DLC Quest

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

DLC Quest is a satirical Indie Game for PC, Mac, and Xbox Live Arcade that takes Downloadable Content to its logical extreme. In this game, everything needs to be purchased. Including things like "Pause" and "Walk left".

Visit the game's homepage here.


Tropes used in DLC Quest include:

"DLC = Downloadable content. Quest = Quest."

  • Excuse Plot: Parodied. The opening cutscene shows you and a princess--helpful arrows will point out which is which--as she is kidnapped by a bad guy, also identified with a helpful arrow. Finally, the bad guy grabs the princess and runs away, and another arrow helpfully provides a label saying "Motivation".
  • Fan Service: Mocked with the 5 coin swimsuit DLC that changes every single characters clothes for the rest of the game (everyone is an 8-bit sprite, including the player and the princess).
  • Fight Woosh: Right before the random encounter. It's Lampshaded, of course.
  • Follow the Money: Coins. Which occasionally form the shape of a helpful arrow to point you in the right direction.
  • Inexplicably Identical Individuals: The two shopkeepers are exactly alike. When you meet the second one, you question him on it, and he claims you've met his long-lost brother.
  • Joker Immunity: Exaggerated, Parodied and Exploited. The bad guy is well aware that you can't kill him (because if you did, they wouldn't be able to make a sequel), and he rubs it in your face. In fact, you can shoot him in the chest, and he survives, seemingly without a scratch.
  • Level Grinding: Parodied with literal grinding: you have to grind a sword on a grindstone 10,000 times before you can use it. But you'll probably want to buy the DLC to skip that.
  • Long-Lost Relative: The Hand Wave for the Inexplicably Identical Individuals.
  • MacGuffin: Lampshaded. The princess is named "Princess MacGuffin".
  • Microtransactions: The premise of the game is that it's a satire of this model.
  • Multiple Endings: There's a good ending if you bought the horse armor, and a bad ending if you didn't.
  • Nice Hat: The top hat DLC. Yeah, its a waste of 5 coins, but you look so spiffy after buying it!
  • Random Encounters: Parodied. There's one random encounter, and it happens in a fixed place at a fixed time. When they said it was "Random", what they really meant was that the character you encounter is named "Random".
  • Save the Princess: The goal of the first game.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The horse armor pack is a reference to Oblivion's infamous DLC of the same name, which cost a whopping $2.50 for a cosmetic upgrade and received a massive backlash from the fandom. In DLC Quest, the horse armor costs 250 coins and is the most expensive piece of DLC in the game. It's also necessary for the good ending.
    • "That first step was a doozy" is a reference to a line from Groundhog Day.
    • "Player." "Shepherd."
    • "Finish the fight" pack is a little jab to Halo 2 ending.
  • Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction: Coins in this game are large.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: You get an awardment for killing all sheep and humans in the game, including the shopkeepers.[1]
  • Voice of Dramatic: The narrator in the trailer does his best.
  • You Have Researched Breathing: Parodied. The first thing you have to do is buy the ability to move left.
  1. Which you can still talk to for DLC-related business.