SideQuest Hunters

SideQuest Hunters knows exactly what kind of game it is, and the design brief is right there in the mechanics list: corner-window desktop idle. Paparajote Games built a low-intensity roguelite hybrid that lives in a small window tucked into the edge of your monitor, where an automated hunter grinds through raids while you do actual work, and your contribution is route planning between the moments when you glance over. It is a second-monitor companion first and a game second, and it is priced and paced like one.

What the loop feels like

The first scene is the map. Every raid is laid out from start to finish as a chain of nodes, mostly skull-marked combat encounters but with shops, healing points and a final boss anchoring the route, and your one real decision is the path: heal now, or push to the next shop and gamble the health pool.

The second scene is the background grind. The hunter clears wave after wave of four to five enemies without your input, the raid concludes, and the haul funds permanent stats and upgrades, turning an underpowered wanderer into a stage-clearing powerhouse one raid at a time. That’s SideQuest Hunters.

How it actually works

Combat is fully automated: attacks, stats and abilities resolve across multiple waves with no player input during the brawl. Progression runs through sequential stages that ramp numerical and mechanical difficulty toward successful raids, and every raid pays into permanent upgrades. The community pushed back hard on the original pacing, with no speed controls and forced transition animations making revisited stages tedious, and Paparajote responded by patching in a 2x speed option and auto-decision features, which quietly turned the tedium complaint into a solved problem. Veteran advice matches the premise: plan routes deliberately instead of auto-piloting, spend healing and shop nodes only when the health pool or gear actually requires it, and above all accept the game as a low-engagement side activity, because staring at the animations waiting for depth is the one way to burn out on it.

Where it stumbles

The interactivity ceiling is real. Built to run passively in a corner, it offers no tactical depth, rich storytelling or complex systems for players seeking a main-event game, and the roguelite structure means failed routes can feel like wasted background hours. Its charm is entirely dependent on wanting a desktop pet that occasionally hands you an upgrade screen.

Playing it today

It is a budget purchase on Steam for Windows and Mac from Paparajote Games, with the speed and auto-decision patches already included. If corner-window grinding suits you, Progress Game and Cookie Clicker fill the other monitor similarly.

The verdict

A second-monitor companion that knows its lane: automated raids, route planning, and permanent numbers. Sit it in the corner, glance over occasionally, and it does exactly what it promises.