Warhammer Quest

Warhammer Quest is a fantasy dungeon, role-playing adventure wargame released by Games Workshop in 1995 as the successor to HeroQuest and Advanced Heroquest, set in its fictional Warhammer Fantasy world. The game focuses upon a group of warriors who join to earn their fame and fortune in the darkest depths of the Old World.

Games Workshop ended the original run of Warhammer Quest in 1998. Eighteen years after the game ceased production, Games Workshop released a new version of the game, Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower in 2016.

Game

Mainly written by Andy Jones, Warhammer Quest utilises a set of simple game mechanics to simulate the Warriors' actions as they explore and fight through the dungeons of the Old World. The game puts a strong emphasis on co-operative and thoughtful play by the players in order to survive against the myriad monsters they inevitably face.

Primarily designed for four players, the original game continues the tradition of HeroQuest by supplying a Barbarian, Wizard, Dwarf, and Elf as its main Warriors.

The game components are These games follow the original in overall design as dungeon crawling board games, but with substantially different rulesets. Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal,Warhammer Quest: Cursed City, Warhammer Quest: Lost Relics and Warhammer Quest: Darkwater are set in Games Workshops new fantasy setting, Warhammer Age of Sigmar. While Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress is set in Games Workshops sci-fi universe Warhammer 40,000.

Warhammer Quest contributors

Warhammer Quest and its expansions/articles were authored, illustrated or produced in whole, or in part, by the following:

Andy Jones, Geoff Taylor, Richard Wright, Dave Gallagher, John Blanche, Wayne England, Mark Gibbons, Bryan Ansell, Gavin Thorpe, Ian Pickstock, Mark Hawkins, Dean Bass, Steve Anastasoff, Tuomas Pirinen, Mark Hawkins and more.

Adaptations

Video games

On 20 August 2012 GW announced Warhammer Quest for iOS devices. The development company is Rodeo Games. It was released on 30 May 2013. It received positive reviews from critics.

It was later ported to PC, Mac and Linux by Twistplay and was released by Chilled Mouse on Steam on 7 January 2015, Android on 25 June 2015, and later to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Warhammer Quest 2: The End Times by Perchang was released on 20 October 2017 for iOS and for Android on 11 April 2018. It received average reviews from critics.

Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower was released for Android and iOS on September 3, 2020, based on the 2016 sequel of the board game.

Card game

A card game adaptation, Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game, was released in 2015 by Fantasy Flight Games. It got a positive review from Robert Florence of Rock Paper Shotgun: "Is this game a reasonable substitute for the full-flavour Warhammer Quest? Absolutely not. That old game is something very, very special. But this is an impressive attempt to pull some of that game's magic into a smaller box and support it with modern game mechanics. I was really surprised by how right it all felt."

Reception

In the January 1996 edition of Dragon (Issue 225), Rick Swan liked the high quality of the game components, and the "easy-on-the-brain explanations" of the rules. But Swan objected to actual object of the game, which he summed up as "a string of random events, most of them combat encounters, with an occasional death trap thrown in to break the monotony." Swan also noted the game's complete lack of realism, but said, "Warhammer Quest doesn't pretend to be realistic, and therefore doesn't deserve to be criticized for its lack of logic. That's like criticizing a candy bar for its lack of vitamins." Swan concluded by giving the game an average rating of 4 out of 6, and only recommended the game as a means of training up new role-players: "Warhammer Quest does a admirable job of incorporating role-playing fundamentals, and thus serves as a painless introduction to RPGs. And when Quest-ers get the hang of hit points and attribute scores, that's where you step in with Call of Cthulhu or the AD&D game."

Reviews

Rollespilsmagasinet Fønix (Danish) (Issue 8 - May/June 1995)