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(More customer reviews)I got this to play with my 6-year-old son. It is pretty much exactly what it looks like: a cool little Lego dungeon-crawler. Each Heroica set (we also got Waldurk forest) comes with a certain number of 'rooms' and 'hallways' that can be combined in almost endless ways. Then you populate the dungeon with monsters and treasure and have at it.
Fortaan comes with a whopping 11 rooms: 2 generic rooms with torches in the corners, 2 rooms with a little table, book, and chair, 2 fortress rooms with crenellated parapets, an entrance area with a tree and a drawbridge, a feast room with a fireplace and a chicken leg (no kidding), an enchanted pool with a tree and a frog, a prison room with a barred door, and a throne room with banners and columns. It also includes 15 microfigures: 4 heroes, 6 goblins, 4 armored goblins, and 1 goblin king. For treasure, there are gold pieces, potions (speed, strength, luck, and health), 2 treasure chests, and a cool microfigure helmet.
There are 3 books in the box: the standard instruction book, a rule book, and an "adventure" book with a mini-comic and three suggested dungeon layouts. The dungeon layouts are not presented in any particular order, but if you look at the bits that are supposed to be included in each one, you can assemble them into a mini-campaign that ends with a confrontation in the throne room with the goblin king.
Each hero comes with a color-coded hero pack for storing their health points, gold pieces, potions, weapons that they've purchased from the store, and enemies vanquished. My son and I have a house rule that you can turn in every 4 vanquished enemies for 1 piece of gold.
The rulebook describes 2 ways to play the game: a competitive mode in which the heroes race to complete the objective for that adventure (either getting to a particular space first, or beating the boss monster), and a player-vs-DM mode in which one player controls the bad guys. My son and I play it a third way. We each take one hero and cooperate on getting through the dungeon, taking out all the monsters, and collecting all the treasure. There's not a lot of 'game' involved since there's no way to lose--heroes who lose all their health points can simply stop and regenerate them with die rolls--but we both have a lot of fun and it beats the heck out of Candyland.
There are currently 4 Heroica sets available: Fortaan (castle), Waldurk (forest), Nathuz (caves), and Draida (seaport). Fortaan is the largest. Waldurk and Nathuz both have 8-10 tiles (or rooms) and different monsters, spiders and werewolves in Waldurk, and bats and golems in Nathuz. Draida is tiny, with only 4 or 5 tiles. Any and all of the sets can be combined, and this is my son's favorite thing to do. We take all of the tiles, monsters, and treasures from Fortaan and Waldurk and set them up together to make one super-dungeon. The adventure booklet also shows how to link all 4 of the first wave sets together.
Is this worth it? Depends on your child's age and interests. For kids 6-10 I think it's a gold mine. It encourages tactical thinking, memory, and some very basic math. There is also lots of scope for creativity and spatial thinking, since the tiles and bridges can be laid out in so many different ways. The bits are cool and even played cooperatively it is a fun way to pass the time. There's nothing scary or occult in the game; it is all pretty innocuous.
As for myself, I'm quietly counting the days until my son is old enough for stronger fare like tabletop wargames and RPGs. In the meantime, Heroica is a theme-heavy but light-play game that keeps us both entertained.
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Every Heroica game is a unique adventure to build and explore, with new heroes, monsters and treasures. Defeat the goblin horde and take on their powerful goblin king! Discover the king's secret battle plans and become a hero when you restore the helmet of protection to its rightful place. An expandable world of adventure for 2-3 players. Includes building instructions and rules booklet. Game play approximately 10-20 minutes
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