According to Kotaku, FPS Quest is an upcoming first-person shooter with a wild premise where avoiding a game crash is the core objective. The game starts as a fantasy RPG before the protagonist installs mods for modern weapons like pistols and assault rifles, breaking the game world. Players then embark on roguelike runs through “prebuilt but recombined levels” that become more corrupted and glitchy. To survive, you must perform in-game actions like lowering graphics settings, using mods to remove geometry, or escaping out of bounds. Crucially, the developers clarify the game simulates a low framerate rather than actually running poorly. There is no release date yet, but the concept has already generated significant intrigue.
The Art Of The Simulated Struggle
Here’s the thing that’s really clever about this setup. The developers are explicitly avoiding the actual technical nightmare of making a game that chugs. Instead, they’re simulating the aesthetic and feel of poor performance. That’s a brilliant workaround. It means they can craft a consistent, playable experience that evokes the frustration of frame dips without ever actually subjecting the player to the nausea or input lag of a genuinely broken build. Basically, they get to have their cake and eat it too—all the thematic punch of a crumbling game engine, with none of the real-world development headaches.
Hacking As Gameplay
So your toolkit isn’t guns and grenades. It’s .ini tweaks and cheat codes. Lowering the in-game graphics? That’s a power-up. Deleting geometry with a mod? That’s your new traversal method. Escaping into the void of an unfinished map? That’s your secret path. This turns the traditional act of “optimizing settings” into a core survival loop. It’s a deeply meta concept that speaks directly to the PC gaming crowd who’s spent hours tweaking settings for that perfect balance of fidelity and frames. Now, that mundane task is literally a matter of life and death for your character. How cool is that?
Why This Idea Just Works
I think this resonates because it formalizes a glitch-hunting, boundary-breaking playstyle that already exists. Think about speedrunners who clip through walls or players who exploit bugs to see behind the curtain. FPS Quest is building a whole game around that fascination with the seams of a digital world. And by making the “crash” your ultimate fail state, it creates stakes that feel uniquely modern. We’ve all had a game freeze or CTD at a critical moment. This game weaponizes that universal fear. Now, the question is, can the developers build enough compelling systemic chaos around this premise to make it last? The roguelike structure of recombined levels is a good start, but the longevity will live or die on how creative those corruption effects and “hacking” tools can be.
It’s a trippy pitch, for sure. If you’re as intrigued as I am, you can wishlist it on Steam. Let’s see if the final product can live up to its brilliantly weird premise.
