Tap Quest

Pour perfect pints before the crowd turns on you! Tap Quest is our very own arcade game – designed and built entirely in-house, from the code to the controller – and like everything else at SideQuest, it's free to play. No coins, no cards, just walk up and pull a tap.

How to Play

Four colored taps, a thirsty crowd, and two minutes on the clock. Customers queue up at the taps, and it's your job to serve whoever's at the front:

Hold a tap's handle to pour, release to serve.
Stop short and the glass is too light; hold too long and it overflows – both cost you points.
Land the pour in the gold zone at the top of the glass for a perfect pour.
Keep an eye on your customers' patience – if too many storm out angry, your shift is over.
Chain clean pours to build a combo and multiply your score.

Easy to pick up, hard to master – exactly how an arcade game should be.

Difficulties

Six difficulty levels, from a friendly warm-up to complete madness:

First Day on the Job – practice mode: nobody gets angry, nobody leaves. Learn the pour in peace.
Easy
Normal
Hard
Expert
Octopus Bartender – you'll wish you had eight arms.

Your best score is tracked separately for each difficulty.

High Scores & Leaderboards

Your shift ends, but your legend lives on: the game now saves high scores, and each difficulty has its own leaderboard. Pour a great round, put your name up, and see how long you can hold the top spot – bragging rights officially survive the night.

The Controller

The controller is homemade too. It uses four joysticks – one per tap – each locked to a single axis so they move like real tap handles, all driven by an Arduino that registers itself as an Xbox controller.

The inside of the Tap Quest controller: four arcade joysticks and an Arduino wired together in a wooden box — Inside the box: one joystick per tap, all driven by a single Arduino.

A Prototype (For Now)

What's standing at the bar today is a prototype. The current graphics are temporary placeholder assets that will be remade in pixel art, and a full arcade cabinet is going to be built around the game. Many more improvements are planned too, so expect the game to keep getting better between visits.

The Inspiration

Tap Quest is based on Perfect Pour, an arcade game made by DSM Arcade. If you ever come across one of their original cabinets, go pull those taps too!

Gallery

From a pile of joysticks on a workbench to pints being poured at the bar: