★★★★★Paladin of the Penv5.110 May 2025
Good, but needs some tweaks
I use the HeroQuest Companion app to experience the official quests as a player before I run them as Zargon for my friends. The atmosphere and graphics are top notch, and I like the “Fog of War” element as well. However, the app doesn’t always reflect the rules of the game in how certain things are handled— most notably line of sight for spell casting. According to the rules, a Hero standing in a square at an open door can see any monster or Hero located along a line drawn from the center of the Hero’s square to the center of the target’s square, as long as that line does not cross a wall or other creature. This means that a Hero can see monsters in the squares on either side of the open door— the line of sight passes next to the wall, and isn’t stopped by it (and this is shown in the rule book diagram). But I have found that the Cast Spell action in the app doesn’t treat these two spaces as visible, even though they should be. Fire of Wrath, Ball of Flame, and Genie will declare that no target can be seen in these positions, but allow for targets further away. This error needs to be fixed. Also, the monsters’ tactics controlled by the AI tend to be poor; they do not consider the power of the Wizard and Elf as spell casters, instead concentrating on the Barbarian and the Dwarf as primary targets. As a result, the AI Zargon is relatively easy to defeat. That’s okay for my purposes, but not very challenging for those who might want to co-op against the AI rather than one player taking on the role of Zargon. Don’t know if that’s really something which can be “corrected” in a computer AI.
UPDATE: I’ve been playing through some of the newer quests and have run into multiple errors. In “First Light,” when magical aid is summoned, the new “figures” all stack on the same spot, and are hard to separate and move as a result. This also breaks the rule that no two figures or furnishing can occupy the same square. Also in “First Light” the App requires a hero to be adjacent to certain furnishings to search it, which also breaks the rules for searching rooms, which a hero should be able to do from any square in the room. In “Prophecy of Telor,” the Flames of Zargon just causes the monster to freeze in place; it neither moves nor attacks. In “Spirit Queen’s Torment: The Tower of Air,” when the App takes over and moves a hero randomly, all the heroes completely freeze, and cannot be selected or moved, nor can Zargon’s turn be activated. You can access the game controls (save and quit, settings, etc.), but play is halted.
Need some fixes, guys!