Snake And RPG Combine To Form Quite An Adventure In Nimble Quest

Nimble Quest (Free) by NimbleBit LLC is the modern day version of Snake, complete with RPG elements such as heroes, skills, and battle. It may look simple, but plenty of chaos awaits you.

We first told you about Nimble Quest last week, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting its arrival ever since. Now that it’s finally here, I can definitely tell you that it was worth the wait. You’ll be addicted to this little gem in no time, just as you were with Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes. Fortunately, though, this game is less about micromanagement and more about, you know, killing things.

Following in tradition of their other titles, Nimble Quest features the signature pixelated look that NimbleBit is known for. However, rather than being 8-bit, I think the visuals in this game lean more towards 16-bit. It’s almost like NimbleBit is growing up, isn’t it? Everything is colorful, vivid, and the animations are incredibly fluid. I also love the music, since it’s entirely in chiptunes, complete with an adventurous tone to it. The sound effects are also fun.

So how do you play? If you’ve ever played Snake before, then you know the gist of it. You’ll start out with one hero in the arena, and you will navigate your way by swiping in the direction you want to go. Sometimes more hero units will appear on the screen, and you can add them to your party by going over to them. Just like Snake, you can’t just turn around to go back — you’ll have to go the long way. You also can’t run into yourself once you have a chain of heroes, and you can’t hit the wall.

There will be enemies who will be by themselves or also in a chain of their own, and your heroes will attack when they are within range. Your heroes will all have their own individual health bar, and once it’s depleted, that hero dies. If your leader dies, then the game is over. Power-ups can be obtained when they appear randomly on screen, or as defeated enemies drop them.

There are several stages in Nimble Quest, and your goal is to get through them all. As you play, you’ll notice a bar at the top of the screen — this is your progress until the next stage. To fill it up, you’ll have to defeat enemies. Once you fill it up, the screen gets filled up with a lot of bonus gems for you to collect, and then you are pushed to the next area, where the enemies become tougher.

When you run into a wall or obstacle, or are defeated by foes, the game will end. However, you can also use tokens to continue playing on the current stage, keeping the score you had when you first entered the area. The more times you do this consecutively in one game, the more it will cost.

When you start, you will have access to a handful of heroes, including a knight, archer, and mage. When you clear stages, you will unlock new heroes that you can pick for your leader, with a total of 15 available once accessible. It will definitely take some time and effort on your part to obtain all of the available heroes, so there is definitely some replay value going on here.

Additionally, each hero will earn experience for being leader, and they can level up and become stronger with more use. I love this, because it definitely encourages players to use them all and discover how much better an individual hero can be through more play.

The gems that you collect can be used in the Shop to upgrade the duration and effect of power-ups that appear in the game, such as more health from potions, increased bomb blast radius, increased attack speed, and more.

And just like Pocket Planes, there’s a competitive side to the game with the Arena, which is available after a certain point in the game. You can join guilds and compete against others in special time-limited Guild Quests. This is a nice option for those who may get tired of just playing alone after a while.

You can even purchase the red gem unlock, which will give you access to red gems that are worth 10 times more than the green gems. There are also other in-app purchases, including packs of gems or tokens, of course, if you are too impatient for grinding for more currency.

There is full Game Center integration for leaderboards, though there are no achievements. I’m kind of disappointed by this, and hope that Nimble Quest will have achievements someday. One can dream, right?

I’m loving Nimble Quest so far, and it’s definitely a challenging game. I am in love with the retro graphics, soundtrack, and the interesting hybrid of Snake and RPG. If you have to get a single game this week, make sure it’s Nimble Quest.

Get it in the App Store as a universal download for free.