Fantasy · 2021

HeroQuest

Classic dungeon crawling with one player as Zargon: four heroes, fourteen quests and a door that hides anything.

2–5 players
60–120 min
2.3 / 5 · Light

Set up the game

0 of 6 steps

Tick each step as you complete it.

1Choose who plays Zargon: they sit behind the Game Master's screen, run every monster and are the only one who reads the Quest Book. The others take the four heroes; with fewer players, someone controls two.
Doors, furniture and dice
Figures
Screen
2Zargon opens the book at the first quest, "The Trial", and reads the parchment text aloud. Then place the gameboard and the stairway tile in the starting room, but reveal nothing else until the heroes see it.
The rulebook
Board
Tiles
Figures
3Hand out the character sheets and hero cards: barbarian with a broadsword, dwarf and elf with shortswords, wizard with a dagger. Note starting Body and Mind Points on the sheet.
One of the heroes
Cards
Character
4Deal the spells: the wizard picks one of the four groups (air, fire, water or earth), the elf picks one of the three remaining and the wizard keeps the last two. Each group holds three spells.
Table from above
5Zargon sorts the treasure, equipment, artifact, monster and Dread spell cards behind the screen. The combat dice and the two red dice stay within everyone's reach.
Cards
Figures
Screen
Dice
6Remember the split in goals: the heroes cooperate and win or lose together; Zargon does not compete, they run the adventure. Monsters shown on the map are placed when the heroes can see them.
Figures

What it is about

HeroQuest runs on a clean asymmetry: one player knows the map and the secrets, and everyone else only sees what they uncover. That gap is what turns a closed door into a decision and an empty room into an opportunity.

The heroes play against the dungeon, not against each other. Every quest is an expedition with two clocks: Body Points, which do not come back until the end, and spells, which are spent once. That is why the order of decisions matters as much as the dice.

Zargon, meanwhile, does not need to win: managing what is hidden is enough. A corridor with a single guard orc can cost more than a room full of monsters, and a well-placed trap stops the group without spending a single miniature.

BGG page Official rulebook

Source note

The 2021 rulebook covers setup, the hero turn, the six actions, combat, the four trap types, Zargon's turn, dead heroes and what happens between quests. The illustrations come from the rulebook itself and from the BGG gallery.

Reglamento EN (Avalon Hill, 2021) · Reviewed: 24 Oct 2026