Here comes a new challenger.
During Lockdown, the only thing more scarce than flour wasSwitch fitness game Ring Fit Adventure.
Strap the controller to you, grab the oversized resistance wheel thing, and get moving.
Everyone wanted one, and the desire for it lingered long after Lockdown.
Nintendo sensed there was a market and Ring Fit proved it.
The topline thing you better know is that it delivers a punishing workout.
There was no air conditioning - enough said.
That’s not to say Ring Fit can’t be intense but it’s generally a calmer experience.
Quell is designed to push it up a notch.
Do you want this power or that one?
That kind of thing.
Let me rewind a bit.
The more you get, the better your reward.
Then, you come to a clearing where you fight.
!, sort of.
If they block high: uppercut.
Some enemies require ducks and jumps.
Other enemies require punch-matching in a rhythm action way - uppercut now, hook now, jab now.
And some enemies simply require a frenzied attack to pulverise them as quickly as possible.
I was good at this; defence wasn’t my strong suit (you get given individual scores).
Fighting, then, is an alive and varied thing.
It’s no big deal.
To return to another earlier point: Quell requires a PC to play.
There are even explorations to see whether it can run on phones.
Consoles, too, are being explored.
It’s there, really, to make up for slim to nonexistent margins on hardware.
As for the subscription: it’s not going to go up.
At least, not in the near term.
I have reservations then.
But I am also filled with a sense of excitement for Quell.
This is a start-up tech company, to a degree, but it has a nice buzz around it.
They’re watching, they’re listening, and if needed, replacements have been sent out.
But the replacement rate itself is less than one percent.
“It’s extremely, extremely low,” says Brookhouse.
In other words, as enjoyable as it already is, there’s some potential left to fulfil.
I would like to play it again.
