QUELL
Fighting fit
How UK startup Quell aims to punch above its weight with a combo of Ring Fit and Roguelikes
We’ve dealt with some sweaty interviews in our time – awkward questions, tiny conference rooms, and so on – but never before have we been offered a towel to mop our brow partway through asking a question. Here, though, it’s a sign that Quell is doing its job properly. We’ve just played a demo of its debut game, Shardfall, a PC/Mac firstperson Roguelike mixing exploration and melee combat, played using Quell’s Impact peripherals, a collection of motion controllers, body sensors and resistance bands. The result is the most intense workout we’ve had playing any game.
It’s no great surprise, then, to hear that Quell – founded by four friends, none of whom with any prior experience working in videogames – began with the question of fitness. “Everyone knows they should be doing it, but it’s monotonous and boring and painful and horrible for so many people,” says Cameron Brookhouse. Now CEO of Quell, he was one of those four co-founders, who found their way here by asking, back in 2020: “What makes exercise fun? And it was exactly what makes games fun: a balance of skill versus chance, a progression of ability over time, collaboration versus competition. And, crucially, immersion.”
That final term is one Brookhouse acknowledges has been devalued by overuse. “But it has a really specific meaning here,” he argues. Essentially, it’s all about closing the gap between real-world and in-game actions. “Ring Fit Adventure is an amazing product, but it has this turn-based, Pokémon-style approach where you choose an exercise, you do it, the enemy takes damage –and that’s a little bit like the gym, in that it’s abstracted by one level.” Outside of combat, Shardfall works an awful lot like Nintendo’s game, with you jogging on the spot to traverse bright fantasy landscapes, occasionally jumping or ducking to avoid obstacles. But once you arrive at one of its combat arenas and find yourself faced with a robot or alien monster, things must be resolved the old-fashioned way: by blocking incoming hits and landing punches.