#HeroQuest First Light. A Nostalgic Callback #review

Heroquest First Light, family game of dice rolling, dungeon adventuring for two to five players. Heroquest is a game that's very close to my heart because it was a game I played a lot growing up in the '90s. Now, everyone knows how old Karen is roughly. Well, I've never played this before. The First Light box has pretty much everything that I remember from Heroquest in the '90s.

The only real difference is that this is a smaller box and most of the components are standees rather than the minis I grew up with. But, it's otherwise fully playable. It comes with a number of quests and it's a one versus many game where one player will control the monsters going around to attack the players while players play the roles of adventurers who on their turn will roll to move and in either order can take one of six basic dungeon crawling actions, which include attacking monsters, searching for treasure, searching for secret doors and traps, and in some specific cases disarming a trap.

There are treasure cards to draw and between scenarios, a character sheet for tracking your character's progress. It's interesting looking back at Heroquest through the lens of a modern gamer who's played a lot of Euros now. This game really has everything it shouldn't have by modern standards. You need a game master to run it.

It's roll to move and the combat is very much dice chucking. Now, maybe it's the nostalgia talking, but I still think this game holds up for what it is. And what it is is a family game which can be played by people who are still used to playing roll to move games that also serves as a bridge to the world of role playing.

And that I agree. It is family level complexity and somebody can or the parent can probably be the game master and I think that works. You don't have to imagine the dungeon crawl or tell a story and you don't have to roll a D20 and have a mix of combinations that can come out. You've got simple mechanisms that are familiar to a lot of people and you can develop quests, go through a story, and ultimately have a lot of fun with it.

I kind of wish I played this when I was younger. That would be fun. More variety than just snake and ladder and Monopoly. [music] But, let's not mince words. There's not very much here for you if you've played and love Gloomhaven. It just doesn't have any of the tactics. It doesn't have the depth of story.

This is a light game and it fits in its place really well.