Out of Games has spent the past several seasons turning its community hub into something closer to a living game. The seasonal experiments that began with Reelfest and continued through Breaking Ground laid the groundwork: fishing arrived first, then foraging, mining, and woodcutting followed. By 2026, those pieces have coalesced into Sidequest, a free, login-driven experience where players build a character, gather resources, craft gear, and now take on weekly boss fights. Oozefest is the first major event in this seasonal structure, and it pushes the site’s game layer into its most ambitious territory yet.
The event is not entirely new. Oozefest originally appeared on Out of Cards in 2020, when trick-or-treating, candy, and a few playful tricks gave the community a Halloween diversion. The modern Sidequest version keeps that mischievous spirit but rebuilds it around a much larger framework. Candy is no longer the main currency; Ectoplasm fills that role, while candy becomes a consumable that grants buffs during boss encounters. Trick-or-treating now reaches member profiles, realms, and articles published during the event, with treats, tricks, pranks, and Sugar Rush adding daily variety.
The feature set reads like a compact role-playing game grafted onto a community site. Players customize a personal character, equip gear to become more powerful, and visit artisans who run separate workshops. Those artisans teach new recipes as crafting levels rise, and they are also known to hand out gifts. Gathering sits at the bottom of every screen, offering materials on a cooldown, while random finds can appear during ordinary site travel, including rare chances at gear. Throwing Ooze adds a social prank layer: Oozeballs can be bought in the shop and tossed at other members by visiting their profiles or finding their comments.
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Boss fights | Weekly community challenger with shared attacks and consequences for wins or losses. |
| Character | Personal avatar with gear and customization that affects power. |
| Craft gear | Artisans in workshops teach recipes and give gifts as crafting levels rise. |
| Gathering | Cooldown-based material collection plus random finds during site travel. |
| Ectoplasm | Halloween currency that replaced candy as the main event token. |
| Throwing ooze | Oozeballs can be bought and thrown at other members through profiles and comments. |
| Trick-or-treating | Daily interactions with profiles, realms, and event articles for rewards and pranks. |
Boss fights are the centerpiece. Each week introduces a new encounter, and the community either wins or loses together. Both outcomes carry positives and negatives, so coordination matters. Players are encouraged to use personal store pages to trade and strengthen the settlement’s overall attack. Daily challenges on the Oozefest page provide extra attacks, and players who gather the right materials can craft a Battle Stew in the Kitchen for one additional attack per day. The first boss, Gourdon the Rotten, is a straightforward tank-and-spank target, but the design is explicitly a learning phase; later fights are expected to demand different strategies and more careful planning.
Battle Stew recipes rotate with the season. Once a season ends, old stews remain in inventory, but new recipes require new materials. That approach keeps seasonal events connected to gathering and crafting rather than treating them as isolated mini-games. The developers have described monthly content additions as the plan, with the sky as the limit. A winter event is already positioned as a major milestone, one that was planned years earlier and is finally ready to be brought to the community.
The interface remains a work in progress. Most features currently sit inside the Sidequest Realm, and navigating between them can feel less natural than opening a dedicated game. The Sidequest World, a literal game embedded in the website, is intended to eventually support the same interactions in a more cohesive space. Implementation will arrive in stages because the settlement itself is still under construction. The Kitchen, in particular, is described with affectionate humor as little more than a pit in the mud, raising the question of whether the food is even safe to eat.
Community feedback is central to the project. Players are encouraged to share impressions in the Sidequest Realm by creating threads or joining existing feedback discussions. The team frames seasonal events as an iterative process, with each round of responses shaping future improvements. Oozefest therefore serves two purposes: it gives the community a Halloween-themed game to enjoy now, and it tests the systems that will define Sidequest in the months and years ahead. 🎃⚔️🍲