I discovered this game after watching development blogs on YouTube. The developer's YouTube channel has game design videos on the likes of Monster Hunter, Enter The Gungeon, Slay The Spire, then he showed progress of this game in development. Patch Quest isn't like those games but he used elements of their game design to inspire his own creation. It took several years to develop, but changed identity and perfecting the game's design over time.
Although the map layout remains constant every time you play, the patches themselves are randomly generated. I don't think this makes a huge difference other than a few special tiles like the ones with the Altars. The world consists of these tiles and arranged in a simple maze. There's long stretches, corner pieces and some crossroads. The two main patches are what I called arenas and corridors. Arenas have a few waves of enemies then you can proceed. Corridors have different terrain and obstacles to hinder you, but sometimes you can just quickly run through. What encourages you to take it slower is that some of the vegetation or enemies are shiny which means they will drop an attribute. Some special areas can lock you in until you defeat the waves or boss creature.
You can only venture to the Jungle at first, but your initial aim is to open up the Coast, Desert and Cliff biomes. However, each of these biomes has special areas too, so the map ends up being very large.
The gameplay is a bullet-hell, and it starts off fairly simple but soon ramps up the difficulty. Some of your progress carries over, so it's a mix of roguelite and Metroidvania ideas too.
You can carry 3 fruits which you collect from bushes, then have a special slot for mixing them. If you choose to mix them, then you sacrifice half the ammunition to make your new powerful concoction.
Enemy projectiles are generally red, and yours are blue. However there are special elemental projectiles of various colours. There are special shields like Blockade and Armour which block your shots.
You play as an explorer armed with a gun that fires fruits, and a lasso to catch creatures. Instead of killing the creatures, you are supposed to be feeding them to satiate them so they flee. If you use your lasso, you can mount them. Once your lasso hooks on, you need to complete one full circle around them. There's stronger variants that require two and bosses that require three.
When mounted, you can use the creature's special attacks; so I suppose the game has violence anyway. When you mount a newly discovered creature, you only have their defensive skill which is often some kind of dodge, but after defeating many enemies, you unlock two main attacks and a special ability that can be used once per battle. You can ride as long as you have stamina which drains over time rather than by attack use.
You can send a creature that you are riding to your camp, which gives you the option of summoning on a future run. You can assign 5 to summon, but your base can hold one of each creature. So your sub-objective is to mount and capture all creatures.
After so many tiles, you can capture vegetation. These can be placed in your base at the end of your run. Or when you find a missing patch, you can plant something there to spawn more friendly vegetation in that area. The Records tab in your menu catalogue creatures and vegetation.
There are also swarm enemies like bees and small bugs. With your various abilities, you may be able to capture these and use these yourself.
There's loads of traits/statuses that can be inflicted on you, or your enemies. Some of them you get by touching the vegetation. Some of these can be positive so it's good to learn what are the true threats.
Attributes increase your strength in a few areas. Riding, Blasting, Defence, Dodge, Afflicting. After a certain amount of patches you explore, the enemies then rank up, and so the game becomes progressively tougher which you can help alleviate by obtaining these attributes increases. Since the difficulty ramps up with patches explored, the shortcuts you unlock mean you can explore further without increasing the difficulty on your future runs.
Another way you get stronger is through perks. You get to choose one at the start, gaining them from visiting patches with vegetation you have planted, from Trees, shrines and bosses.
Once you are defeated, you return to your base and collect your experience. If you level up you can choose a new permanent perk. If I didn't unlock a shortcut, I felt I hadn't really made progress. Even when you unlock a shortcut, it still takes some effort to get there to take advantage of it. There are caves which unlock shorter distance shortcuts, merely linking two areas together. Clearing the dungeons unlock a longer distance shortcut.
Despite the adorable presentation, it is deceptively difficult. Even if you play well, collect loads of great perks and attributes, the game eventually gets extremely hectic, spawning in loads of high-level enemies. The game isn't meant to be completed in one sitting like many other Roguelikes/lites, but repeated plays uncovering the shortcuts and making creature and vegetation discoveries.