OnTableTop – Home of Beasts of War

Reply To: Could Heroquest be finally coming back again?

August 1, 2020 at 6:28 am #1554802

Participant

6224xp

One of the owners is a lawyer and, of course, they have experience with licensing boardgame IP’s. In fact, if you follow the BGG and Dakka threads, they’ve filed trademarks (?) or whatever IP protection on various other classic games. Both MB and GW have been licensing properties. With GW, though, FFG was not allowed to include miniatures in their games (they used sculpts like busts), although we don’t know if HQ will use GW miniatures or their own.

While the hobby gamer market has plenty of dungeon crawlers, it’s the nostalgia value of the game that drives demand, as well as its simplicity for new gamers. MB did release Dragon Quest (?) and other boardgames for younger players, but none have the same reputation. HeroQuest is such a powerful brand name, that it drew over 3/4 million dollars from a foreign company that had no connection to the original game. While there are better dungeoncrawlers out there (although all but Gloomhaven have the “throw dice and roll for hits vs shields” mechanic), none approach the nostalgia of HeroQuest. HeroQuest Legacies may end up not being the hobbyist’s dungeoncrawler, but I don’t think that’s its primary target audience.