Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra: Phantom Quests

In Phantom Quests, you control SPO-20, a delusional, fame-hungry robot who insists he’s in the world’s greatest band... Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra. Along with his weary, mad scientist creator, Professor B. Miller, they travel across time and space performing bizarre tasks for even weirder NPCs.

Investigate laundromat sock conspiracies. Scat to an audience of geese. Team up with Abraham Lincoln for some reason. And always — always — be ready to win over a new fan.

Built in RPG Maker MZ with 16-bit pixel art, a fully original soundtrack, and hundreds of hand-scripted interactions, Phantom Quests mixes satire, sci-fi, and absurdity into a surprisingly cozy RPG adventure.

Recommended if you like: LucasArts 1990s games, Secret of Mana, or Earthbound.

• Play as the band: You control the robot and professor from Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra

• Side quests like no other: Missing socks, placebo currency, and shark wigs

• Weird, smart humor: Satirical takes on art, science, capitalism, and more

• Time travel: Hop from ancient Rome to 1980s arcades

• Retro aesthetics: The 16-bit pixel visuals could have been released in 1994

• Dialog-heavy and character-driven: Every NPC is a potential punchline

• Built-in mini-games: Including skeeball, slot machines, and parodies of retro arcade-style classics

• The Game Is the Band Is the Performance: The game takes place in the same universe as the band Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra... which is both real and fake at the same time. Think This Is Spinal Tap meets The Legend of Zelda, but if the Triforce were made of expired coupons.

• Every Quest Is a Song: Each of the game’s 20 quests is directly inspired by a song from Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra, some of which were re-recorded as 8-bit instrumentals for the game to go along with the 8 new original songs written for the game. This makes the game a kind of playable greatest hits album. Or maybe the album is a listenable game?

• Deluxe Vinyl Liner Notes by a Cartoon Legend: The liner notes for the deluxe vinyl release of SPO's arcade-themed album PRESS START were written by Stephen Sandoval... Co-Executive Producer of Big City Greens, and Animation Director on Futurama, Rick and Morty, Gravity Falls, and Tangled: The Series.

• Taught in a College Class: Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra has been studied as a multimedia work of satirical fiction at San Diego State University... alongside Vonnegut, Magritte, Stevenson, and Clowes.

• Cheat Codes Galore: Entering the right codes can change your outfit, unlock in-game advantages, or trigger secret dialogue. Some are hidden in the printed strategy guide that comes with the physical release.

• Playable Minigames (Yes, Really): You can fish, play slot machines, skeeball, table hockey, a Pac-Man-style chase game, a skateboard sidescroller, and a racing time trial... all built in RPG Maker MZ without a single plugin.

• No Combat, No Leveling, No Problem: There are no battles, no experience points, and no inventory juggling. Just story-rich quests, oddball puzzles, and wandering into the next strange thing that happens.

• Hasn’t Played Games Since the ’90s: Despite writing an album about video games and creating one from scratch, Professor B. hasn’t really played games since the mid-1990s. He loved LucasArts computer games, NES, and SNES games. That probably explains a lot about why Phantom Quests looks the way it does... and why it’s so unlike anything else.