If you already have gray hair (or are on your way to it), there is a board game that will bring a smile to your mouth irrepressibly. It is the memory of clashing swords, battles won at the last moment, medieval epics, miniatures and dungeons that unfolded before us: it may not be the best, but, for many, it was the first. This is the story of ‘HeroQuest’.
Pure dungeon crawling
By the end of the 80’s, ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘ was already more than established in popular culture. With the second edition about to be published, which would introduce the first major changes to the role-playing game, more than a few people tried to capitalize on its success. Among them, Games Workshop, founded in 1975 and which brought Gary Gygax’s work to the United Kingdom as well as creating complex miniatures and games like ‘Warhammer 40K’, which even now continues to receive versions and expansions.
In this scenario, in which medieval fantasy took all the glory, we find Stephen Baker, a game designer who left Games Workshop to go to the friendlier Milton Bradley (better known in Spain as MB). His idea, to create a fantasy game in the style of ‘Warhammer’ but one that could be played by everyone. Said and done: the only requirement was that it be simple enough for the whole family to understand.
Originally, Baker was going to contact his former company exclusively to make the miniatures, but he finally decided to trust them to create and develop the whole game. In 1989 it exploded in sales in Europe and became the gaming craze: ‘HeroQuest’ was a mix between role-playing game, miniatures game and board game that for four years was absolutely everything.
Role for novices
In ‘HeroQuest’, players had to fight against the master (“Morcar” as we know him or “Zargon” as he is known in the United States), who set up dungeons to try to defeat them. Players could choose from four archetypes (barbarian, dwarf, elf and mage), each with their own range of abilities, who fought against all the enemies put in front of them. For an experienced player it was really simple, but the kids of the time felt that finally a game gave them the epic they needed.
The same year of its release, ‘The Tower of Kellar’ allowed players to try to free the Emperor and his army by going through ten new scenarios with 17 different monster miniatures (it would appear in 1991 in the United States). And, at the same time that expansions were appearing like hot cakes (‘Return of the Warlock Lord’, ‘The Wizards of Morcar’), Games Workshop was preparing a special version for the most experienced players.
Advanced HeroQuest’ was the same game but more complicated, to put it simply. The characters acquired new characteristics and the combat was more complex… although at the time the fans didn’t like it very much. In fact, the fame of HeroQuest, in general, was falling over the years. And then came its darkest moment: crowdfunding.
Launch it
They asked for 58,000 euros, but managed to raise 679,927: a small company called Gamezone “accepted the challenge” of releasing a 25th anniversary version of ‘HeroQuest‘ giving it the level it deserved as a game that changed the life of a whole generation. They promised it would see the light of day by Christmas 2014. To this day, no one has seen a single figurine… or their money back. Gamezone didn’t get the rights but nevertheless launched the crowdfunding, convinced that, seeing the success, they would get them.
In 2021 the trial was still going on, and it doesn’t seem that it will end soon because of its “extreme complexity”. Luckily, last year Avalon Quest (Hasbro in Spain) was able to calm things down by releasing ‘HeroQuest’ for sale again with the usual expansions and some new ones trying to take advantage of the current wave of board game success.
HeroQuest’ is a game that has marked many childhoods, defined many lives and changed many minds about what role-playing games are. It may not have had a smooth path and it may have started as “an easy version” of role-playing, but in the end the numbers speak: especially in Spain, it was more than pure nostalgia. It was a mass phenomenon. Grab your axe, open the dungeon and get ready to collaborate to kill all the bugs: Let the battle begin!
