Development
Produced with a small team of developers on a budget of around $500,000, Chex Quest was created by the WatersMolitor promotion agency, which had been hired by Ralston Foods to promote the Chex cereal brand.[11] The original game concept was created by Dean Hyers and Mike Koenigs as a non-violent CD-ROM computer game to be released with 5.7 million boxes of Rice Chex, Wheat Chex, and Corn Chex cereals[3] in order to cast Chex as a cereal that was exciting and fun for children while appealing to modern sensibilities by targeting home PC owners.[6] The game would be a high-quality program whose normal retail value would be between $30[3] and $35.[11] However, it would be offered to consumers for free[6] with no increase to the cost of the cereal box.[15]
The development of Chex Quest differed from traditional video game development in that the basic game engine had already been created and the bulk of the creation process consisted of aesthetic changes made to the music and artwork from The Ultimate Doom. For budgetary reasons, Id Software was contacted and an inexpensive license was obtained for the Doom engine which was considered obsolete in light of Id's then-recent release of Quake. Chex Quest was the first foray into professional game development for lead artist Charles Jacobi and programmer Scott Holman, though both had previously modded Doom levels in the past. In an interview with PC Gamer magazine in 2009, Jacobi stated that the biggest reason for the lasting success of Chex Quest has been that it is still essentially a disguised version of Doom with basically unaltered game dynamics.[10] Indeed, the game has been recognized for having a sense of humor about its identity and origins.[17]
Humorous aspects of the conversion take the form of ironic in-jokes related to Doom resulting from the more or less exact "translation" of previous non-essential Doom decorations into their non-essential Chex Quest equivalents. Thus the bloodied bodies and the twitching torsos from Doom become the goo-covered cereal pieces and the cereal victims twitching to extract themselves from goo in Chex Quest. Likewise, according to the plot the "health" meter represents the Chex Warrior's ability to move, with 0% representing being completely covered in slime and unable to move. The picture of the Chex Warrior in the status bar display becomes progressively more coated in slime, as opposed to bleeding as does Doomguy's face in the Doom status bar. Because time was limited, pre-existing tools popular with the Doom fan community (such as the level creation tool Doombuilder) were utilized in level design, and sound effects such as the distinctive vocalization of the Flemoids were created by creative director Dean Hyers and audio designer Andrew Benson playing around in a sound booth.[18]
During development, aesthetic decisions had to be run by Ralston for approval and this resulted in a number of modifications. The zorchers, for instance, were originally intended to look like a classic raygun, though they were changed to look like a remote control or Star Trek tricorder due to Ralston's concerns that it looked too much like a violent gun. All of the higher-powered weapons were then designed on the tricorder model. However, the Zorch launcher and Phasing Zorcher were modified again toward the end of the design phase to have a more distinctive look. Zorch weapons were also originally going to "neutralize" flemoids with nutritional foods like banana slices, milk, and strawberries, but due to Ralston's worries that this might encourage food fighting, this was changed so that the zorcher emitted pink light and "sent back" the flemoids, making them vanish. Early designs for the Chex Warrior also had his head and body all as one giant Chex piece. However, this was changed due to aesthetic similarities to the M&M's animated characters. The flemoids were originally yellow, but this was changed to green due to limitations in the Doom color palette.[19]
Additional development team members include: Producer Kimberly Hyers, Technical Coordinator Dave Brus, and Project Manager Mary Bregi.[20]
In support of the promotion, coupons and advertisements were included in newspapers and magazines with total circulation of 42 million; promotional art was added to the front of all boxes containing the game; a 30-second television advertisement was broadcast; and a website (chexquest.com) was launched to present game tips, Chex recipes, and further plot details such as character biographies.[6] To cut down on development costs, WatersMolitor formed a promotional partnership with America Online who actually manufactured the CDs[11] in exchange for which all copies of Chex Quest came bundled with the AOL software and a "50 Free Hours" subscription offer.[6] WatersMolitor also created a telephone help-line for gamers who encountered problems with the game[21] and hired fledgling new media company, Digital Café, to provide coding, plot, animations, original music and art for the game.[6]
