CoraQuest

CoraQuest is an exciting and accessible co-operative dungeon crawling game for one to four people, aged six and up.

In CoraQuest the players work together to guide four adventurers exploring a dungeon, avoiding traps, finding treasure, fighting monsters, and sometimes rescuing a gnome called Kevin.

CoraQuest is a game that kids and grown-ups can play together and get equal amounts of fun from. It's also a game that sparks creativity - providing encouragement and guidance on how to create heroes, monsters and adventures to make CoraQuest your own.

All the artwork in CoraQuest is based on kids' drawings, much of it sent in to us from all over the world by the wonderful CoraQuest community. The art has been brought together by our "chief-colourer-in", Gary King, to make a unique and charming-looking game.

CoraQuest began life on a particularly boring lockdown afternoon. Cora, my eight-year-old daughter, and I both agreed that we were fed up of doing the same old maths worksheets. We decided we wanted to do something more exciting with our time instead - like design our own board game!  

Cora and I spent many enjoyable days working side by side on our game. Cora was having so much fun she never noticed me sneaking school work like maths, creative writing, art and computing into the project (shhh, don't tell her). As CoraQuest developed we both felt so pleased with it that we wanted to share it with other people too.

While it started as a homemade project, CoraQuest has had massive amounts of support from a whole legion of playtesters. Although its roots are still true to the game Cora and I made together on our kitchen table, our playtesters have helped us develop CoraQuest from its rough and ready origins to a smooth-running, polished, and above all very fun game.

There's enough content in the CoraQuest box to keep you going for a very very long time. However, Cora and I had so much fun with the creative process of making the game that we wanted to provide the same exciting experience to others too. 

The rulebook for CoraQuest includes guidance and encouragement on how to create and draw your own heroes, characters and adventures - making the game fully customisable.  

What's more, we've even made a fantastic free web-based app that you can use to create your own heroes and print them out on "official" cards and matching standees. Just draw and upload your picture, choose your hero's stats and special abilities, and then print them out - it's as easy as that!

CoraQuest is designed to be as accessible to children as possible without diluting any of the fun for adults. Here are three of the key features of the game:

You explore the dungeon by drawing cards from the dungeon deck and placing each card out into the layout.  This means every game you play will have its own unique dungeon map - providing a different experience each time. 

Whenever you venture into the dungeon there is a chance you will encounter some of the fearsome creatures that lurk there. Orcs, goblins and gremlins emerge from the shadows whenever a card with their symbol is added to the dungeon.  

Whimsical and family-friendly narrative emerges during the game via the "quest cards" that are spaced out within the dungeon deck.  When a quest card is placed in the dungeon you read a short passage from the quest book and carry out any special instructions it gives you.   

The quest cards' illustrations include multiple elements that are open to interpretation, allowing you to use them as inspiration to design your own adventures.

Combat is exciting, fun, and simple for even young children to understand. It's resolved using custom red and white dice. Your hero card and your weapon tell you what colour dice you need to roll, then you inflict one damage to your target for each success you get.  

If you're in combat and you completely miss your target your hero flips over to their "determined" side. This means you will get even more dice to roll for your next attack. This helps take the sting out of rolling badly for younger children (and for adults too).

The countdown track adds another level of decision making and tactical thinking to the game.

Each hero has a special ability that is activated by putting a token on the countdown track. At the end of each round the tokens will move down one space on the track. You're unable to use your special ability again until your token has moved off the bottom of the track and has come back to you, so you need to think very carefully about when is the best time to use it. 

The countdown track also has a second use - to add the threat of a spider attack! 

This mechanism has received some of the highest praise from our playtesters, as it creates tension and ensures the game moves along at an exciting pace.

Each time you complete a round without having explored further into the dungeon, the "threat token" moves down one space on the countdown track. If it ever moves off the bottom of the track then a swarm of spiders appear in the dungeon and start attacking the heroes. The ever-present threat of being swarmed by spiders really moves the action along!