The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is a brand new Free-to-Play IP from Ubisoft Montreal for the PC that thrusts you in an outrageous medieval fantasy world called Opulencia where wealth, status and showboating are the name of the game!
As a newcomer to Opulencia, you will hack n slash your way through hundreds of castles designed by the ingenious minds of your fellow players! Don't forget to show them who's boss by constructing deadly keep of your very own - in this kingdom, size really does matter!
You are probably sitting reading this thinking "that's a strange title for a game" - well you would be right, but equally it pretty much describes the game perfectly! For the rest of this article I am going to refer to the game as TMQFEL as it is a lot easier to type!
TMQFEL is probably best described as a cross between Diablo and Dungeon Keeper, with rather a lot of humour thrown in for good measure.
You can play as one of four characters - at the moment only three of those characters have been announced - Sir Painhammer, Blackeye Bowgart and The Earl of Evilosity, with the four character, a female, being announced at a later time. For the preview we had the chance, or should that be the honour of playing as Sir Painhammer, a Knight who is rather sure of himself.
Boiling the game down to its basics, there are two main elements - attack and defend. For attack, you raid a castle, hack n slash (as they like to remind you) through all the beasties and traps and try to get to the epic loot before the time runs out. And even if you get there in time there is no guarantee you will get the loot as the developers have added an fairness element to the game - if the castle has recently been looted it cannot be looted again for a set period of time, that way if you are the unfortunate owner of said castle you won't loose all your loot quickly.
And that brings us nicely onto defending. You have your own castle where you store all your epic loot and you don't really want someone else raiding it and stealing it now, do you? Of course not, so you can create rooms in your castle and fill them with beasties and traps of your own which should stop, you hope, any would-be attacker. Again, the developer has made it so that you can't just put down row after row of beasties and traps - only a certain number can go in a room, otherwise it just wouldn't be fair, would it?
As you work you way through castle after castle you get XP which can be used to level up your character. As you get stronger you can attack other more powerful castles, where the rewards will be far greater.
And talking of castles, there are castles created by the developer as well as castles belonging to other players, which makes for a rather interesting game.
One thing you can't do is concentrate on just attack or just defend, you have to do both, although you are likely to be spending the majority of your time attacking, especially if you have fortified your castle well.
One really nice feature is that you can playback any attack on your castle and watch how badly, or how well the attacker did. This gives you the opportunity to see where you defences could be enhanced, and even better you have the option to seek revenge on the attacker, which is always fun!
Gameplay consists of pointing where you want to go and what you want to attack and clicking on things - all very simple and something that you can easily get the hang off if you are not used to playing games like Diablo or StarCraft. The graphics are very good and there are lots of beasties and traps with their own unique look and style.
The build of the game I got to play was alpha, although it was pretty slick and I didn't experience any issues. Ubisoft tell me that there will be a closed beta coming up later in the year before the game gets a final release. Personally I can't wait as it was a lot of fun, when you play it just don't forget to defend as well as attack, or like me you will soon find yourself in a little bit of trouble.
You can also check out our the interview with Matt Zagurak who is the writer of TMQFEL below: