Appy Adventuring!: The Return of HeroQuest, Part III

I mentioned in my previous posts that Hasbro has released the HeroQuest Companion App for the Apple iOS (and Android as well). The app functions in place of the Zargon player, revealing the dungeon as the heroes explore, then moving and attacking with the monsters on the Zargon turn. As I was preparing to play with friends, and yet also wanted to experience the adventures spoiler-free for myself, I was happy to give this a whirl.

Is that Mentor or Zargon? Maybe it's both...

 The Good

The quest begins. And it's awesome looking.

The app is gorgeous. It faithfully reproduces the board game map, and puts a layer of “mysterious green haze” over the unexplored hedges, which undulates like clouds. Everything is shown in a top down view, in two-dimensional art. The various furnitures pieces are seen in this way as well, but the designers included some clues as to what piece is represented when it’s not clear— for example, the two bookcases will have a lone book resting on top, whereas the otherwise identical cupboard top has no book. Similarly, the fireplace has the glow of the fire on the hearth. (Otherwise these particular objects would be a little generic, compared to the others which have better visual appearances from an overhead perspective.)

The heroes and monsters are represented by icon tokens rather than figurines. For the heroes, the icons are the head and face character portraits from the cards; for the monsters, the icons match the small icons on the various monster cards (only as full color illustrations). The monsters also conveniently show the number of defense die to roll for these creatures when a hero attacks one. Clicking on a monster brings up a copy of the monster’s stat card, with a function for adding damage or an outright kill.

Each quest begins with the introductory text read by “Mentor,” with a suitably effective voice narration. During the game, the melodramatic voice of Zargon either offers instructions or taunts and threatens the heroes, with appropriate sneers and evil laughter. The sound elements also include thematically moody “adventuring” music, and sound effects for traps, item placement, monster attacks, and so forth. The voices, music, and sound effects can be independently adjusted in volume, or silenced completely. It all works quite well for the mood of the game, and feels a little like a throwback to old school fantasy movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

How It Works

The HeroQuest Companion is easy to use. First the player is invited to choose either an already existing party, or create a new one— the first time around the only option is to create a party. The player selects the heroes to use, in order, which will establish their turn order in the game. The app supports not only the classic original heroes but the three expansion heroes (Bard, Warlock, and Druid) and the various different imagery from the game, including the alternate hero genders and the classic “Mentor” wizard appearance— although like the board game, the appearance has no effect on actual play. Each group can be given a unique name, and the progress of a group will be saved independently of other groups, potentially allowing multiple solo players to share the app. (I created one party to experience the various quests, and a second party simply to test the app’s features and idiosyncrasies.)

Once the party is created, the app offers the choice of Quest environment— the standard Quest Book or the two Expansion Quest sets, though neither of these are available at the start, but will appear as free in-app updates. (There’s no sign of the special Mythic Tier Quest, alas. If as I suspect this quest is eventually offered as an expansion, I hope it will be added to the app as well.)

With the environment selected, the player is given the lists of quest to choose from, which can be approached out of order if one wishes (I don’t advise this, if you want your heroes to survive!). Once the player taps on the quest, the app loads the board revealing the opening chamber for the quest and instructs the player to set any pieces on the physical game board. When the player indicates that this has been done, the app brings up a title screen with an introduction for the quest, which is also read to the players by “Mentor.” (The reading can be skipped at any time). After this, the app may also bring up further details about the quest, such as special monsters, quest goals and objectives, and any special instructions needed to complete the quest. Most of these will include illustrations just for flavor.

From there, the app’s use in actual play is simple. The current hero is shown in a small menu at the bottom of the screen, which itself has two buttons— “Move Help” and “Action.” Other heroes may be activated by tapping either the token on the map, or tapping the four hero icons displayed at the top of the screen.

The Move screen.
You've seen it. You may now ignore it.

