Hime’s Quest Wiki Guide: Story and Gameplay Walkthrough
This past week saw the release of Crunchyroll-Hime’s first official video game: Hime’s Quest! In order to make sure that no one gets too lost — and totally not because I can finally justify combining my lifelong passions for video games and anime — I’ve written up a guide, covering almost everything that players could want to know.
Some stuff, like where to find all of the upgrades or how much money you can get from chests, I’ll leave to anyone brave enough to crunch the numbers. But if you want to know about the game’s enemies, bosses or where to go to progress the story, look no further!
RELATED: Hime’s Quest Game Boy Color Adventure Game Now Available to Play!
By all means though, I recommend playing the game yourself! (It’s free and you can find it here). Exploring the world is part of the fun, so personally I’d recommend keeping this tab open as a reference, but only coming back to it if you don’t know what to do next.
Without further ado, welcome to Crunchyroll News’s complete guide to Hime’s Quest.
Table of Contents
In Hime’s Quest for Game Boy Color, Hime and her anime club were about to sit down to watch some anime, when some kind of monster appeared from their DVD player and destroyed it before turning into a giant storm and fleeing away from New Crunchy City. In its wake, a strange forest and other biomes have appeared along with people who don’t seem to even know there is a city within walking distance.
In order to figure out what’s happened, fix New Crunchy City, and get back to watching anime, Hime has to find the thing that escaped her DVD Player and set things right.
Gameplay
The gameplay loop of Hime’s Quest is an adventure focused on tracking down the monster that escaped the DVD Player. However, this is complicated by the various impassable obstacles that require specific items to traverse, such as needing Winged Boots to jump over pits, rather than fall into them. And the map is far from peaceful, containing various kinds of monsters, some randomly wandering around, others actively seeking out Hime to harm her.
As you collect items by searching the map and completing side quests, you’ll be able to explore more of the map, discover more items, and eventually encounter dungeons with bosses at the end for each area.
Controls
Please note: the following are the default Sameboy controls. Feel free to remap to whatever you want, these are just to make sure you know what buttons should be making the game do things!
X – Confirm
Z – Back
ENTER – Inventory
BACKSPACE – Map
ESC – Settings
SPACE – Speed up time
Bestiary
Basic Enemies
All of the basic enemies deal one damage to Hime on contact, take three hits to kill and have a chance to drop yenny or healing items.
Slime: A basic enemy that poses little threat. It randomly moves one tile at a time generally towards Hime, but has no other attacks. Approach carefully and you can cut it down without taking any damage.
Orc: A lance-wielding enemy that will charge at you in a straight line after a moderate buildup, running until it hits a wall.
Squid: Moves randomly like the slime, but when it has a direct line of sight it will shoot a ball of ink at you.
Bat: The most dangerous thing about the bat is its movement pattern. Once it starts moving, it will fly over barriers like walls until it lands slightly below where Hime was when it started flying. After resting for a short time (and giving you an opportunity to hit it), it will then repeat the cycle.
Skeleton: The most aggressive normal enemy in the game. Skeletons will seek out Hime and have deceptive range on their attacks due to having a sword. The safest strategy is to attack from range with the bow or boomerang, but if you need to engage in melee combat, the easiest way to succeed is to accept you’re going to get hit, and just keep attacking while you have invincibility frames protecting you.
Mushroom: Like an upgraded version of the squid, they still move randomly and shoot an ink ball, but do so on a diagonal, so they can catch you off guard if you aren’t being careful about your positioning. As a result, simply approaching mushrooms from the cardinal directions and attacking them is totally safe.
Yokai: A tricky enemy, since it’s the only one that can teleport. Luckily, it takes some time to charge up, and when it finishes it appears at a set distance away from Hime. The distance is large enough to not risk contact damage, but small enough to easily close the gap and attack before the enemy can do anything else.
Bosses
There are five special enemies in the game, each of which has its own arena, mechanics and a much larger health pool than standard enemies.
Gorgo
Introduction: The only optional boss. Owes a year of rent payments to Hime who covered his share.
