CoraQuest is a dungeon-crawling board game that began life as a homework project
Add treasure and subtract monsters.
Take your kids on an adventure into a dungeon to fight beasts and find loot in CoraQuest, an upcoming board game that began as a homework project for its designer’s child.
CoraQuest is a co-op board game for one to four players that takes place in a dungeon infested with dangerous monsters, traps and a friendly gnome called Kevin. Designed for kids aged six and up, CoraQuest invites players to create their own characters using a system that sparks creativity and provides guidance on how to make the adventures in the game feel personal to the players.
The character creation process within CoraQuest involves the players using an online companion app that enables them to print out an official card for their character, including artwork they’ve drawn themselves. Players can then use their character card in the dungeon-crawling game, using the dungeon deck to create the layout of the location they’re exploring and discovering quest cards that tell the game’s story.
If the player characters ever encounter enemies in the dungeon, they’ll use a collection of red and white dice to perform attacks. Should a player character miss their attack, then their card is flipped over to the determined side and they’ll have more dice to roll for their next attack. The kids’ board game includes special abilities that players can use as long as their ability token at the top of the track - with every use moving it to the bottom before it rises closer to the top after each round.
There’s also a countdown track that alerts players to the arrival of the dreaded spiders, with every turn spent not venturing further into the dungeon moving the token on the track closer to the spider attack outcome - which sees the players being swarmed by arachnids. If players successfully make it to the end of the dungeon with their treasure, they win the game.
CoraQuest was co-created by Dan and Cora Hughes, a father and daughter duo who decided to start designing the board game after getting bored with doing the same homework all the time. Dan helped Cora to create the game - slipping in opportunities for her to engage in maths, creative writing, art and computing throughout - before sharing the project online. Tabletop enthusiasts and parents began to get involved in the project, playtesting the game and sending in their own children’s art, which was then used to form the game’s illustrations.
Jerry Hawthorne - the creator of dungeon-crawling games such as Mice and Mystics and Stuffed Fables - spotted the print-and-play version of CoraQuest that Hughes had put on the game’s website and created their own version of rodent-themed characters that players can print off and use in their playthroughs.
The Kickstarter campaign for CoraQuest is live until February 19th, with a pledge of £30 ($40) getting backers a copy of the core game estimated to arrive in November.