The “Move Help” button merely calls up a help screen which describes how to move— once you’ve read this, there’s really no point in tapping this button ever again. Movement consists of dragging a hero’s token along the path to his new position. The app springs traps according to this movement, if any exist and have not yet been disarmed. If a trap is already known, the app will give the option to jump the trap or disarm it. Otherwise, all Actions are selected from a list called up by a tap on the Action button for the active hero, shown at the bottom of the screen. The app will hide buttons for actions which cannot happen due to circumstances in the game. Note, however, that certain Actions only trigger an instruction to draw an actual physical card or roll the physical dice— the app does not replicate these elements for players, and so can’t actually be played as a game without using the real board game (one could skip the board and figures, but not the cards and dice). In fact, there is no button for attacking, just a “?” icon which instructs the user to roll the physical dice for the hero’s attack as well as for the monster’s defense. After this is done, the player taps on the monster token and tells the app the results of the attack (if any). The app then tracks the damage and alerts the player if the monster has been defeated, instructing the player to remove the monster from the board.

The Action Screen for a Wizard.

Once all heroes have completed their movement and actions (or have opted not to do anything), the player taps “Zargon’s Turn” to allow the Zargon AI to take over. The Zargon AI moves the monsters, alerting the player to also change the monster’s location on the physical board. Monster attacks, unlike all other dice rolls, are made by the app— but the player still rolls the physical dice for the hero’s Defense roll.

The Attack Screen. Yeah, you may now ignore this, too.

 Spells are also handled somewhat oddly— some spell effects are carried out by the app, with the player tapping on a target. If a spell which has a potential “break” roll is cast on a monster, the app rolls virtual dice to attempt to break the spell. If the monster fails this roll, the app automatically tracks the effect on the monster. However, if a monster casts a spell on a hero, the player rolls the physical dice to attempt a break. The app also checks line of sight for most spells— but for some spells the app simply instructs the player to “follow the instructions on the card,” with no indication as to whether the line of sight is blocked.

The Spell Screen. This one is useful!

Special Features

The app has a save function which can be used mid-adventure to save the state of the game, which is a nice feature. Be aware that unless you save, you will lose all your progress if you put your device to sleep mid-game (as closing a cover on an iPad). Fortunately, the app automatically saves the heroes’ progress through the list of quests, so you can always at least return to the start of the current quest should something interrupt your game before you can save. Note, however, that the app doesn’t track any details other than location and the status of traps and monsters, as well as any searches conducted. It doesn’t track treasure found, hero Body Points, spells used, or any other hero details— these are all assumed to be tracked by the players on the heroes’ physical character sheets.

Dinner's ready— save your heroes!

During play, the app can be set to show the wounds on monsters by adding little skulls to the monster tokens, which mimics the token stacking done by Zargon in the physical change. This feature can be turned off if one likes to keep guessing (though really there doesn’t seem to be much point to turning it off). If a player has trouble with the quest the app can also provide “hints” from Mentor. Tapping the banner emblem at the top left of the image will bring up first a summary of the quest’s goals and special rules (if any). Tapping the Hints button will produce a screen with a series of “?” icons. Tapping on these reveals text with clues or even outright explicit directions to find the quest’s various objectives. (I never found cause to need these, but then I’m a pretty savvy dude.)

One quirky feature of the app is the ability to turn off furniture, allowing players and monsters to freely move through these details as if they were intangible. (Apparently this was how some fans played the original game; I prefer the tactical restrictions provided by the physical presence of these items— though see the Line of Sight quirks below).

Quirks and Problems

The app has a number of quirks which hopefully will be corrected. Movement of heroes in the app will produce a trail of numbers counting off the spaces— which is helpful— however, the movement isn’t limited by the app. You could ignore your dice rolls and move any given hero an unlimited number of squares on a single turn (I got up to 56 squares on a test check before I stopped— the app never so much as blipped). The plus to this is that when a scenario is completed and no other actions can effectively be taken by Zargon, you can simply drag each hero token along the path back to the staircase and ignore dice rolls. Of course, a “skip to return” feature would be nice so you don’t have to drag the tokens at all, but that’s a minor quibble.

