YoIf you have an Xbox and some common sense, you’ll spend this Christmas playing the new Indiana Jones game. And maybe take satisfaction in the fact that it’s a timed exclusive, leaving PlayStation owners pressing their noses against the frosted glass like Victorian orphans.
But dry your tears, PS5 fans, because I found the game that will save Christmas. And it costs 79p. Say hello and ho ho ho to Santa’s Speedy Quest.
I discovered this gem while searching the PlayStation Store for terrible, cheap games to laugh at on my Twitch stream. (This is also how I discovered the seminal classic Stroke the Beaver, but that’s another story.) SSQ fits the bill, being incredibly cheap (it’s actually only 23p if you have a PlayStation Plus subscription) and seemingly terrible. But it’s also addictive, hilarious and with many more layers than it seems at first glance.
At one point during the broadcast, I may have described it as the pinnacle of the video game medium. That might be a little strong, much like the three pints of Baileys I’d consumed earlier. But I stand by the claim that, in its own simplistic and diabolical way, Santa’s Speedy Quest is a work of twisted genius.
Unsurprisingly, SSQ doesn’t have the blockbuster polish or high production values of Indiana Jones and the Great MacGuffin. It looks like it was made in Microsoft Paint. It also contains no original gameplay ideas, unless you count “Flappy Bird, but make it Santa” as innovative.
It is a collection of eight minigames. They are all family. None of them would be an exciting offering on their own. Two of the games are variations of the “snowball dodge” concept, the variation being whether the snowballs come at you vertically or horizontally. There are no collectibles, health potions, or power-ups. There is no multiplayer mode or online play. You can’t even pause it: press Start and the game continues in the background, with the metaphysically defiant message: “YOU CAN’T STOP THIS GAME.”
It’s like Christmas 2008 all over again. Back then, the success of the Wii meant that the market was flooded with mini-game collections ranging in quality from poor to pauper. I was forced to go through a lot of them just to put food on the table on Christmas Day, and I ended up have an existential crisis during Hasbro Family Game Night. I’m still not sure a Vienna was worth losing my mind over.
But here’s the twist: Santa’s Speedy Quest doesn’t let you choose which minigame you want to play. You must play them all. In random order. Consecutively, without breaks. Just for a few seconds at a time. At an increasingly rapid pace, increasing at seemingly arbitrary intervals.
“THE SPEED IS NOW 1.4X,” the game will shout at you. 2.6X. 3.2 times. This presents a peculiar challenge for your brain, as it is repeatedly forced to switch between familiar game mechanics running at incredible speeds, without warning. Meanwhile, an electronic piano version of Jingle Bells plays endlessly in the background, also increasing in speed, so the notes warp and shatter, like you’re in a horror movie set at a fairground. You can’t stop this game.
And here’s the kicker, the diabolical detail that really elevates Santa’s Speedy Quest from a below-average collection of minigames to a diabolical, Sisyphean masterpiece. The game takes a snapshot every time it starts you in a different minigame, and when you return, the game continues from that exact point.
This introduces strategic options. Do you try to make sure you’re always in a good position to pick up where you left off? Do you try to mentally record every state of the game every time you get kicked out and remember which button to press when you come back? Or do you forget all that and desperately rely on reflexes dulled by the fact that you’re 47, perimenopausal and have drunk three pints of Baileys?
Every time you fail a minigame, it is removed from the list until there are none left and the game ends. You are then presented with a score and a breakdown of your performance in five key areas: speed, coordination, timing, reflexes and decisiveness. There’s a leaderboard, populated by credible-sounding player names like SHADOWBLADE23, but it’s fake; there is no online functionality.
I know this because SSQ has really taken off in my Twitch community, but our high scores don’t show up on everyone else’s leaderboards. Instead, we are forced to resort to sharing screenshots on Discord as proof of our efforts. But it doesn’t matter. We are having a wonderful time.
That’s because Santa’s Speedy Quest is exactly the game we need this time of year. Easy for non-gamers to learn, difficult for serious players to master, great for reigniting old feuds and breeding bitter rivalries. It is a vulgar, silly and cynical way of getting paid that is based on outdated ideas and sentimental nostalgia. But isn’t everything this time of year?