Heroquest 25th Anniversary Edition – 3rd Time Lucky?

Aaaand it’s back.

GamesZone is back with their Heroquest 25th Anniversary Edition on the Spanish crowd-funding platform Lanzanons.

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#1 – Third Time Lucky?

In case you don’t know what I am talking about, here’s a little summary of the story so far.

Spanish miniature-making company GameZone have (it seems) secured the (Spanish?) rights to the classic dungeon-crawler board-game Heroquest, and went to Kickstarter to launch a 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of the classic game.

The Kickstarter made nearly 300.000 Canadian Dollars in its first day (and yes, it was Canadian Dollars, as Spanish GameZone ran the campaign on Kickstarter through a Canadian proxy, presumably because they wanted to steer clear of the United States?).

With the Kickstarter-campaign running hot, American RPG-maker Moon Design sent a letter to Kickstarter.com to take the crowd-funding-campaign down, pointing to their Heroquest RPG products in the U.S. The Kickstarter was suspended.

GameZone quickly launched a second, probably ill-considered attempt on the Crowd-Funding platform website Verkami, which in turn suspended the campaign after mere hours, saying they felt the project was misleading users.

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#2 – Lanzanos!

Now, GameZone is giving it a third go on another Spanish crowd-funding website, Lanzanos. Notably, they also made a new video for this campaign, notably omitting the classic TV-spot they used on their Kickstarter-campaign to hit the nostalgia spot.

Another curiosity. comments on the this HQ25-Lanzanos-campaign have been completely disabled (other Lanzanos-projects have comment-sections similar to Kickstarter).

Hmmm…

This Heroquest version is a tribute remake of the original game to commemorate its 25th anniversary. All illustrations, board, miniatures, rules and any other components are brand new and property of Gamezone Miniatures.

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#3 – Thoughts?

The IP-issue is so thoroughly tangled (Spanish IP, US IP, etc..), I can’t really comment on it.

Either way, communications haven’t always been as good as many people hoped throughout the process, and I expect a few people will sit this out for a possible retail release at the very least. GameZone, however, still seems to think a crowd-funding campaign will get them more money and publicity than a “traditional” release of the game (in Spain only?).

With a little-known, foreign-language crowd-funding site and two duds behind it, I doubt Heroquest 25th Anniversary will raise the Millions it probably would’ve done on Kickstarter. Nevertheless, this third campaign did raise close to 20.000 EUR in a few hours, which is not a bad start, all things considered?

• Would you back Heroquest 25th (again?)?
• Have you been scared away?
• Were you never interested in the first place?
• Will Moon Design try to shoot it down again?

Let me know what you think of this Heroquest revenant and leave a comment!

Z.