Judging from Diablo III's sales numbers, pointing, clicking, and looting are all clearly activities that gamers enjoy. For the just-announced hack-and-slasher A Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, the developers at Ubisoft Montreal -- normally folks who spend their time crafting eight-figure-budgeted blockbusters that set you back $60 apiece -- have a rather simple question for you:
Would you like to point, click, and loot for free?
Such is the unique offer that Mighty Quest makes, though it's far more than a simple free-to-play Diablo clone. It's actually a two-sided affair of attacking and building. The former you're already quite familiar with from years spent playing Blizzard's devilishly successful franchise and its countless imitators. It even lifts Diablo III's interface almost exactly, with a health bar, mana bar, and four skill/attack slots. So it's the latter that sets Quest apart. On defense, you'll create your own dungeons using a handy level-creation tool, easily dragging, dropping, rotating, and populating challenging scenarios that other players will be faced with navigating and completing when they go into Attack mode. It's true that the team at Ubi Montreal will provide a batch of pre-baked scenarios for all to both traverse and study using either of the two included character classes (Knight and Archer), but the bulk of Quest's content generation will come from gamers themselves.
As in any good tower defense game, you won't simply be able to pile everything and the kitchen sink into your dungeon in Defend mode. You'll be on a budget, which both maintains competitive balance by keeping you from loading a room with every boss in the game simultaneously and prevents you from soaking up every drop of RAM from the PCs of your map's visitors. But you can add a healthy selection of monsters and trap-laden structures. Some of them are even themed, like a forge that featured flame-spewing ovens, which led to a final room guarded by a fire-breathing dragon named Mr. Firesly.
Interestingly, your character level and castle levels are separated. The idea is that you're meant to have to play the Defend mode in order to advance in it and unlock new and better fortifications and not simply rely on your offensive skills in order to hack-and-slash your way to an über-castle. And the longer players spend in your sanctuary of sadism, the more you'll be rewarded. In other words, the tougher you're able to make it on your fellow gamers, the better you'll be compensated. And you're asked to rate each castle you complete on a five-star scale, pushing the better designs to the top of the community's virtual bulletin board and earning gold for skilled builders. Better still, you're able to easily create bets with your friends. Challenge them, for instance, to get through the castle you just completed in under a certain amount of time, and bet the gold amount of your choice on it. To even the odds, you'll be able to set the character level for the both of you, so if you're level 20 but your pal is only 12, you can set it to 20 and give your buddy a taste of what's in store for him when he spends a bit more time with the game.
Fittingly, you'll see that, as the title indicates, A Mighty Quest for Epic Loot doesn't take itself too seriously. It's an intentionally tongue-in-cheek take on genre tropes, even if the core gameplay is plenty serious. Beta keys are starting to go out now, so you'll soon have the chance to judge for yourself if Mighty Quest is a laughing matter or not.
Ryan McCaffrey is the Executive Editor at IGN Xbox. He used to own a DeLorean, which is weird. Follow him on Twitter, on IGN, catch him on Podcast Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.
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