Reward: 120 yenny
Attacks:
- Lets out speech bubbles while strafing along the top of the room.
Strategy: You can’t reach him with a sword due to a barrier in the way, but you can reflect his attack back at him. If you’re having trouble landing hits, try waiting near a wall, so when he attacks and continues moving, he’ll bounce off of the wall and return to the same spot again.
Kleptopatra
Introduction: The boss of the desert area.
Reward: The Legendary Game Disk
Attacks:
- Water beam that shoots from her all the way to the back wall.
- Geyser of water that shoots up from the player’s position.
Strategy: The beam attack looks dangerous at first, but the boss never strafes all the way to either wall when using it, so hug the wall and you’ll be completely safe. The geyser can appear anywhere, but has a charge time and doesn’t follow Hime after the charge begins, so is easy to walk away from as long as you’re paying attention to Hime during the fight.
The safest way to fight Kleptopatra is to wait along a wall while being close enough to hit her, then waiting for her to come to you. Move out of the way whenever a geyser starts, then move back to your safe spot and repeat until she’s defeated.
Nofungus
Introduction: The boss of the swamp area.
Reward: Bishum Mushroom
Attacks:
- Raises arms up and summons a pair of mushroom minions, one on either side of the arena.
- Raises arms up and opens mouth to let out three ink balls, one directly in front of the boss and two others angled to the side for a wider arc.
- Winds up fist, then punches all the way to the back wall.
Strategy: The trickiest part of this fight is that the boss is invulnerable the majority of the time. You can only damage Nofungus when it uses its punch attack, as the bulb on the end of its arm is susceptible to damage. Until that attack comes, you’ll need to manage it repeatedly summoning new minions and spitting ink at you.
The minions are standard mushroom enemies and pose little threat, but can complicate the fight by shooting their own ink and boxing you in, so killing at least one to make room is advisable. The boss’s ink attack can be avoided by either killing a minion and moving far enough to the side to avoid the attack altogether, or by positioning Hime to stand between the central and side ink balls to avoid damage. The punch attack is easy to dodge, but only gives a short window to damage the boss before it retracts.
Underlord
Introduction: The boss of the hills.
Reward: Dream Casino Key
Attacks:
- From the top of the screen, can punch to the opposite wall once with each fist.
- While strafing, stops and detaches left hand to go to one side of the screen, then strafes back to return to the boss, dealing damage to anything along the way.
- While strafing, stops and detaches right hand to shoot four energy projectiles at regular intervals before returning to the boss.
- From the center of the screen, detaches left hand and circles around the boss twice, first in the circle of tiles adjacent to the boss, then the circle forming the perimeter of the arena.
Other:
- Teleports to top middle of the screen, invulnerable for a short time.
- Series of short teleports to the middle of the screen, settings up left hand circling attack, invulnerable during this time.
Strategy: The safest way to get through this fight is to wait for the attack where the boss’s left hand circles around the room, as it gives an extremely long window to attack the boss safely, only requiring the player to move out of the way when the knife is approaching the tile they are in, then able to return to attacking for the remainder of the boss’s attack.
Moving in during other attacks is possible, but riskier. During both of the attacks where one of the boss’s hands detach, wait for the detachment, then move in to strike while watching the hand so that you can move out of the way before it returns. The punch attack is the hardest to punish, so just move out of the way and wait for it to end.
The Bug
Introduction: The final boss of the game, the monster that broke your DVD player. And multiple worlds.
Reward: You beat the game and saved the anime club!
Attacks:
- The tail sends a beam of glitches towards the top of the screen.
- The head spits out a glitch straight down.
- The claws send two glitches in quick succession, one from either side, in a line toward Hime.
Strategy: Despite being surrounded on all sides, this fight is pretty straightforward due to having a projectile weapon with infinite ammo. You need to attack the head while dodging the various attacks, however the tail beam is like Kleptopatra’s beam attack. So when you see it starting up, run to the nearest wall and you’ll be safe. The head attack is deceptively dangerous, since you need to be under the head in order to deal damage. The moment you see it start flashing orange, get out of the way and you should be fine.
