Developer: Brain Seal Ltd
Publisher: Brain Seal Ltd
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Dark Quest: Board Game – Review
Brain Seal Ltd brings us their new entry in the Dark Quest series. This time as a board game. Dark Quest: Board Game brings us a classic board game experience on our computer. It is a DND-like adventure with miniatures and dice. The game is played through interaction with cards; the player decides which option on the card to take, rolls dice to decide which outcome to get, and to top things off, they will have to fight waves of enemies. Today we present you our opinion on Dark Quest: Board Game.
Story
In Dark Quest: Board Game you survive your way through forests, undead ruins, goblin caves, labyrinths and more to stop an evil sorcerer from casting his spells on you. There isn’t really a storyline that we can follow. It is a bit lackluster, as an interesting storyline would greatly improve this game.
Graphics
The visual aspect of this game is amazing. It features a hand-drawn ‘sketched’ art style with lots of details. There are moving particles that together with the lighting make the art come alive. The background changes slightly within major areas, and whenever the player gets to a new area it changes completely. These backgrounds all look great and perfectly fit in the dark board game aesthetic. The same counts for the enemy character models. Every area has a set of enemies you can encounter and they all fit perfectly in the setting. It hits the perfect spot between nostalgic and fresh, and overall everything just looks really great.
Sound
The music and sound effects really add to the atmosphere. The crackling of the campfire, the battle cries in the background, and the medieval tavern music all come together nicely. It all makes you feel as if you’re traversing the lands on an epic quest. The sound design beautifully supports the rest of the game and together with the art, you’ll have yourself a nice package.
Gameplay
Dark Quest: Board Game is a roguelike adventure board game that is catered towards solo play. In Dark Quest: Board Game you start in a hero camp where you must select the four heroes that will form your party. You start with only four options, but as you progress through the game, you will unlock more options. You then set off on a quest that is presented by cards. Each card that you’re dealt has you roll a dice to see what will happen. Or the card may have you pick an option. This is the way that you encounter enemies, that events happen, and that the story is told.
Enemy encounters are quite basic, you can decide which enemy to attack and what attack to use, then you decide where you want to move. After you do this, it is the enemy’s turn to do the same. It is a very classic turn-based combat system. After each encounter, if you manage the survive the battle, you are allowed to upgrade one of your heroes. This either unlocks a new ability or enhances an existing one. Each hero gets a maximum of four abilities and starts with only their basic attack. There’s very little room for customization in this area, as four abilities per hero aren’t that much. On top of that, there are quite a few useless abilities that you would almost never want to get and some abilities that are so useful, that you always want to get them as soon as possible. While in theory there’s a little bit of customization possible in how you upgrade your heroes, in reality, if you want to get far in the game, you don’t have many options at all and will almost always go for the same upgrades as they are simply much stronger than their alternatives.
Besides encounter cards, you also have event cards and trap cards. Event cards are very simple, they have you choose an option, and depending on your answer they will give you a reward or lead to an encounter card or a trap card. Trap cards are probably the most annoying part of this game. They have you roll a dice and depending on your luck they deal damage to your party or just do nothing. Trap cards seem to trigger randomly and deal more and more damage the further in the game you get. There is also very little you can do against these cards. For this reason, there were a lot of amazing runs that ended because we triggered multiple trap cards in a row, and we got very unlucky with the dice roll. Due to this, our entire party perished, even in the scenarios where our heroes were already heavily upgraded with a lot of extra health points. Randomness is always a part of board games, but when you can immediately get killed without any way to fight back, then it gets annoying rather quickly. found that the randomness eventually became unfair, frustrating, and unfun.
Conclusion
Dark Quest: Board Game is not a great board game, nor is it a great computer game. While the atmosphere and art are amazing, the gameplay is not. There is a huge aspect of randomness that feels unfair and it also causes a lot of frustration. It is an okay game to play mindlessly when you’re looking for something in this specific genre, but we can’t see ourselves getting invested in this game for a longer period of time.
Dark Quest: Board Game – Review,
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