Key Kwest

Overview

Key Kwest is a lighthearted top-down adventure where you’re locked out of your own house. The only way back in? Find the missing keys scattered around the neighbourhood.

It plays like a stripped-down Zelda. You explore a small open world, solve simple obstacles, and uncover hidden paths. No enemies, no combat - just exploration and puzzle-solving with a retro feel.

Development Story

I started out wanting to make a Zelda-style adventure. Pretty quickly I realised I’d need a map editor to build it properly. Halfway through building that editor, I realised the editor itself could be a complete game making tool. So I scaled back and made a simpler, more focused adventure that could be built entirely inside the tool.

The first things I coded were walking and screen transitions. After that, the editor took over most of the heavy lifting. The trickiest part was making the editor flexible enough to design the whole world, while still easy to use.

At one point the game had enemies wandering around, but there was no way to fight them. It felt pointless, so I cut them. They’ll come back in a new game once enemies and combat are part of the editor.

Design Notes

Designing the map in the editor was fun. You can scroll around and see the entire world at once, which makes laying out areas straightforward. I started with the big shapes, then dropped in the keys, crates, and interactive objects. Since the game doesn’t scroll smoothly I was able to make some screens quite different from each other, since you will never see them connected. This allowed me to add the interior of the house, even though it’s a separate screen.

The game isn’t meant to be hard. There are no enemies or ways to die. The focus is on exploration and discovery. I placed plenty of shortcuts and hidden paths - some obvious, some sneaky - so poking around pays off.

When I have more time I will expand the editor to include enemies, NPCs, and combat (and many other features). That will open the door to making a proper retro-style Zelda game.

Technical Notes

Key Kwest leans on several BeepMini features:

• Tilemaps for drawing and designing the world.
• Animated actors for the player character.
• ECS (Entity Component System) for managing all the objects and updates.
• Generated music and sound effects for music and sound effects.

The code that runs maps built with the editor isn’t built into BeepMini itself - it runs as a plugin. A separate file that can be added to BeepMini games. That way I can keep adding features without touching the core library, and easily reuse it for other games.

Player Tips

Take your time and explore everything. There’s no combat, so there’s no rush.

Keep an eye out for hidden paths. Some are obvious shortcuts, others are tucked away. Learning the map makes it much easier to zip around quickly.

Reflection

Key Kwest was my first time using an ECS architecture. I was aware of it at a theoretical level, but never truly appreciated how useful it is. It made handling game objects and behaviours much cleaner, and it’ll be essential for the editor as I expand it.

The map editor built for this game will power future projects. It’s already shaping up to be a flexible tool for building bigger adventures. The adventure game editor is freely available on the site, so anyone can make their own worlds and play them in BeepMini.

Key Kwest itself is done, but the editor has plenty more growing to do.