Spuds Quest is a wonderful Dizzy-like game that marvelously succeeds to capture the style and the atmosphere of the original Dizzy series, while in the same time avoids all the flaws the games from the series had.

The game opens with an announcement of King Arthur who is looking for brave treasure hunters to find three items: a golden hen, a golden harp, and a golden chalice. The finder will be rewarded not only with fortune and fame, but also with a valuable position in the king's service. You play the role of a cute ball-shaped creature called Spud, with a mission to find the lost treasure.

The game starts in Spud's tree village, a setting very often used in Dizzy games. Right from the start you will be captured by the wonderful graphics the developer designed, as well as with the brilliant and enjoyable engine. It's so much fun to run around with Spud and grab on the platform edges, a great feature that adds a lot to the game.

Like in all Dizzy games, the game features screen by screen movement, with each location being a pretty scene to watch and enjoy. Spud is controlled with arrow keys for movement (down key is not used) and space for performing an action or calling inventory.

Spuds Quest is basically a platform/adventure game. The player explores a game world consisting of many single screen locations, collecting items and using them in appropriate places. Spud can carry only 3 items at time, which adds a certain element in the gameplay that some will like, while some will dislike. The game world features many "lethal" locations, but most dangers are platform-based, simply meaning you need to jump over spikes, and other similar hazards. Nothing I found frustrating. The real challenges are the puzzles to solve. The player only has one life, but several save points to use and to continue from.

Not only that, Chris Davis brilliantly succeeded in emulating the graphics style of the original series.  It has been enhanced with many skillful touches and some nice graphics effects, like the dust Spud leaves when running.  He also managed to design many fun and challenging puzzles, and a very original and imaginative world. You'll experience all kinds of exciting adventures in Spuds Quest, from diving under the sea, to visiting an island in the sky. Over 60 scenes to explore.

Spuds Quest also features very nice sound effects and music. I think the music is not original (not made for the game), but it is very appropriate and well picked. The game includes quite few music tracks, each accompanying a section of locations, and they fade in/fade out very nicely when changed.

I find it hard to point out flaws in the game.  However, there is one serious flaw which is a bug. The game allows you to collect more than 20 gold coins (related to another bug), but to finish the game you need to have 20 gold coins in the pocket, and no more. Be very careful about that when playing the game. Other  things some people might complain about could relate to 2 or 3 difficult jumps (but it's all about getting used to the positions of platform edges in the game), and few rather "tricky" puzzles. Also, the fact the player doesn't know where the game world ends might be a bit frustrating, deluding him that certain locations are crossable while they aren't. But that would be it.

Since the release of the game, the developer never got back to fix the bug I mentioned, or to release extra puzzles and locations he promised. So for now, this is the only version of the game. It’s still great, though.