Pointless Quest

Look at the popularity of World of Warcraft Classic, or the hype around the (currently in beta) solo-friendly reimagining EverQuest Legends. Final Fantasy XI, which was on the PlayStation 2(!), is still up and running. Old School RuneScape has over 100,000 people online at the moment I’m writing this. The children yearn for a simpler time in MMORPGs. Kill 5 rats? Don’t mind if I do! Collect 10 gems? Already on it! Go through a cave and emerge to a completely different biome? Yes please! There’s something about having a very straightforward quest and an area made just for your character’s level that can be so cozy, in a way that “cozy games” do not attempt. Pointless Quest is an online MMORPG for the Playdate. It has voice chat, text chat, communication emojis, 30 quests (so far!), and secrets, NPCs, and lots of feel-good grinding to reach the top of the leaderboards. The dev has already added new areas and will add more soon. And it’s free! And it will NEVER come to Catalog.

When Panic added networking features to the Playdate, they also implemented some rules for games that want to get on Catalog — their curated, on-console marketplace that can also be accessed through their website and makes it very straightforward to get games on your Playdate without sideloading. (I sideload from my phone; it’s so easy, but Itch sales numbers vs. Catalog’s are almost a joke when you compare numbers side-by-side. Like, hundreds or thousands on Catalog vs. something like… 4 sales on Itch.) But anyway, you can’t be on Catalog without a sort of friend code system that you need to trade on the outside (probably on Discord, where all the cool Playdate people hang out). It’s how helloyellow works, and it keeps you from chatting with random strangers on the internet.

In Pointless Quest, you can just hold down B and speak into the microphone, and everyone in your area in the game can hear you. Which, for a small, friendly community like the Playdate, really feels like not that huge of a deal. There have been something like 200 people that have played this game since launch, and nobody is there to have a bad time. But sure, bad actors could get in there and start saying bad things, and it’d be up to the solo developer all by himself to handle it. (Which he can take care of, so far — I saw his cool omniscient dev environment where he can see everything everyone is doing at all times. But what if he’s not around at that moment?) So I get it, but it’s hard to build a huge playerbase or make any money and want to keep working on this thing when you can only get as players the people sideloading to what is admittedly a niche console in the first place. It’s a niche within a niche, and it had some AI coding that would further keep it off Catalog, too. But! It is SO NICE to be part of this game world.

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s an old school RPG that anyone that’s played a video game in the last 30 years should be able to understand. It has a top-down, pixel art, almost Pulp-looking world, and you move around the grid, bump-battling monsters Ys-style with the help of anyone who wanders by. Most of the quests (even the high-level ones) can be done solo, eventually, if you’re willing to grind hard enough. But the real joy exists here like it did in Journey — you meet someone randomly in the game and just start questing together for a while. It works extra well if you’re both around the same level, which you can tell with a glance. This means you’ll both be working in a similarly leveled zone, with similarly powered gear, and you’ll get around the same number of experience points.

You can get a bow and arrow and a more close-combat weapon, and it’s up to you to focus on speed, or critical hit percentage, or pure power at the expense of both of those. You’re always able to see the life bars of your enemy, so especially if you’re fighting one-on-one, it’s clear who will (probably, if critical hits don’t get too wacky) win the battle. You heal by waiting for a few seconds outside of combat, and being hasty in a just-too-high-level dungeon won’t do you any favors. And the mob behaviors have already been adjusted since launch to make the battles much more dynamic and exciting, so you’ll need to be careful if the scorpion you’re fighting has a buddy just behind him. Maybe you bring a buddy of your own, though?

The best part of the tight-knit Playdate community is that this is the ONE THING the dev is really working on right now. He’s very involved in the Discord and can fix bugs in real time, and there’s a constant stream of tiny adjustments we can’t even see as he works on the new areas, even while the current players are in a neck-and-neck competition to see how high they can get their levels before the new expansions drop. It almost feels like he’s our live Dungeon Master, making sure that everyone is having a good time, whether you love to keep grinding the top-level quests to reach the top of the leaderboards and hopefully get a rare item drop, or if you just like to hang out and take things at a more leisurely pace.

There are about 4 hours of gameplay right now, and the quests drop at a steady pace so there’s rarely a time when you’re like, “Oh, I guess I just have to kill spiders for a while until I’m strong enough for the next area.” It’s really clear when you ARE ready, also, which I very much appreciate. If you’re well-equipped, you should be able to take on a creature that’s a level or two ahead of you, but not much more than that. Bring a buddy, though, and you’ll be getting rare boss drops much earlier than expected!

I appreciate that I could do a lot of the game at my own pace, whenever I wanted during the day. The downtime for game improvements has been very minimal, and there have already been multiple updates, not just to game balance but also adding entire new areas and quests at both mid- and high-level ranges. The game doesn’t tell you exactly where to go or what to do, but there is a great sense of exploring the wilderness in a way that feels reminiscent of the very first NES Dragon Warrior/Quest. If you head too far out there, you’ll just die (with no real scary consequences!). But build your strength and you can fight those guys soon.

The fact that this is a pay-what-you-want game (meaning it’s free if you can’t/won’t pay for it yet), on a system that will never outsell the Virtual Boy across its entire lifespan, is just an incredible feat and gift to the community. If you’ve never sideloaded something on your Playdate before, this game is worth learning how. And this is something that just wasn’t possible earlier in the Playdate’s lifecycle, before they added networking features and when we (both the players and developers) didn’t know quite what we were doing yet.

I’ve completed everything in Pointless Quest so far, and I’m not one of those kinds of players that can keep killing the same creature over and over, hoping for a rare 1% chance item drop to show off in the Discord. But I do know I’ll be back each time a new zone or questline is added to the game. How long will Pointless Quest be updated? Not sure, but if you see me in there sometime, send me a wave emoji and we’ll battle some creatures together. And isn’t the real pointless quest the friends we made along the way?

(Released June 13, 2026, on Itch. Originally reviewed within two weeks after launch, so the content may and will change going forward!)