HeroQuest First Light Review - Your Favorite TTRPGs Favorite Gateway TTRPG

There's a lot of ways to get your start in TTRPGs. Whether it be the act of playing (either being shown by another or starting fresh in a group), watching Actual Plays, or just picking up a book and starting to read, the whole process can be difficult. HeroQuest is a step removed, as it maintains the familiar movement of a grid-based board game, adds some light RPG mechanics, and requires a GM to flesh out the encounters. With all these elements in place, this might just be the best way to introduce a new player.

HeroQuest First Light is a classic high fantasy RPG complete with a Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf, and Wizard fighting at the behest of Mentor, Wizard of the Realm, against the evil forces of Zargon. If you were to pull anyone off the street and ask them what a Tabletop Role Playing game was this is exactly what they would picture.

What's In The HeroQuest First Light Box?

Inside the box you'll find a rulebook, a quest book, damage and movement dice, a double-sided game board, cardboard tokens to represent monsters, doors, and other hazards, miniatures for all of the playable characters including a Dragon, a GM screen, and cards to represent treasures, monsters, spells, equipment, and more.

To begin playing the party needs to be selected from the available pieces, a GM should be picked (or no GM is needed if the players are using the included App), and the game board should get set up with the starting pieces for what the party can see.

I was incredibly impressed with how much was packed in this container, and just how versatile it is. Each of the quests in the included book has the party dungeon diving through increasingly complicated scenarios, but by informing the GM where to add road blocks and where to place doors one adventure might use the central area of the game board while another quest uses a completely different set of rooms.

In this way HeroQuest's game board isn't just double-sided but as it gets filled in with each quest it's infinitely replayable.

Turn-Based Exploration And Combat

The rules for HeroQuest are simple, the game operates on turns having the players cycle through getting to roll dice to move and then take one action a turn. They can choose to attack an enemy if they're adjacent to one, otherwise they can investigate a room for traps, treasure, or hidden doors before passing their turn on.

It's important that every specific step that a character takes is tracked as there's all kinds of traps and pitfalls that they might fall into. During my time playing I had characters fall and take damage, take down a section of the roof, or even get shot by hidden arrows. The way HeroQuest focuses on these minute details does make things like traps that more effective.

If monsters are present on the board then at the end of the player rotation the GM gets to take their turns moving the monsters. For the GM their job is easy, all monsters have a set amount of movement they can travel each turn (no need to roll any dice for that) and they will try to head to the player characters to deal some damage.

Combat is also a simple endeavor. Each character has a number of dice for when they're attacking, hoping that skulls come up on the custom HeroQuest battle dice, and then the monster will respond by rolling their damage dice. For a monster they're hoping to see black faces come up to block damage, while players are looking for white shields.

It's simple mathematics to track how much damage is done. If an attack deals 2 damage, and the defender rolls to save on one of their dice then they only take one damage.

Combat is fast paced and easy to resolve, the real trouble for the players comes from just how much combat they'll take on. Almost every doorway that they open up will offer a new challenge. Even if the Goblin might only be dealing a single piece of damage each turn when you're facing 10+ Goblins over the course of a session that minor damage begins to stack up in a very big way.

GMing HeroQuest As A Gateway

The GMs job is to fill out the map as it becomes visible to the player. At the beginning of the game the party will be able to see what's directly visible to them. Normally just the staircase and a few guiding blocks.

As a party turns a corner they might see a locked door, a treasure chest, or even a monster ready to attack. You'd think as a player getting to see the whole unmarked map from the outset might give you a bit of an idea of what you're in store for but every corner really is a surprise.

The GM also gets a number of prompts given them to read out to the player. They aren't too complicated and can practically be learned as the game is ongoing, reducing the 'time to play' drastically. If you're interested in running a more complicated RPG I can definitely see how HeroQuest can help you learn the ropes of managing a map, events, and an ever-moving party.

App Driven Gameplay

The most impressive aspect of HeroQuest to me was honestly the HeroQuest Board Game Companion App. This app allows you to create a party of characters, including those that aren't in the First Light box, and pick the First Light adventure or ten other quest lines.

Important text from Mentor to start and conclude each adventure is read aloud to the players and when moving pieces on the game board you need to move them on the app first so that as things need to get revealed the players are instructed to.

The app handles your movement, reminding you what actions you can take, tracks movement and damage, and even handles all Monster AI including their damage roles.

After trying the game with friends I set up the game for myself with the Companion App running it and had a fun time strategizing with my party of three coordinating their movement, combat, and investigation. You could realistically play the whole game with just the app and the included movement and damage dice.

HeroQuest First Light Review | Final Thoughts

If you're after that truly quintessential high fantasy dungeon crawling experience this is it. Led by a human assuming the role of Zargon, or by the companion app, travel through these ten quests following a story to save the world and improve your characters along the way.

Gameplay is simple to learn allowing for new players to hit the ground running. GMing is simplified by detailed maps and instructions for creating a fast-paced combat environment.

The versatility of all of the pieces in the box, the double-sided game board, and the way that those rooms are used differently from quest to quest create an incredible experience where you'll be able to play new content for hours and hours and not need to get anything externally.

As a standalone product, this is a lot of fun, but it's also an excellent stepping stone from board games to larger and more complicated TTRPG for those who are afraid to make the full jump.

The copy of HeroQuest First Light used for this review was provided by the publisher. All photos were taken during the course of the review over 5 hours.