The headline refers to Watch Quest: Heroes of Time, a 2015 game from WayForward—not a new 2026 announcement. WayForward announced it on April 14, 2015, and released it on April 24 alongside the first Apple Watch. It was built around an iPhone-and-Apple-Watch combination, with the phone handling management and the watch presenting the heroes’ journeys.
The game was called Watch Quest: Heroes of Time
Contemporary reports sometimes shortened the name to Watch Quest. WayForward, the studio behind Shantae, Mighty Switch Force! and DuckTales Remastered, described the project as an Apple Watch-exclusive experience. That label describes its target platform, not a watch-only game. The iPhone was an essential part of the design.
GamesBeat’s announcement report dates the reveal to April 14, 2015. Pocket Gamer’s launch report confirms the April 24 release date.
How the iPhone and Apple Watch worked together
| Device | Role in the game |
|---|---|
| iPhone | Manage the kingdom, select heroes, equip them, handle progression and make in-app purchases. |
| Apple Watch | Follow quests, receive notifications, fight monsters, solve short puzzles and find treasure. |
On the larger phone screen, you prepared a character and sent that hero on a quest. The watch then became the adventure layer: you checked in on the journey, responded to brief challenges and collected the results. Calling it a standalone Apple Watch game therefore gives the wrong impression; it was an Apple Watch-centered game dependent on an iPhone companion.
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- A FULL-FEATURED HEALTH TRACKER—Apple Watch Series 11 gives you invaluable insights about your body, right from your wrist. Take an ECG anytime* and get alerts for a high and low heart rate or an irregular rhythm*—so you can stay closer to your heart. You can also view your overnight health tracking metrics with the Vitals app* and be notified of possible sleep apnea.*
- KNOW YOUR SLEEP SCORE—With advanced sleep tracking, Series 11 gives you a daily sleep score. It’s an easy way to help measure and understand the quality of your sleep, so you can make it more restorative.
- GET HYPERTENSION NOTIFICATIONS—Did you know that Series 11 can spot signs of chronic high blood pressure? By analyzing how your blood vessels respond to beats of the heart, it can notify you of possible hypertension.*
- SAFETY FEATURES—A smartwatch that puts your safety first. Series 11 can detect a hard fall or severe car crash, automatically help connect you with emergency services, and notify your emergency contacts.* Check In can automatically notify a loved one when you’ve arrived at your destination.
- A POWERFUL FITNESS TRACKER—With advanced metrics and motivating features like Pacer, Heart Rate Zones, training load, and Workout Buddy powered by Apple Intelligence from your nearby iPhone*—Series 11 is made to help everyone stay active, from runners and hikers to strength-training enthusiasts.
What a quest felt like
Preparation on the phone
You chose or managed a hero, selected equipment and dispatched the character from the kingdom-management screen. This kept inventory and longer-form decisions off the watch’s small display.
Short interactions on the watch
Some journeys were largely passive and could run for several hours. Others asked for periodic interaction, including battles, puzzles and treasure discoveries. The result was closer to an asynchronous adventure than to a miniature Shantae-style platformer. Pocket Gamer’s preview and GamesBeat’s coverage describe this split between longer journeys and quick watch-based actions.
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- A FULL-FEATURED HEALTH TRACKER—Apple Watch Series 11 gives you invaluable insights about your body, right from your wrist. Take an ECG anytime* and get alerts for a high and low heart rate or an irregular rhythm*—so you can stay closer to your heart. You can also view your overnight health tracking metrics with the Vitals app* and be notified of possible sleep apnea.*
- KNOW YOUR SLEEP SCORE—With advanced sleep tracking, Series 11 gives you a daily sleep score. It’s an easy way to help measure and understand the quality of your sleep, so you can make it more restorative.
- GET HYPERTENSION NOTIFICATIONS—Did you know that Series 11 can spot signs of chronic high blood pressure? By analyzing how your blood vessels respond to beats of the heart, it can notify you of possible hypertension.*
- SAFETY FEATURES—A smartwatch that puts your safety first. Series 11 can detect a hard fall or severe car crash, automatically help connect you with emergency services, and notify your emergency contacts.* Check In can automatically notify a loved one when you’ve arrived at your destination.
- A POWERFUL FITNESS TRACKER—With advanced metrics and motivating features like Pacer, Heart Rate Zones, training load, and Workout Buddy powered by Apple Intelligence from your nearby iPhone*—Series 11 is made to help everyone stay active, from runners and hikers to strength-training enthusiasts.
It was free-to-start, not a complete free game
The initial download was free and included one training quest. Additional characters, campaigns, lands, monsters, items or quest packs were sold separately through the iPhone portion of the app. The first reported expansion, Bolo’s Adventure, cost $0.99 in the United States and £0.79 in the United Kingdom. Those were launch-era prices reported in April 2015, not current prices.
Game Informer’s announcement and Pocket Gamer’s release coverage identify the free training content and paid expansion model.