Spell handling is one area where the app has a significant problems. First, the app treats line of sight differently than in the rules. For example, despite line of sight being allowed when looking diagonally through an open doorway, the app will at times declare there is no line of sight in this manner for different spells. Also, line of sight is blocked across any furniture— including low lying pieces like tables and chests, which seems unnecessarily restrictive and unrealistic. At least one spell— Pass Through Rock— can be cast on a hero who has already moved. By the book the spell effect will linger to the character’s next movement turn. But the app unfortunately forgets the spell once Zargon’s turn has activated, so if you wish to cast the spell on a hero whose turn precedes the spell caster’s turn, you’re out of luck. (This one really needs to be fixed, as unlike most of the errors, it can actually affect your game play negatively.) Another spell, Genie, has two uses— either opening a distant door, or conducting a 5 dice attack on a target in sight. However, this spell doesn’t work in the app for targeting monsters. If a closed door is present, you will be offered a choice to click the “Open a Door” button or Cancel. But even if a monster is clearly present and visible, the spell reports “No target in sight.” I just ignored this and rolled the dice anyway. Finally, in one of the quests (#8), a monster cast a spell on one of my heroes, and the app produced a spell card image that should have explained the spell and the action to take, but instead only read “New Text.” Oops.

Note that the app also doesn’t track hero spell usage at all. Your Wizard or Elf can cast the same spells over and over again, and the app doesn’t bat
an eyelash. You could also have them cast the same spells as each other. Neither of these are allowable according to the game rules.

Finally, the app doesn’t track turns at all. You can move your heroes in any order, even skipping Zargon’s turn outright, neither of which are permissible by the rulebook. Most of these quirks don’t prevent you from playing the game by the rules, but they seem odd details to overlook.

Other Details

As note above, the app doesn’t make any attempt to track details about the heroes’ “Body Points” or other stats, nor does it have a way to do so— such tracking is all up to the players, to be done on the physical character sheets. The same is true of Equipment purchased, Artifacts discovered, and Treasures found (including special quest treasures that only appear on the screen, and so have details that should be copied down on the spot). This is apparently a deliberate design to give players the tactile experience associated with playing the classic physical game (it also has the potential to encourage sales of the game as well, I suppose). I don’t really have an issue with this, but it would be nice to see some in-app tracking as an additional optional feature— not to look a gift horse in the mouth, of course.

 “Smart” is Only So Smart

The app’s version of Zargon is capable, but not necessarily much of a challenge. The tactics used by the monsters seem to be rudimentary— charge the biggest hero first (the Barbarian) and then on down the line, more or less in order of total Body Points. Rarely have I had the highly vulnerable yet major threat of the Wizard sought out and attacked by the opposing force when other melee characters were present. Also, the app doesn’t see the advantage of a tactical or strategic retreat for wounded or outnumbered monsters, or of bottlenecks, choke points, flanking maneuvers or other potential tactics to harry or impede the heroes. In fact, the app’s performance had led me to believe that the game itself was flawed and too greatly weighted towards the PCs, at least in the early quests. But when I took the role of Zargon and ran the beginning quest against my friends, I discovered that proper tactics for the monsters increased the challenge greatly. What I had experienced as a cakewalk for myself became a near killer for my friends— a testament to the effectiveness of the core game.

 In the end, the app feels a bit like a Beta release— not quite ready for prime time. Fortunately, most of the quirks have work arounds (except for the Pass Through Walls spell, which is disappointing). And as stated, the Zargon AI could be a tad smarter. But play is fairly smooth and the whole thing quite easy to use. All in all, it has served me well as a way of experiencing the quests myself as a player before putting my friends through the ringer. I expect Hasbro/Avalon Hill will make adjustments and updates to handle the few glitches in the app and hopefully tweak the Zargon AI. But for my purposes, it has worked just fine. And since the app is entirely free, without either adds or “in app purchases” (which I despise), there’s no reason not to download it and use it. Go for it, and set up your own favorite imaginary opponent— though you’ll still have to tap the screen for him.

Lit’l ‘Zilla Says:

Game: 5 Atomic Breath Blasts

App: 3 Atomic Breath Blasts

I will (I will) Stomp You!