Developer: No Checkpoint
Publisher: EastAsiaSoft
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch (2), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Tested on: Switch 2
Direction Quad – Review
We’ve been feeling a bit under the weather lately, so we decided to take things easy this weekend. Instead of getting stuck again in the vast world of Final Fantasy VII (review coming soon!), we figured a smaller game would be the way to go while our sinuses weren’t exactly behaving. What better way to battle the frog in our throat than with a nice cup of tea and a frog on our screen instead? Enter Direction Quad, a puzzle game that looks simple on paper, but as we found, it was a lot more challenging than we expected. Was some quality time with Direction Quad just what the doctor prescribed?
Story
Quad is the name of our protagonist, a lazy and disinterested frog. He’s appointed to be the representative of his tribe to complete ten trials. The trials boil down to proving the prowess of the tribe by navigating a series of obstacle courses, filled with all sorts of dangers, from lasers to spikes. This is as far as Direction Quad’s story goes, as delivering a narrative definitely isn’t the main focus of the game. Story elements are sparse and mostly implied rather than explicitly told.
Graphics
Harkening back to the days of old, Direction Quad’s visual style is functional rather than flashy. The pixel art appropriately brings early 1980s games like Frogger to mind. As minimalist as the art is, it is very clear, with good use of color to ensure readability during the fast, precise gameplay. Rather than lose themselves in unnecessary details, environmental elements like traps, switches, nodes, enemies, and collectibles are easy to recognize at a glance. This also translates into a nigh-on flawless performance, with frame drops, stuttering, or visual instability nowhere to be found here.
Sound
The minimalist approach that is present in Direction Quad’s story and in-game graphics is found in its soundscape as well. Music and ambience are restrained and come across as purposefully low-key. The intention of the music is to provide the right mood to get you in a zen-like state, supposedly needed to complete the levels. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but we’ll say it anyway: there is no voice acting present in the game, not even in the limited cutscenes.
Gameplay
A minimalist arcade-style action puzzle game, Direction Quad is built around trial-and-error progression and an unusual movement system. Each self-contained level is presented from a top-down perspective and tasks you with guiding Quad to its end. Quad can only move diagonally, and once he starts moving, he can’t stop. You’ll need to change his direction through precise inputs and springboard interactions. Levels end up feeling like spatial puzzles, demanding pattern recognition, careful timing and, more likely than not, lots of trial-and-error. Deaths are part of the learning process. As if it wasn’t hard enough to figure out how to get from point A to point B in these spatial puzzles, you’ll also need to figure out how to pick up collectibles along the way if you’re aiming for that perfect score in each level.
For as simple a concept as Direction Quad’s gameplay is, it is also very, very unforgiving. Quad’s constant movement means you have very little time to actually think about your next move. Mastery comes not from looking at a level layout and figuring out how to reach the end but from pattern recognition and careful timing. In this regard, Direction Quad feels like a rhythm game where you’re figuring out the rhythm for yourself, rather than a puzzle game. Getting to know the pattern of a level sees you try over and over, tweaking the final hop until you inevitably meet your doom or reach the end of a level. Once you’ve mastered a stage, it becomes easy to replicate, as it means hitting the directional change button at the exact same time. The game’s collision detection is extremely strict, however, and we expect most players to give up rather than push on. To be fair, that isn’t on Direction Quad, as, despite its high difficulty level, it doesn’t feel like the game is purposefully trying to taunt or frustrate you.
There’s not a lot of evolution to Direction Quad’s gameplay, because despite the introduction of different kinds of stage hazards, the core gameplay itself doesn’t change. On the upside, the levels themselves are never overly long, typically requiring less than a minute to complete. It’s the numerous retries that result in a much longer game. It took us around 8 hours to complete the main game, though we estimate that if we were completionists looking to grab every collectible, we could squeeze another 4 hours out of it. Not that we’d want to, because Direction Quad ended up feeling far more demanding than it was satisfying. Not even the low price of entry of €4.99 could change that feeling.
Conclusion
Had Direction Quad debuted in the early ‘80s, it probably would have found its audience, but by current-day standards, there simply isn’t enough substance here. The game doesn’t feel retro enough to fully appeal to retro enthusiasts, despite its Frogger-like presentation. This also means that it doesn’t benefit from the same forgiveness we’d give to actual retro games (or ‘true’ retro-inspired ones), which we’d judge as a product of their time. As it stands, Direction Quad comes across like it doesn’t know what it wants to be, and because of this, it doesn’t know who to appeal to. It simply exists. This is the kind of game that’s not bad enough to be considered shovelware, but not good enough to recommend. It’s a filler game, and perhaps that’s worse.
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