select your stats, or attributes. Then you just put in a name (it can be anything you want), and then decide if you want to play online, or not.

That is something that I liked about it. And That is that you do not have to play it online. You can simply play this game when you are doing your homework or are doing some research for some business. And it is not even called playing since Progress Quest does all the events and all the actions by itself, unlike other games. That is right, this game is automated, or does all the stuff by itself. But this brings me to my next point; Progress Quest is not a game like many claim it to be. Instead Progress Quest is more of a program to waste your time. Many people would not even call it appealing, thanks to it just being a simple spreadsheet with blue bars.

The blue bars, as mentioned, do nothing more than loading up your next actions and intriguing efforts. They basically make you wait till a new action is displayed at the bottom of the screen; you know the little words that tell you what you are doing. The blue bars are also used as meters that fill up. These meters are there for the experience building, and for the time loading. The blue bars also tell when it is time to shop. You will go to shop once your Encumbrance bar is filled up, which should be quite often. When shopping you will sell all the items you obtained by killing animals, or even humans. Many items have funny names like Kobold Penis, Pirate Booty, ape ass, and the ever-avenging girl-scout cookie, which is obtained by killing the massive and pre-adolescent girl scouts. As you sell items your amount of gold will rise. If you have enough gold you can then buy an item, which undoubtedly will piss you off if the computer made a bad mistake when choosing the right item.

As you progress you will also gain higher levels. Gaining new levels simply makes your weird character more powerful by ‘upping’ his stats. As you continue playing the game you will also get new acts. These acts happen when you spend nearly six hours in the past act. You are also given quests in each act, which you must do. Quests are easily done since if you kill one enemy then you are 1/10 out of the way of later on finishing your quest. Quests contain simple things like exterminating the pirates or the killer fungi, and fetching stuff like toothpicks and twigs.

A thing many people seem to be pissed off about is that you cannot die. Well all I got to say is this: is it or is it not that the worst part of Role-playing games is dying. I mean come on people waste countless hours playing these RPG’s and then they think they are strong enough to kill a monster, so they do not save, then they lose to that monster, which results to countless hours of powering up all thrown to one wasted battle. Pathetic is all I will say. And something that Progress Quest is not is pathetic. But Progress Quest is something else, and that is…

It is repetitive and boring. Looking at a spreadsheet is tiresome, and having the thing minimized --while the game is playing by itself -- is certainly repetitive and a waste of good time, while you are on the Internet. I heard that a 3-d version, or something like that may be in the works, but for now this is a simple time-waster. However, there is a cool thing about this game that some people seem to find cool, and that is the Hall of Fame list in the progress quest web site. This list can be put into play by pressing Ctrl-B, when you are playing. Here you see where you are ranked within the Progress Quest world and you will also see your level, the act you are in, your most prized weapon, and your motto. Mottos are created by pressing Ctrl-M, and a motto can give your web site, which you created, or just an irrelevant rant about how good you think you are, or how bad you think some people are.

As mentioned, this game has no visual pace, but worse there is no audio in this game. Shame, really. Hopefully some sound will exist in upcoming versions or tests, but chances of that happening are close to none.

Overall, you should go ahead and download Progress Quest, and perhaps give it a try, and see if you like it. It’s short so one can start playing right away. But the fact of the matter remains that while Progress Quest can be fun and addicting at first, in a couple of hours it will be uninteresting and really, really boring. Hopefully web junkie Grumdrig can make a sequel to this game that can actually be, you know, fun.

Progress Quest is not a game.

Overall- 5/10
It does have its ‘good’ points, but its ‘bad’ points subtract any fun one can have with this game.

*Grumdrig is actually a pretty good name :)

Reviewer's Score: 5/10 | Originally Posted: 04/14/02, Updated 09/03/02

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