The claw attacks are the most troublesome to deal with, as it’s two hits back-to-back that are actually aimed at Hime. Keep moving up and down (though be weary of the boss dealing contact damage) to throw off their aim, and just keep an eye on the claws while you’re attacking the boss.
Items
Sword: Obtained from Alma during the story.
Bow: Same damage as the sword, but ranged and with limited ammunition. Can buy a boxed lunch (20 yenny) from the coffee shop, then trade it for the bow with the shrine maiden of the Kitsune Shrine (northern desert area. From the Mall, one screen east, north, west).
Boomerang: A ranged weapon with infinite ammo, same damage as the sword. Can hit an enemy multiple times due to the projectile staying in the air while returning to the player. Can purchase from the animal village shop for 400 yenny.
Bombs: Useful for getting into optional areas, can purchase a license from the general store in Beachtown for 50 yenny.
Bombs/Arrows: Limited ammunition for optional weapons, can be bought infinitely from stores for 10 yenny (4 bombs or 16 arrows per purchase).
Bomb/Arrow Capacity Upgrade: Doubles the amount of relevant ammunition you can carry, for 50 yenny. Arrow upgrade sold at the Beachtown store, Bomb upgrade sold at the animal village store.
Health Upgrades: Increase maximum health. Total of 10 in the world. One in each store for 40 yenny.
Campaign Walkthrough
Intro
After a monster destroys the anime club’s DVD player and television, Hime sets out to confront the monster, figure out why the world’s gone haywire, and get a new DVD player for the club. However, traversal is near impossible at the beginning due to various obstacles and hazards, like tall grass, pitfalls and heavy boulders.
To begin, go east from the Library as far as you can. For ease of future travel, you may want to stop in the train station (the building on the first screen east of the library) to unlock it as a fast travel point. Don’t let the glitches worry you, they can’t hurt you. The Slime on the final screen going east can though, so make sure to dodge it since you can’t fight it yet. Continue along the path, now going north for two screens before turning east again.
In the new screen, you’ll see an NPC named Alma. She’s an adventurer and gives you a sword with which you can fight monsters and cut grass. Test out the sword by cutting the grass on the same screen and begin moving south. You’ll encounter an orc and a slime. Either dodge or fight them, then continue southward to a simple puzzle. Hit the eye statue to unlock the path forward and fight two Squids, then head south to enter the desert area (heal/save at the new kitsune statue as necessary).
Head one screen east, then south, then west to reach the oasis. Push the eye statue out of the way to drain the water and gain access to the desert dungeon.
Desert Dungeon
In total, to get through this dungeon you need to rotate two statues to the proper orientation to unlock the boss door, then defeat the boss.
Starting on the west side, go as far west as you can to encounter a dead end room with two Slimes. Defeat them and a key will drop. Back in the previous large room, you can use this key on a locked door near the top of the room to proceed. Through the door is a simple puzzle involving three eye statues. Push the two on the side up once, then push the middle one to the side to proceed.
Turn the falcon statue so that it faces the east (right), and the first half of the dungeon is solved.
On the eastern side of the dungeon, you encounter a new kind of enemy: the Skeleton. After fighting it, proceed eastward to a large room. You can fight the enemies in the room if you want, but go to the waterfall on the north side of the room and continue forward to enter a secret room with a Skeleton and another new enemy: the Bat. Kill them to get another key.
Go back to the first skeleton room, then head north. Unlock the door, then head west on the following screen. Turn the snake statue until it faces west (left), and you’ll unlock the boss’s door.
Simply go south from the statue to jump down, and you can either use the teleporter (the swirling blue square) to go back to the kitsune statue to heal up and save first, or go directly to the Kleptopatra boss fight.
After beating Kleptopatra and gaining the Legendary Game Disk, head south two screens, then east two screens to enter Beachtown. While you’re here, you may as well pick up the fishing rod from the General Store, since you’ll need it later, and go to the train station north of the store to unlock fast travel in case you need to come back. You can also buy a bomb license from the general store to be able to use bombs to destroy cracked rocks, but they aren’t necessary to beat the game.
