Thoughts on the 2023 Quest Calendar
Posted on December 15, 2023 by Aywren
I just wanted to jot down my thoughts about the 2023 quest calendar – The Voidspark Chronicles. This is the second yearly quest calendar that I’ve played through, and I believe the third quest calendar made by Sundial Games.
I had a lot of fun with the 2022 Quest Calendar, which was a gift I received for Christmas in 2021. It was a fantasy-themed story, and I had a fun feline monk named Tsavani whose DEX score was out the roof. It was the first time that I played a solo RPG like that, and I did chronicle much of it on my Pillowfort in the same way I have kept up with this year in my Microblog.
I knew from the start that I wouldn’t be as hot on a sci-fi adventure as I was on fantasy. But because I had fun with the 2022 calendar, I decided to Kickstart the 2023 calendar, anyhow. Overall, though, I know that I’m much less invested in this year’s story.
The calendar was fine. I liked some of the exploration with game mechanics that they attempted this year, such as much more flexible boss fights. I hope they keep those for next year.
I also like that they tried to break out game stats between both the character and the ship. You could hire hands who worked on the ship and gave the ship itself bonuses while also giving your character bonuses.
At first, the concept of a ship that had its own stats was slightly confusing, though. I believe that I read that next year, the focus will be on beefing up the follower system, which I think is a good idea.
While I haven’t finished the calendar story for this year, I will say there were points where the narrative either lost me (I couldn’t figure out where my character/ship was located until pages later when it was clarified), the logic of the story was just illogical in the choices made… plot points were fairly obvious… and sometimes ship fights or boss fights went on and on for nearly a week of pages.
I know that the quest calendar wasn’t meant to be an award-winning novel, and the story it did present was fine and functional for what it was. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not hoping for something more inspired next year.
The one thing I did get that I know will be a long-time keeper is the set of Kickstarter Galaxy Dice that came free with the 2023 calendar. I was looking for a nice, attractive set of dice, and have really fell in love with these as I’ve used them over the year.
This is a good thing because the 2024 calendar came with a tiny set of clear orange dice which just don’t do it for me. Even the 2022 mini blue dice (which I still have) came with a little dice bag. The orange ones just felt a bit tacked on to the set with no bag or any additional trappings.
Speaking of the 2024 calendar, I’m so happy that we’re heading back into a fantasy story! Not only that, but this is a forest animal fantasy story in which I know that I can play a plucky little mouse hero. I’m right there for it!
Not to mention the title references “Wrenwood” – so how could I not pick it up?
The other positive is that this year, they have already sent backers full color PDFs of the calendars. This means that instead of me having to rip out each page every day and scan it in for blog images, as I have done since the 2022 calendar, I can instead use the PDF for images.
Not only will this save me time, but it will also result in better images for my blog. And it means I don’t have to pull pages from the calendar a day early. I try not to spoil myself by looking ahead, but when you have to rip out today’s page to scan it in, sometimes tomorrow’s page gets spoiled. I’ll be happy not to worry about that for 2024.
Overall, I’m still glad I was along for the ride with Voidspark, but I’m far more hyped for Wrenwood. Hope you’ll check in on the adventures in 2024!