Playing Slash Quest, a Game Where You Only Rotate and Move Forward, All the Way to the End

The story opens like a picture book being read aloud. Once upon a time, in a queendom, there lived a very powerful queen who wielded a magical weapon. Every day, the queen went hunting in the forest surrounding her castle. One day, as she was preparing for the hunt and confidently swinging her sword around, she was suddenly attacked. The queen fought back at once, and the story says that as a result, great changes came over the queendom.

The scene shifts, and the protagonist leaves home and finds a talking sword lying on the ground. According to the commentator, this sword originally belonged to the queen. Since the sword has no memory of anything after the attack, the protagonist sets out for the royal castle where the queen lives. The sword talks about all sorts of things, while the protagonist speaks only in emoji. The commentator likes this contrast.

The controls consist only of rotating left and right and pressing a button to move forward. You can break objects with the sword, and most enemies can be defeated just by spinning around. The sword grows longer each time you defeat a monster, so the commentator speculates that "there are probably gimmicks you can't reach unless your sword is long enough." Along the way, you collect vegetables and make your way through terrain that resembles the Irritating Stick game.

The game is stage-based: you clear a stage by solving several puzzles. After clearing three stages, a boss appears, and this repeats across four areas until you finally reach the royal castle. The commentator also says, "It looks easy when I show it like this, but the controls are hard to get a feel for, and the protagonist slides around quite a bit, so even just moving around is a real effort."

The first boss is a giant enemy with two arms. Not knowing how things worked in this first boss fight, the commentator started by poking at its body. But it had no hitbox. So, figuring that "it's probably the kind where a weak point eventually shows up," they kept dodging its attacks while clearing out the small fry around it. When the enemy went limp, they broke one of its arms, then repeated the same process to destroy the other. Finally, they defeated the body itself, ending the grassland boss fight.

The swamp boss is a giant one-eyed serpent. The commentator describes its design as "having a round eye like a cyclops, but overall reminiscent of the giant serpents in Dark Souls," and remarks that "you can tell at a glance it's going to be a nasty boss." They also seem to like the stage name, "The Dead-End Abyss," and joke at their own expense that they're voluntarily seeking out a sense of claustrophobia in a game that's supposed to be a way to unwind.

The fight involves hopping between narrow footholds while waiting for the weak point to appear, then cutting off the enemy's body one segment at a time. In the second half, the enemy's movements become more intense. You make small movements to dodge projectiles, and after evading a slam attack, you immediately move over to the weak-point side. In the end, a spin attack settled the fight.

The boss of the volcano area is a giant machine piloted by someone who serves the royal court. Switches in three colors appear in this area. The strategy is to operate the switches in the correct order, scoop up bombs growing along the path with your sword, and launch them at the boss when it comes down.

Though it couldn't all be shown in the video, the commentator explains that the path leading up to the boss is also designed with a strong puzzle element, having you navigate a maze while operating switches. The game they named as a similar one was the dungeon crawling in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The commentator says that while the game is a bit childish in places, the little protagonist scurrying around is just adorable, and there's a pure joy in making things happen with your sword, so you end up pressing on before you know it.

At the royal castle, the protagonist finally meets the queen again, but the queen suddenly attacks them, and a battle breaks out inside the ruined castle. Since earlier conversations had mentioned that the queen had carried out an invasion, the commentator speculated that "maybe it means the queen has lost her mind."

In the first half, the queen mainly uses charging attacks with her shield raised. So the basic approach is to keep your distance. The commentator notices that the shield has a face too, and says, "Maybe that shield talks as well." Your chance to attack comes when blue flames appear. When you scoop up a flame with your sword and hit the queen with it, she launches a powerful body slam. You lure her skillfully into the pillars in the four corners, breaking them. You repeat this, and when you break the last pillar, you win.

In the middle of the fight, the queen's side claims that this situation was caused by someone else. The commentator takes this to mean that we can only imagine whose version of events is correct. On that note, they shared their preference. In recent games, protagonists often talk and even voice their inner feelings. But they say they prefer a quiet protagonist like the one in this game. Their reasoning is that each player has their own story, and a quiet protagonist leaves room for that imagination.

Having lost its pillars, the royal castle begins to collapse, and the protagonist reaches out a hand to the queen and they escape together. The reformed queen begins efforts to restore peace with the people of the wild lands and to respect their homeland. She also builds a training ground just for herself, so as not to harm other creatures. The people rebuild their homes, and the story ends by telling of the beginning of a long era of prosperity.

The commentator sums up the whole affair as having been caused by the queen running amok, describing the story as "truly like a picture book." Even though all you do is move forward, it's fun just to move around. They close the video by saying that this feeling is close to that of a toy they were absorbed in as a young child.