Like any lifelong enthusiast of role-playing games, I’ve got a few memories that are embarrassing to relate in mixed company. Since we’re all friends here, I’ll let you in on one of them. In junior high school, or middle school as some of our readers might call it, our class planned a trip to one of the islands in the lake my hometown sits beside. It’s kind of a popular beach for those who have the means to reach it, and there are even a couple of food stands and a vague attempt at a boardwalk. Well, everyone was pretty excited about this trip, and when the day arrived, people came with bags packed with swimming gear, water guns, and sports equipment for the park. My tight little group of RPG-loving friends and I had our swimsuits and a couple of Super Soakers. I mean, we weren’t totally out there. But instead of bringing a volleyball or anything like that, my good friend had Milton Bradley’s HeroQuest board game tucked under his arm. We spent a good portion of the day sitting in the park beside the beach, making our way through a few campaigns.
Sometimes, I look back at memories like that and feel like I missed some kind of point, but thinking again, those are some great memories of happy times spent with friends, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. The five of us who played that day are scattered around the world these days, and I can’t even recall the last time we were in the same room together, let alone playing one of the many board games we used to binge on. I’m not even sure if they even play games anymore. It’s true what the great northern minstrel Tom Cochrane famously sang, life is a highway. That doesn’t mean we can’t take a little pit stop now and then to reflect, however, and that’s where Arcane Quest 2 (Free) comes in for me.
This is a sequel to a game that was released for Android and Windows Phones, but not iOS. The original game was apparently more or less an electronic version of HeroQuest for a single player. It seems to have had at least decent enough following to earn a sequel, but I can’t honestly say I had heard of it or played it before. The game even had a level editor, so people could put together their own quests, a popular element of the HeroQuest board game. Naturally, including that means you can’t just throw together a level pack for a sequel and expect people to buy it, so the developer was forced to essentially make a sequel to HeroQuest, and do it without stepping on any Games Workshop toes. From what I can gather, the developer took a whole lot of suggestions from fans of the first, grabbed a couple of things from the Dungeons & Dragons board game, and put it all together into Arcane Quest 2.
I should mention upfront that this is a single-player take on the concept. I mean, you could technically pass your device around, I guess, but there’s no support for playing over the internet or local wireless. Right from go, that means this game lacks a big part of HeroQuest‘s appeal, so if that’s what you’re looking for, you might not enjoy Arcane Quest 2 that much. If, however, you’re open to the idea of playing a bit of HeroQuest solitaire, you’re going to find a game that faithfully captures the essence of what made that board game fun and manages to add a few great ideas on top of it. There are a few rough edges, but it’s a surprisingly polished game given the developer is a one-man team, and the amount of content is impressive for the price.
For those who don’t know HeroQuest, I suppose I should go through what exactly Arcane Quest 2 is. This is basically a role-playing board game where you guide a team of four heroes through dungeons composed of a set number of floors. Each dungeon basically uses the same board, but doors, walls, and other pieces are arranged differently each time, creating a new layout. The various hero characters have different parameters in terms of movement distance, attack power, defense, life points, and magic points. They also possess different skills, like the ability to cast certain magic spells, or being able to disarm traps more easily. On each of your turns, you can move all of your characters and take one action with each, be it attacking, searching a treasure box, disarming traps, or using a spell. You can’t see sections of the map until they’re within your character’s range of view, so you have to proceed carefully to avoid running headlong into traps and monster ambushes. The goal on each floor is to find the stairs to the next floor, with the last floor housing a boss that, when killed, will end that quest.
The combat system involves rolling special dice. Attack dice have swords on them, while defense dice have shields. Depending on which character or monster is involved, different numbers of dice will be rolled, and damage is calculated based on swords minus shields. The color of the dice determine how powerful they are. You can improve your odds in combat by using items and spells, or by finding or buying new pieces of gear. The equipment you can use is based on the character’s experience level and can be bought between quests at a shop using the gold you’ve accrued from your adventures. Each character has different equipment open to them, so you’re never going to be rocking a boss using a wizard’s physical attack or anything like that.
The base game is free with ad support and includes the four classic characters from the original: the warrior, the wizard, the dwarf, and the elf. There are four additional characters you can buy in packs for $0.99 each or all in one pack for $1.99. Any purchase will remove the ads from the game. The new characters are pretty fun to play with, especially the assassin who forces you to consider your positioning relative to the enemies carefully if you want to maximize her damage. In addition to the content IAPs, you can buy gold in various packs if you want to, but I never found myself needing more than what I was able to find just by playing normally. I found the amount of content in the game to be well worth the two dollars, but if you don’t mind playing with the traditional characters and can put up with ads here and there between maps, you could certainly get away with playing this for free.
It’s very easy to play, as you would expect from a game of this type. You just tap where you want to go and double-tap on anything you want to interact with. Dice rolls are carried out automatically. You can use spells or items from a menu on the side just by tapping on the buttons and targets. The same menu offers up a button to speed up the enemy’s turn, which is something I always like to see in games like this. I found the double-tapping to be a bit fussy at times, but I suppose it’s better that the game errs on the side of caution to help you avoid making an undesired move.
The production values aren’t the highest here, but everything is at least consistent and of decent quality. A few little animations here and there would go a long way towards bringing the game to life, though I suppose it’s more like a real board game without them. The game includes a decent tutorial dungeon, but there are a lot of things that could do with more explanations, especially for those unfamiliar with the board game that inspired Arcane Quest 2. I like that there are two difficulty settings, with one being forgiving enough for anyone to enjoy and the other making certain stiff rule changes that make for an enticing challenge. As mentioned earlier, there is no support for multiplayer in any form. Additionally, there’s no support of any kind for Game Center features.
Of course, the elephant in the corner of the room here is Warhammer Quest ($2.99). HeroQuest was, after all, co-created by Games Workshop, and Warhammer Quest is a follow-up on it. Since Arcane Quest 2 is using HeroQuest as a launching point, the two games have some shared ancestral DNA, resulting in Arcane Quest at times feeling like a lower budget version of Warhammer Quest. It evolves the gameplay in a different direction, so it has enough differences to carve its own identity to an extent, but I could see some people thinking differently. At the very least, it’s considerably cheaper to pick up all of the content here. I think that if you enjoyed Warhammer Quest and you’re looking for something somewhat related, you will probably find something to like here. I think it does a good job of capturing the unique flavor of HeroQuest while still advancing the rules in a satisfying way.
