Quench is a story-driven puzzle game about herds of animals making the trek to the mystical Eastern Elder Tree. This journey is a difficult one and you, playing as Shepherd, will help guide these herds safely through the dangerous, demon-filled lands.
As Shepherd, which is an avatar of the Elder Tree, you can aid the different animal tribes on their journey with different powers. You have to use these powers to solve different puzzles and help them safely cross the deserts, jungle, and rivers. And all of this driven by the story of the Eastern Elder Tree and the mysterious appearance of smoke beasts.
These puzzles have the right level of progression of difficulty. You have different powers that can change the environment in useful ways. You also have to pay attention to the herds because they can lose stamina or get attacked and they can die. There were some puzzles that were fairly quick to solve why others took a lot of trial and error and multiple attempts to complete. There are time sensitive ones where you have to complete the puzzle before something occurs and others where you can take your time to explore all your options before beginning. Most puzzles focus on getting the powers you need to safely move the herds.
My only complaint with the puzzles is sometimes what the game wanted you to do was not very clear. You are given objectives which can be helpfully, but there were a few puzzles where those were not helpful or clear. This tended to happen with the most climatic puzzles, which made them frustrating. Otherwise the game play and puzzles themselves were very smooth while still being challenging and engaging.
Now for the story. We start with the elephant tribe who are beginning their trek from the western Elder Tree to the eastern. It has been a tradition for the various herds to make this trek and offer gifts to the Elder Tree. This time though the journey is much more difficult with the appearance of smoke beasts suddenly terrorizing the tribes and destroying the land in their wake. We not only learn about all of the tribes as we progress through the story and puzzles, but we also have the mystery of the smoke beasts and their winged leader to learn about.
The story is interesting and progresses well with the puzzles. And the puzzles are good companions to the story as well. I did think the game and the story were going to be much shorter when in actuality I had only reached the halfway point. I think that could be resolved with some story progression fixes where we are setup to know we have to solve the smoke beast mystery sooner.
Overall, I really enjoyed Quench. The puzzles are challenging in an enjoyable way and the story as a whole is interesting. The game is longer than I expected and had its frustrating moments, but I still think it is a really good puzzle game.
Quench is available on itch.io, Steam, and Nintendo Switch.
What puzzle games have you played? Let me know with a comment below.
