Chex Quest

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Wearing breakfast as armor? Makes perfect sense.

Chex Quest is a 1996 Game Mod for Doom, originally shipped in six million boxes of General Mills brand cereals. The game itself was notable for being the first CD game to be bundled in cereal boxes as a prize. The first game involves the Chex Warrior going down to a colonized planet invaded by a race of aliens called the Flemoids, on a mission to rescue the inhabitants.

In 1997, Chex Quest 2 was released, but instead of being shipped with breakfast cereals, this time it was distributed exclusively on the Chex Quest website. Numerous fansites still distribute the game to this day.

There was to be a Chex Quest 3 released shortly afterwards, but it was cancelled. However, in September 2008, more than a decade after Chex Quest 2's release, former Digital Cafe employees Chris Jacobi and Scott Holman got together, created a new five-map campaign, and released it for free.

Chex Quest 3, which includes all three Chex Quests in one package, can be downloaded from Chris Jacobi's website (requires the ZDoom source port, or a derivative thereof).

Tropes used in Chex Quest include:
  • BFG: The LAZ (Large Area Zorcher) Device.
  • Bloodless Carnage: Flemoids never "die" really, but rather your weapons send them back to their own dimension. When you run out of health, you merely get "slimed".
  • Darker and Edgier: Very hard to notice, but probably both intentional and unintentional. If you were asked which game is the silliest, you would probably say the first. Second silliest? the second. Most Intense? The third.
  • Developer's Room: There's a secret room in one of the levels (E1M2) that has photos of the dev team on the walls.
  • Excuse Plot: Goo aliens are invading this mining planet. Go zap them back to their own dimension and save the hostages. That's it.
  • Fighting For a Homeland: In Chex Quest 2, the Flemoids have invaded Chex Warrior's home planet.
  • Immune to Bullets: Conventional weapons seem to have no effect on Flemoids, as told in the opening cinematic.
  • Improbable Weapon User: The Chex Warrior carries around a "bootspoon", which is, you guessed it, a spoon. It can be upgraded to a "Super Boot Spork", an equivalent to Doom's chainsaw.
  • Large Ham: The Chex Warrior.
  • The Moral Substitute: To the more violent Doom, allowing children to experience the thrill of a fast-paced first-person shooter without the concerns parents would unsurprisingly raise with Doom especially the latter's occult setting.
  • Shout-Out: Several posters in the theater (Chex Quest 2) reference movies such as Jaws and Indiana Jones.
  • Teleport Gun: Chex Warrior's Weapon of Choice.