Board Game Blast: Heroquest
25Vin and I talk about the iconic board game Heroquest.
From wiki
In the late 1980s, game designer Stephen Baker moved from Games Workshop (GW) to Milton Bradley, and convinced Roger Ford, Milton Bradley's head of development to allow him to develop a fantasy genre game. Kennedy gave him the go-ahead if he kept the game simple. Basker contacted his former employer, Games Workshop, to develop the plastic miniatures that would be needed in the game, but he then decided to draw on their expertise in the fantasy game field to help develop the game.[5] The result was the fantasy board game HeroQuest (1989), an adventure game where the players cooperate against a single adversarial Games Master.[6] The game was released in Britain, Europe and Australia in 1989, and a slightly different version was released in America and Canada in 1990.
The game consists of a board and a number of individual miniatures and items. The protagonists are four heroes ("Barbarian", "Dwarf", "Elf" and "Wizard") who face a selection of monsters: Orcs, Goblins, Fimir, Chaos Warriors, a Chaos Warlock/witch Lord (which represent many of the named characters for the various quests), a Gargoyle and a number of Undead: skeletons, zombies and mummies.
In a 1989 interview, designer Stephen Baker agreed that the game was too easy if the players all cooperated, but explained that "The game is really aimed at 10–12 year olds who play with their mums and dads. My feeling is that they play in a very competitive, rather co-operative way."[5]
Many expansions for the game were published, starting with Kellar's Keep, released in Europe and Australasia in 1989, and the United States and Canada in 1991. Kellar's Keep added new quests, new items and artifacts and a further batch of monster figures (more Orcs, Goblins and Fimir). Released shortly in the same years was Return of the Witch Lord which extended the undead with more skeletons, mummies and zombies.
The publication of expansion sets was then split between the European and Australasian markets and the North American market. In Europe and Australasia, Against the Ogre Horde was released in 1990, and included Ogres, a more powerful monster type, while Wizards of Morcar was released in 1991, themed around the addition of enemy wizards.
In 1992, the United States and Canada saw the release of two sets of their own: The Frozen Horror, with a snow and ice theme, featured a lone "Female Barbarian", Mercenaries, Ice Gremlins, Polar Warbears and a pair of yeti as well as the "Frozen horror" of the title, while The Mage of the Mirror had an Elven theme: Female Elf against an evil Elven Archmage, Elf warriors and archers, Giant Wolves and Ogres.
A HeroQuest Adventure Design Kit was released in Europe in 1990, containing items to help HeroQuest players design their own quests, and an Adventure Design Booklet was published with four sheets of adhesive labels and with an 80-page pad of a new design, larger character sheet. There was also a blank quest map printed in the middle of the original game's quest booklet for creative players to make their own adventures.
HeroQuest Advanced Quest Edition (also known by the German version name "HeroQuest Master Edition") was released later with 12 added miniatures ("black guards") with 4 kinds of detachable weapons and a new 13 part adventure "The Dark Company" in addition to the original contents of the basic HeroQuest Box.[7]
Three HeroQuest novels were published: The Fellowship of the Four, The Screaming Spectre and The Tyrant's Tomb; and the HeroQuest computer game adaptation was released in 1991, forcing Sierra On-Line to rename their Hero's Quest series to Quest for Glory. A version of the game for the NES was developed to a prototype stage, simply named HeroQuest, but was never released. A sequel for the Amiga titled HeroQuest II: Legacy of Sorasil was released in 1994.
Advanced HeroQuest was a revised and expanded version of the HeroQuest game. The basic concept is the same: four heroes venture into a dungeon to fight monsters and gain treasure, but the rules are more detailed and complex.
In 1997, Milton Bradley let their HeroQuest trademark lapse. It was subsequently purchased by Issaries, Inc. who used it for an unrelated tabletop role-playing game. This was sold in 2013 to Moon Design Publications who continued to use it for the same purpose, eventually selling it back to Milton Bradley in 2020.[8]
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