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- GET SMARTER HEALTH INSIGHTS—Apple Watch SE 3 is an advanced health tracker that helps you better understand your body. The smartwatch sends alerts for an irregular heart rhythm, or an unusually high or low heart rate.* You can view your overnight health tracking metrics with the Vitals app,* track your sleep score, and get sleep apnea notifications.*
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- KEEP HELP CLOSE AT HAND—SE 3 is a smartwatch that can detect a hard fall or severe car crash and automatically help connect you to emergency services and notify your emergency contacts.* Check In can automatically notify a loved one when you’ve arrived at your destination.
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What the Shantae connection really meant
Watch Quest was not a mainline Shantae game. The connection was WayForward’s authorship and the appearance of Shantae-related characters. Contemporary coverage identified Shantae and Bolo among the featured or playable characters. Nintendo Life’s report is a useful source for that distinction: the title was Watch Quest: Heroes of Time, with Shantae and friends associated with it, rather than “Shantae on Apple Watch.”
Why it mattered at the first Apple Watch launch
In 2015, developers were still testing what made sense on a wrist-sized screen. Watch Quest avoided trying to reproduce a console adventure in miniature. The phone handled strategy, equipment and progression; the watch supplied glanceable notifications and short interactions. That division suited a device intended for brief checks throughout the day, while passive quests let progress continue when the player was not actively tapping.
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- GET SMARTER HEALTH INSIGHTS—Apple Watch SE 3 is an advanced health tracker that helps you better understand your body. The smartwatch sends alerts for an irregular heart rhythm, or an unusually high or low heart rate.* You can view your overnight health tracking metrics with the Vitals app,* track your sleep score, and get sleep apnea notifications.*
- A GREAT FITNESS TRACKER—SE 3 can track your workouts in a healthy number of ways—from running and strength training to simply achieving your 10K steps a day. With real-time metrics and Workout Buddy powered by Apple Intelligence from your nearby iPhone,* you’ll hit your goals like never before.
- KEEP HELP CLOSE AT HAND—SE 3 is a smartwatch that can detect a hard fall or severe car crash and automatically help connect you to emergency services and notify your emergency contacts.* Check In can automatically notify a loved one when you’ve arrived at your destination.
- WOMEN’S HEALTH INSIGHTS—SE 3 has advanced sensors that track your wrist temperature while you sleep. With this smartwatch, you can log your periods and symptoms, get period predictions, and get notified of cycle deviations.*
- GREAT BATTERY LIFE AND FASTER CHARGING—Enjoy a smartwatch with all-day, 18-hour battery life* from sunup to sundown. Then charge up to twice as fast as SE 2* and get up to 8 hours of battery in just 15 minutes.*
The trade-off was dependence on two devices and an intentionally asynchronous pace. The free entry point made an experimental launch-period game easy to try, but the full experience was divided between an introductory quest and optional purchases.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Can you still play Watch Quest today?
The confirmed history ends with its 2015 release. As of August 18, 2026, no reliable official evidence establishes that the game remains listed, downloadable or compatible with current iOS and watchOS versions. Apple’s modern documentation explains independent watchOS apps and direct watch distribution, but that model arrived after Watch Quest’s companion-app era. See Apple’s WWDC 2019 explanation of independent watch apps and its current documentation.
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- A FULL-FEATURED HEALTH TRACKER—Apple Watch Series 11 gives you invaluable insights about your body, right from your wrist. Take an ECG anytime* and get alerts for a high and low heart rate or an irregular rhythm*—so you can stay closer to your heart. You can also view your overnight health tracking metrics with the Vitals app* and be notified of possible sleep apnea.*
- KNOW YOUR SLEEP SCORE—With advanced sleep tracking, Series 11 gives you a daily sleep score. It’s an easy way to help measure and understand the quality of your sleep, so you can make it more restorative.
- GET HYPERTENSION NOTIFICATIONS—Did you know that Series 11 can spot signs of chronic high blood pressure? By analyzing how your blood vessels respond to beats of the heart, it can notify you of possible hypertension.*
- SAFETY FEATURES—A smartwatch that puts your safety first. Series 11 can detect a hard fall or severe car crash, automatically help connect you with emergency services, and notify your emergency contacts.* Check In can automatically notify a loved one when you’ve arrived at your destination.
- A POWERFUL FITNESS TRACKER—With advanced metrics and motivating features like Pacer, Heart Rate Zones, training load, and Workout Buddy powered by Apple Intelligence from your nearby iPhone*—Series 11 is made to help everyone stay active, from runners and hikers to strength-training enthusiasts.
If you are investigating it, treat these as separate questions:
- Is the app visible in your Apple account’s purchase history or the current App Store?
- Can an older iPhone and Apple Watch pairing install and launch both components?
- Can previously purchased quest content be restored?
None of those points can be answered from the original launch reports. Do not assume that a current Apple Watch will install the game, and do not treat community comments as proof of a delisting date, licensing issue or modern compatibility.
The short version
Watch Quest: Heroes of Time was WayForward’s 2015 experiment in Apple Watch game design: manage a kingdom and equipment on an iPhone, then follow heroes through battles, puzzles and treasure hunts on the watch. It launched free-to-start with paid quest content and included Shantae-related characters, but it was not a mainline Shantae title. Its release is documented; its availability on modern Apple devices is not.
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