The 80s were an exciting time to be a kid… the games industry was just starting to take shape and every game seemed to offer something genuinely new to players, role playing games (and I mean traditional games such as Dungeons & Dragons) were not only cool but something that were a way of socialising amongst groups of geeks, and there was a flurry of board games based on video games or fantasy themes. Even though some things seem pretty dire looking back, there are things that even now are still quite fantastic.
Hero Quest was one of those things. It was a fantasy board game – effectively a single player dungeon crawling RPG that spawned a series of 8-bit and 16-bit computer games and was a massive hit back in its day. While not as deep and involving as traditional RPGs it helped bridge the gap for many and introduced a lot of younger players to the genre and it must have been responsible for setting thousands of gamers onto the path of being RPG lovers. Now Dark Quest has come along and while not an official release, it’s clear both from the style of game and it’s look (even down to the logo), that the board game is the inspiration for this quest based dungeon crawler.
It’s an addictive game that puts you in control of a solitary character, progressing through one dungeon after another, returning to a town between quests where you can resupply with equipment, upgrade your character, save your game and then head into another dungeon to do it all again… and that’s exactly what made the original such fun. It plays wonderfully, looks great, is full of atmosphere and it’s just what you want from this sort of game. I just hope we get to see a native release at some point as it would be crying shame to lose this.
Title: Dark Quest
Developer: Brain Seal Ltd
Type: RPG
PlayStation TV Compatible: No
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