Beachtown
The main reason you needed to go to Beachtown though is to the east of the train station. The large house in the northeastern Beachtown map tile has an old man who will trade you his Winged Boots for the Legendary Game Disk. This is your first traversal upgrade since Alma gave you a sword, as the boots allow you to press Z to jump, and thus cross pits.
From here, the main progression continues in the swamp area, to the southwest portion of the map.
From the Beachtown general store screen, head west for two screens, north for one, then west for another three (passing by a long set of stairs to the Dream Casino and a witch’s hut in the process). Jump over the pits and you’ll officially be in the swamp area (from this entrance screen, you can also go one screen to the west to get the swamp train station).
Swamp Dungeon
Head south for one screen (if you went to the train station, then backup one screen east first, to where the swamp entrance sign is), then west for two, and you’ll find the swamp dungeon. While traveling, you’ll also encounter a new enemy: the Mushroom.
The swamp dungeon follows a similar mechanic to the previous dungeon: that you need to interact with something on either side of the dungeon to open the boss door, then fight the boss.
For the swamp, you need to navigate pipes and use switches to change their destination, and are looking for the two safety switches. However this time the two sides are more integrated than before.
Initially, the west side is a single room. You can fight a few enemies, but the main point is to get a key from a chest and leave. As a word of note: once you flip the pipe’s switch, you can’t get back to the larger area of the room. This might feel like the game glitched, but it’s supposed to happen, and you don’t need to go back there anymore, so you can just leave without issue.
With a new key, go to the eastern side of the dungeon. Flip the switch and unlock the door to access the next room. Ride the pipe to get a key, then head back to the previous room. Hit the switch to use the other path, and hit the first safety switch in the room with two bats.
Continue north and hit the switch to change the path of the pipes in the large room, then get back to the large room by reversing your steps and ride the pipes to the locked door in the northwestern corner of the room.
Unlock the door and head east to fight some enemies and gain a key. Head as far west as possible to encounter a room with a switch, locked door, and cracked rock. Trigger the switch to open a teleporter, and unlock the door. Without hitting the switch, enter the pipe to reach the second safety switch. Head back to the previous room to use the teleporter and heal up at the kitsune statue before the boss fight.
Head north a few screens to face the boss Nofungus.
After beating Nofungus and obtaining the Bishum Mushroom, leave the dungeon and retrace your steps to the edge of the desert and the witch’s hut (two screens east, then one screen north, jump over the pits and continue one screen east). Trade Salty the Witch the Bishum Mushroom for a Bicep Card, allowing you to push boulders.
From here, the entire northern half of the map opens up. You now have all of the traversal abilities, it’s just a matter of finding everything.
In terms of the main plot, from Salty’s hut, re-enter the swamp, go north one screen, then go as far west as possible, all the way to the edge of the map. Then head north until you reach the yellow-ish head thing. Those are the pushable boulders. Push it and continue north.
Tundra, Pig Farm and New Crunchy City
Welcome to the tundra! For now, we’re pretty much just passing through. Head north into the snow, and continue north up some stairs on the screen with an orc and a slime. You should be on a path that only takes up around a quarter of the next screen. Go up the next stairs and exit to the east. Go north and follow the winding but linear path. When you see an orc, there should be footprints in the snow leading across a bridge in the southern portion of the screen. Follow them all the way to the Pig Farm Lifestyle Resort and interact with the cat.
With the cat collected, make your way back to New Crunchy City. The easiest way to do this is to go to the animal village and activate the tundra train station. From the Pig Farm, go east one screen, then north as far as you can. On the final screen, head west and follow the footsteps into the village. The train station is in the northwestern screen, so just keep heading west. Activate the station and head to New Crunchy City.
From the New Crunchy City train station, head west, then south, then enter the big building. Don’t mind the creepy music and ominous darkness, just go north for two screens and return Junji Ito’s cat to him in exchange for a Skeleton Key.
Junji Ito’s House
Retrace your steps back to the New Crunchy City train station and go back to the animal village. Keep going east until you hit a wall (this should be the same screen as the sign that says you’re at the highest peak). From here the path is winding and the enemies don’t give you a break, but the idea is to keep heading east.
