Game Reviews

Watch Quest! Heroes of Time (Apple Watch)

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| Watch Quest
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Watch Quest! Heroes of Time (Apple Watch)
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| Watch Quest

Watch Quest is weird. You pick a quest from your iPhone, and then open the app on your Apple Watch to send your hero Bolo off on his little adventure.

This will take about 30 minutes, if successful. Along the way, every few minutes, events will occur - Bolo might stumble across a treasure chest, or come up against an enemy, or find the entrance to a cave.

If you're in the app when this happens you'll get to press a button or solve a simple puzzle and maybe win a prize - coins, for example, or an apple that will replenish your energy. If not, Bolo will keep on walking until he runs out of energy.

Mighty switch off

The bizarre thing is that the game doesn't send notifications when these events happen. So you just have to, I guess, check in every now and again and see if anything's happening?

If you're like me, you'll forget. Every time. And you'll come back later to see that your hero ran out of energy, collapsed, and the quest ended prematurely. This happens over and over again because I just don't care enough about the game to force myself to remember.

If you load the game and there are no events, you could always play a mini-game with your pick axe. But it's so pointlessly random - you tap on squares until money or a skull appears - that you probably won't bother.

Time out

Developers are still figuring out how to make games work on Apple Watch. A device that gets a few seconds of attention every few minutes, after all, has a completely different play pattern to one that can command 20 minutes of time in one go.

Watch Quest! could work in that word, especially with a bit more depth or strategy and some actual notifications. But as it stands, you'll probably find yourself forgetting to check in on your hero until it's much too late.

Watch Quest! Heroes of Time (Apple Watch)

Watch Quest! brings WayForward's charming art and characters to your Apple Watch, but offers few compelling reasons to check back in until it's too late
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Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer