Image Courtesy of WaterZero
This review is one in a series of reviews that focus on games from my pre-teen and teen years (the 80's). Many of them will be out of print and I aim to not only review the game but comment on my thoughts of them then and now - many years on.
This review is also meant to serve as part review, part resource so please feel free to skip to the parts of most relevance for you.
If you liked the review please thumb the top of the article so others have a better chance of seeing it and I know you stopped by. Thanks for reading.
Summary
Game Type - Board Game
Play Time : 60-90 minutes
Number of Players: 2-5
Mechanics - Roll & Move, Exploration, Miniatures Combat
Difficulty - Pick-up & Play
Components - Excellent ++
Maturity Level - 19 Years (Released 1989
Designer <PERSON> -( Axis & Allies: Pacific, Battle Masters, Battleball, all manner of Heroscape, RISK: The Lord of the Rings, Space Crusade)
HeroQuest was something of a revelation to me as a 14 year old. My experience (and I suspect that of many others) with board games to that point was very much the mass market fare, although they (<PERSON>, Crown & Andrews) made some great games in the 80's like Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs, Horror House and Survive!. HeroQuest however took me to a new place altogether. It fuelled my love of all things fantasy and it very much allowed me to play out what I had imagined when reading Fighting Fantasy Game Books. On top of that, HeroQuest allowed me to play with friends and share those experiences.
What has lead to this review after all these years is that I have just rediscovered HeroQuest by playing it with my 3 boys aged 5-8. It's fair to say that I've fallen in love with the game all over again, although for slightly different reasons second time around.
The Theme & A Little History
HeroQuest used what we now view as a tried and true...perhaps even tired by some...theme of fantasy. A Dwarf, Elf, Wizard and Barbarian were pitted against the evil hordes in Goblins, Orcs, Sorcerers, Undead and many more. 470
Of course back in '89 the fantasy genre was nowhere near as 'overexposed' (I’m looking at you Hollywood and the video games industry) as it is today. Whilst this was essentially <PERSON> 'come to life' the general public didn't regard 'fantasy' as a part of mainstream popular culture and only true fans would take to reading the books by the great man himself.
To put things in perspective, these were the days when the TV Show 60 Minutes were doing stories exploring the link between Dungeons & Dragons and teen suicide (there was one very notable case in New Zealand).
The game required one player to take on the role of the evil wizard <PERSON> (I believe his name differed in other parts of the world), whilst the other players controlled the heroes (4 being the maximum). The modern day equivalent of course is Descent: Journeys in the Dark and it too uses the same model (Overlord versus heroes).
A single player could play any number of heroes so in effect the game catered for 2-5 players. It was also possible to play with less than 4 Heroes and this, in effect, increased the difficulty.
HeroQuest stands out in my mind for two simple reasons. Primarily this was the first game of its type to hit the mass market. HeroQuest was essentially a board game representation of Role Playing Games like Dungeons & Dragons. Games like D&D were often denounced by religious groups in the 80's (and probably still are to some degree today) so HeroQuest was important as its board game nature made it less threatening. The board game format combined with the familiar Milton Bradley brand name saw Department Stores stock a game that really wasn't representative of their normal product lines. Suddenly the fantasy genre was on shelves and getting exposure to millions of children (presumably boys as girls were still into dolls in the late 80's, anyone recall Cabbage Patch Dolls?, but I could be wrong) all around the world.
I recognise that there were other games like DungeonQuest (released in '87 of which I've never played) but these were not as widely available.
The second reason why HeroQuest stood out from other games of that time, was that it allowed for sequential campaign play over 14 quests. This allowed players to develop a character, gather treasure, buy equipment and generally build a story and history for their character, instead of the single play and pack away nature of traditional games.
Ok this wasn't role-playing like depth but it did allow players to get attached to their characters.
HeroQuest was something new...it was exciting... 304