Why We Built SideQuest Tools

It started, like most good ideas, from a moment of boredom and a late-night TikTok scroll.

In early 2024, the “side quest” trend was everywhere. People were filming themselves going on spontaneous solo adventures — visiting a town they’d never heard of, trying a random restaurant with their eyes closed, writing a letter to a stranger, staying up to watch the sunrise. Not productivity hacks. Not life optimization. Just… living. The comment sections were euphoric. People were sharing their own stories, tagging friends, and asking the same question over and over: “Where do I find more of these?”

We searched. We found scattered Reddit threads, Pinterest boards, and journal prompts — but nothing that actually worked as a tool. Nothing that let you pick a category, track what you’d done, share the moment, or generate something tailored to you. So we built it.

SideQuest Tools started as a single page with 50 quest ideas. Within a month, it had grown into a full-featured platform: a 100-quest tracker with XP progression, an AI generator powered by GPT-4o, a faith-specific quest finder for Christian communities (one of the most underserved corners of the trend), a random spinner wheel for the chronically indecisive, and a 30-day summer challenge calendar.

Everything is free. Everything runs in your browser. No account. No download. No subscription. Because the whole point of a side quest is to lower the friction between you and the experience.

We believe the world gets better when people step away from their screens and into their lives. SideQuest Tools is our small contribution to that. We hope it sends you somewhere unexpected.

— The SideQuest Tools Team