Chex Quest

Originally based on the Doom engine, the gameplay present in Chex Quest is substantially identical to its predecessor. The game is played in a first person perspective with the player character navigating through quasi-3D environments while enemies attempt to attack and immobilize him. Along the way, various cereal-themed power-ups, weapons, and ammunition can be found that can boost the player character's health and make him better able to counterattack or flee his enemies. When the final boss is defeated in the last level, the game is won.

A few notable differences from Doom are evident, however, regarding enemy profiles (specifically the loss of long-range attacks in low-level enemies and the loss of movement in high-level enemies) and the number of levels in each world (restricted to 5 levels in Chex Quest).

Set on a distant planet named Bazoik, the game follows the Chex Warrior, a soldier clad in a Chex-shaped suit of armor, as he foils the invasion of the planet by the 'Flemoids': a species of slimy, green invertebrates, who have infested the planet and captured many helpless colonists, whom the Chex Warrior must save. His main weapons are devices called "zorchers", which teleports his enemies to their home dimension. The game starts at the landing pad of the research center on Bazoik; other levels include the laboratory, the arboretum, and finally, the caverns of Bazoik, where the Flemoids have established their colony. Their principal weapon is the use of mucus as a projectile.

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. 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 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. The game would be a high-quality program whose normal retail value would be between $30 and $35. However, it would be offered to consumers for free with no increase to the cost of the cereal box.

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 modified 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. Indeed, the game has been recognized for having a sense of humor about its identity and origins.

On release, the game was received largely positively by players. Consumers of diverse ages gave enthusiastic feedback, and there were many requests for the development of sequels. Corporate sales of Chex cereal also saw a tremendous boost with incremental volume over base increasing by 295% and volume share increasing 48% from the previous year. These increases were directly attributed to the release of Chex Quest, and General Mills deemed the promotion "highly successful." Although the promotion only lasted 6 weeks, the game continued to be played well beyond the promotional period and promotional marketing groups considered the brand image to have been revitalized "from old-fashioned and stodgy to exciting, fun and modern."

Despite this, what little critical attention Chex Quest received in the video game press tended to be negative. Comparisons of the game to its forerunner (Doom) and to other similar games of the day were often unfavorable to Chex Quest, which was pejoratively labeled a "Doom clone", and the game was regarded as an imitation with little to no innovation. Noted cereal scholar Scott Bruce decried General Mills' decision to invent a new mascot for Chex cereal for such frivolous purposes, and dismissed the Chex Warrior as not compelling enough to sell the product.