Chex Quest HD, a remake of the 1996 promotional Chex shooter made with the Doom engine, is now available for free on Steam. This remake adds new playable characters, animated cinematics, a multiplayer mode (I have no idea why), and new gameplay features like the ability to jump. But don't worry, the sound of the door opening is still as loud as ever. It is indeed preserved.

If, like me, you were wondering what the heck Chex Mix was doing taking over the promotion of Chex Quest, a game clearly set in the serial portion of the General Mills Cinematic Universe, prepare for a snack food surprise. That's because snacks have struck sacred lore with the registration of five new playable characters based on the various varieties of Chex Mix snacks. Unfortunately, the "strange flavored powders that accumulate at the bottom of the bag" are not playable characters. It's the developers at Flight School Studios. They were obviously distracted by the creation of the rather radical "Creature in the Well," a pinball/slasher hybrid that was released last year.

The additional characters are tied to product promotions and can be redeemed through codes in specially marked Chex Mix bags or through Chex Mix social media channels. But honestly, the curated feed of retweets and half-baked memes praising mediocre snacks is a pretty safe atmosphere right now, especially compared to the rest of Twitter. In other words, I still think you shouldn't follow Chex Mix, but I think it's easy to do worse.

I jumped on board after the first two levels; Chex Quest HD is obviously a low-budget remake of a promotional game made on an even older shooting engine, but it's still quite appealing. Maybe it's just appealing to me because I must have played Chex Quest long before "Doom" and "Wolfenstein". Imagine Chex Quest coming out of a cereal box in my childhood when my parents banned video games. That was my secret. I would obliterate a lot of Chex-hungry aliens and be ready to unplug all the power supplies the moment my father walked in.

The remake, while cute, doesn't do much to evolve the experience. It's still mostly about sliding around narrow corridors and beating up slow-moving monsters with non-violent bullets that only make them teleport back to their home planet instead of blowing them to hell. Colored keys open corresponding doors, and secrets are hidden behind hidden doors. Although "Doom" is aimed at children or the chex elite, the 3D model has been updated and is a little too smooth and featureless to surpass the original sprites.

"Chex Quest HD" is still a tremendous novelty. It would be ideal if the original game were released on Steam, but for now, we'll accept this strange, Chex-mix flavored impurity. This could be a gateway to "Doom Eternal" for kids, and that's a beautiful thing.