From the screen with the summit sign, head south, then east, then take the stairs to go north, follow the screen’s path to the east, and head south. You should see the snow melting, indicating that you’ve made it into the hills area.
Head east and encounter the final new enemy of the game: the yokai. Kill it and head north, then keep going east until you see Alma and a locked door. You’ll automatically use the Skeleton Key when you interact with the door, opening the hills dungeon.
Hills Dungeon
This dungeon is less of a puzzle and more of a maze with a few signs to give hints on how to unlock the boss’s door. To reach said door, start by going west from the kitsune statue. In the second screen (the big room), use the southern exit to fight two mushrooms to get a key. Use the key on the locked door in the big room and take the stairs on the next screen down.
Follow the linear path and take the stairs back up. Drop down and open the chest to get a key, then continue west to reach the kitsune entrance hall again. Repeat the same path until the point you dropped down to get the key. Instead of dropping, proceed east.
The large room has three exits, one southern and two northern. The eastmost northern exit leads to a combat room that gives you a key. The western north exit is the remainder of the progression for this dungeon (the southern is just one of the hints for later).
Follow the path into the long room and take the western exit. Drop down to get a chest with a key, then drop again to reach the entrance hall. Make you way back to the same long room and take the stairs.
You have reached the main boss room. Use the southern exit, take the stairs, and continue to the next screen to open a chest with a key.
Return to the boss room and use the exit on the far west northern wall. Fight off the orcs and open the chest for your final key.
Return to the boss door room and use all four keys on the locks around the pushable boulder. The hints you’ve been collecting are as follows:
- At the break of dawn, our overlord travels north to meet his people.
- Before noon, our overlord travels south to survey his lands.
- Afternoon, our overlord travels east to spread his benevolence.
- At night, our overlord travels west, in tireless duty to his people.
So push the boulder to the north, then south, east, west. Every time you push it, it will return to its home position.
As a bonus, you can actually input another series of movement to get a hidden item from this screen. Use the Konami code (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right) and you’ll get the Cursed Amulet. It’s entirely useless, but at least you can fill up your inventory, if you’re trying to go for a completionist run.
Underlord
With the boss door open, you can finally fight Underlord. When you defeat him, you’ll get the Dream Casino key. The stairs to the Dream Casino are those stairs in the desert we saw on the way to the swamp after defeating Kleptopatra.
From the dungeon, start heading south. Stop after two screens though, and talk to the fisherman NPC to give him the fishing rod from Beachtown. He’ll give you a Yellowtail. Go three screens to the west (starting by going across the bridge in the upper left side of the screen with the fisherman) and one screen south to reach the hills train station. Activate it and use it to go to the animal village.
In the village, go one screen east and enter the mayor’s house. Talk to the Big Cheese to trade your Yellowtail for their TV. Go back to the train station and go to New Crunchy City. Go west two screens to Hime’s house and enter. Go west to the kitchen and play the petting minigame with Yuzu the cat to get an Anime DVD, then exit the house and go back east to the library. Go up the stairs to your anime club, and talk to Bimmy to give the club their new TV and DVD to watch. In return, you’ll get an Anime Club Membership Card.
Now you’re prepared. Go back to the train station and go to Beachtown. Use the southern exit near the general store and go two screens west, one north, and another west to reach the stairs to the Dream Casino, bordered by Alma and Salty.
Ascend the stairs, open the door, fight the three area bosses again, show your membership card to the apparently transdimensional being running the trains, and enter the boss fight with the Y2K Bug, the monster that broke your DVD player and stopped you from watching anime. Also something about multiple worlds crashing together. Don’t worry, you get a projectile sword for this fight because Alma decided to give you an upgrade.
Once you’ve defeated the boss, you’ve won the game and get to watch anime with your friends, then fireworks as the credits roll!
What did you think of Hime’s Quest? Do you have any tips or guides that you think other people could benefit from knowing? Let us know in the comments below!
Kevin Matyi is a freelance features writer for Crunchyroll. He’s been watching anime for as long as he can remember, and his favorite shows tend to be shonen and other action series.
