HeroQuest Board Game Review: The Dungeon Crawler With a Game Master Seat

Publisher: Avalon Hill · Players: 2–5 · Ages: 14+ · Time: about 90 minutes · Quests in the box: 14

HeroQuest is the dungeon crawler to buy if you want one person running the dungeon and everyone else fighting through it — and it is a poor choice if you wanted everybody on the same side. The 2021 Avalon Hill edition puts one player behind a screen as Zargon, setting traps and commanding monsters, while two to four others play the Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf and Wizard. Avalon Hill calls it semi-cooperative, which is the honest word: the heroes co-operate with each other, but they are playing against a human being, not against the game.

That single structural fact decides whether it belongs on your table. It is why the rules are simple enough to teach in ten minutes — a person is doing the adjudicating that a card-driven co-op has to encode — and it is why someone has to volunteer for a role that is closer to hosting than to playing.

What is HeroQuest? A fantasy dungeon crawler with a human Game Master

HeroQuest was originally released in 1989, designed by Stephen Baker and published by Milton Bradley. Baker had previously worked at Games Workshop, whom he approached — with the go-ahead from MB’s head of development — to supply the miniatures. It borrows its structure from tabletop role-playing games and sends players through dungeons to complete quests. One player runs the board and the monsters; the others take one of four adventurers, each with different strengths. Its success produced a long line of expansions offering new areas and new monsters.

In 2020 Hasbro acquired the rights to HeroQuest and Avalon Hill, its subsidiary, began production shortly after. Backed by a successful crowdfunding campaign, the remake shipped at the end of 2021 with new, more detailed miniatures and components. The box contains 14 quests and 65 or more miniatures, and includes instructions for building your own quests.

A note on sourcing, because it affects everything below. Avalon Hill’s website no longer serves product pages: every path on the domain returns the same shell, and the page never finishes loading in a browser. Checked 28 August 2026. Where this review states a specification, the source is the publisher-authored retail listing, and where we could not confirm something we have said so rather than filling the gap.

How to play HeroQuest

Heroes take turns one at a time. Movement is rolled — you move a number of squares equal to your dice total, along corridors and past friendly figures, but never through a hostile creature. On top of moving, each hero takes exactly one action, before or after the move.

That action is where the game lives. You can attack, cast a spell, search for secret doors, search for traps, or search for treasure. As you push deeper, Zargon reveals only what falls within your line of sight, so a room arrives in pieces — sometimes empty, sometimes holding a waiting horde. If a hero declares “I search this room for treasure,” Zargon consults the quest book and narrates what happens, which is why the rulebook can be as short as it is.

Combat is dice against dice. For every skull the attacker rolls, the defender must roll a shield; unmatched skulls become damage. A hero reduced to zero body points is out of the quest and loses everything they were carrying, unless a healing potion or a spell reaches them first. Searching for treasure carries the same shape of risk — a large share of the treasure deck is monsters and hazards rather than gold, so greed is punished by design.

Between quests the campaign continues: heroes spend the gold they kept on better weapons and armour before the next dungeon. Finish the objective and reach the stairway and you usually collect a bonus; head for the stairway early, or lose the whole party, and the quest ends without one.

The four heroes, and what breaks when one is missing

The Barbarian hits hardest, the Dwarf disarms traps, the Elf fights and casts a little of both, and the Wizard has the most spells and the least armour. On paper that is a standard party. In practice it is a set of dependencies, and a group of two or three heroes feels the gaps immediately: without the Dwarf you eat every trap in the dungeon, and without the Wizard some rooms have no clean answer at all.

Heroes carry progress between quests rather than levelling in the usual sense — you accumulate gold, equipment and artifacts, and the party gets stronger because it is better supplied, not because a number went up. It is a lighter system than a role-playing game and it is meant to be; the appeal is the campaign accumulating over a dozen sessions, not character-sheet depth.

Quests, expansions, and whether HeroQuest is still in print

The base box holds 14 quests plus instructions for writing your own, and Avalon Hill has released a series of expansion quest packs adding tiles, traps, artifacts, monsters and in some cases new hero classes. The Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror packs are the best known.

We cannot confirm the current availability of the base game or any expansion from the publisher. An earlier version of this review said there had been “a steady stream of new adventures” and that the game was “more popular than ever before.” Both were true when written and neither is checkable now: Avalon Hill’s site does not serve a product page for HeroQuest or for any of its expansions, and Hasbro’s own link for the game resolves to a where-to-buy page rather than a listing. The game and several packs are still sold at retail. Treat any claim you read about the line still expanding — including ours — as unverified until the publisher puts a page back up. Checked 28 August 2026.

This matters more than it sounds. Expansion-driven games are usually sold on the promise of more to come, and a promise about the future is the part of an old review that rots first. If you are buying HeroQuest, buy it for the 14 quests in the box.

Verdict

HeroQuest is a genuinely good introduction to the dungeon crawler, and it is easier than it looks. Open the box and the rules resolve into something a mixed table can hold in their heads — move, one action, roll skulls against shields — while the campaign structure gives you a reason to come back. The miniatures and set pieces are the best argument for the 2021 edition over nostalgia for the 1989 one.

Who should skip it. Anyone who wants a fully co-operative game where the whole table is on the same side — that is not what this is, and no amount of goodwill converts the Zargon seat into a player seat. Groups who cannot reliably field the same five people, since the campaign assumes continuity. And anyone treating the price of the base box as the price of the hobby: the expansions are where the cost accumulates.

• Set pieces and miniatures look excellent
• Rules are far simpler than the box implies
• 14 quests plus a system for writing your own
• One player has to run the dungeon rather than play
• Expensive once the expansions start

If you liked HeroQuest

Every game below is a dungeon crawler or a close relative, and each one changes a different part of the HeroQuest formula.

• Tiny Epic Dungeons — HeroQuest’s shape in a box a fraction of the size, with a dungeon that is different every time and no Game Master seat to fill.
• Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System — Wrath of Ashardalon, Castle Ravenloft and The Legend of Drizzt take the D&D idea, cut the rules down and run it on a board. Unlike HeroQuest these are fully co-operative, so nobody sits behind a screen.
• Talisman — competitive rather than co-operative: everyone races for the Crown of Command, levelling up and collecting companions along the way.
• Zombicide — the same miniatures-and-dungeon appeal relocated to a modern zombie apocalypse, and fully co-operative.
• Star Wars: Imperial Assault — the closest structural relative, with a campaign, an opposing Imperial player and a separate skirmish mode.

For more in this direction, see our guides to the best RPG board games, board games like Gloomhaven and the best campaign board games. If Imperial Assault is the one that caught your eye, it is covered in our Star Wars board games roundup. And for a co-operative monster hunt with no Game Master at all, there is our Horrified review.

Want a shortlist rather than a rabbit hole? Our free Top 10 Must-Have Games guide is the ten boxes we hand to people who want one that always works.

HeroQuest FAQ