Hasbro are planning a new version of the HeroQuest board game

The cover art for Hasbro's proposed rerelease.
(Image credit: Hasbro)

The HeroQuest board game, a collaboration between Milton Bradley and Games Workshop published in 1989, has been out of print for years. One potential reason was the US trademark being taken up by tabletop RPG company Moon Design Publications—which is ironic, since Sierra had to change the name of their game Hero's Quest to Quest for Glory when the digital version of the board game was trademarked in 1991. Anyway, Moon Design have given the trademark to Hasbro, owners of Milton Bradley, who are now crowdfunding a new version of the board game for North American release.

Hasbro is seeking $US1 million on its internal crowdfunding system HasLab, which they use to gauge interest in expensive toys aimed at adults like a Transformer the size of a child. HeroQuest has already raised over $US865,000 with 44 days left to go, so it's going to make that target.

This version of HeroQuest is being made without the cooperation of Games Workshop, so references to the Warhammer World and its monsters have been removed. While the rules and board seem broadly unchanged, the art and miniatures have been updated. They've got a much more Warcraft look to me, and the overdetailed miniatures seem a lot harder to paint than the appealing but beginner-level sculpts of the original.

It's hard not to be cynical about a game whose appeal was all about its introductory qualities, a My First Dungeon Crawl for kids, being repackaged as another boutique box full of expensive plastic for nostalgic adults, as so many crowdfunded board games are.

Meanwhile, over on the Steam Workshop for Tabletop Simulator here's what a search for HeroQuest turns up.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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