Finding a board game that is genuinely fun for young children whilst also keeping adults engaged can be surprisingly difficult. Many children’s games rely on luck, become repetitive after only a few plays, or offer little opportunity for meaningful decision-making. The Quest Kids, published by Treasure Falls Games and designed by Dustin McMillan, aims to solve that by introducing young players to co-operative fantasy adventures, light role-playing elements and strategic choices in an attractive and accessible package. The result is a game that successfully bridges the gap between simple children’s games and more complex family adventure games.
First Quest
The Quest Kids immediately stands out thanks to its colourful artwork (by Apolline Ettiene) and welcoming fantasy theme. Rather than presenting a dark or intimidating world filled with frightening monsters, the game embraces a playful style that feels like a Saturday morning cartoon. Heroes are expressive, monsters are more charming than truly scary, and every component is designed to appeal to younger audiences.
The production quality is impressive. The board, cards, character pieces and cards all feel durable enough to withstand repeated plays. My 4-year-old daughter could not help being attracted to the colourful gems and was constantly playing with them during our playthroughs. The artwork also helps to immerse children in the adventure without overwhelming them with unnecessary detail. The game provides both cardboard character standees as well as plastic character miniatures and we had great fun alternating between the two.
One negative I have is that I found the wall markings on the board to be difficult to see, especially in any kind of low light. There's also a yellow glow around the "doors" of each section that, when the board was covered with tiles, are easy to miss. Initially, we would often move our characters and only realise afterwards that they must have acquired the ability to walk through walls. Whilst not game-breaking, I do feel like this could easily have been made more visible.
Help Thy Neighbour
The Quest Kids is a semi-co-operative adventure game. Whilst players to compete against one another to collect the most Tolk stars, they can also help each other out to defeat monsters and
ultimately save the kingdom. Each player controls their own hero, and whilst each hero has their own starting ability, there is nothing other than aesthetics that differentiates one hero from another, at least not within the base game.
Each turn, players move around the board turning over tiles that may contain treasures, additional ability cards or else monsters to fight. These tiles come in 3 different colours, green, grey and red. The green cards mostly reward players with minor treasures and a few additional ability cards. The grey cards have slightly better rewards but may also contain some of the weaker monsters. Finally, the red cards have some of the game’s best rewards as well as containing the most difficult-to-defeat monsters. Whilst players can chance their luck by jumping almost immediately into the red card zone, often the best strategy is to build up one’s collection of ability cards before potentially facing off against the tougher villains. This means that children are introduced to the concept of balancing risk versus reward.
Combat is relatively straightforward. The ability cards constitute power, magic and wisdom. Players turn in the combination of ability cards pictured on the monster tile to chase it out of the cave. If a player has insufficient ability cards, they can then choose to either lose a health (each worth 2 Tolk stars), or they can ask the other players to assist them. For each ability card another player gives an ailing hero in their quest to chase away a villain, they receive a ‘Kind Kid’ card which rewards them for their good deed. Usually, these rewards are better than the loss of the ability card and this helps teach young children the value of helping those in need. This is one of the best mechanisms within the game and turns it from being completely competitive (who can get the most stars), to a semi-co-operative affair.
Each player also has an optional quest card. If they meet its conditions, they complete it and draw a new quest card at the end of their turn. Players continue clearing tiles until they've emptied Tolk's cave. Players tally their stars from their remaining life, defeated enemies, treasures, ‘Kind Kid’ cards, gems, and quests and whoever has the most stars wins!
At first, it felt like quite a chore at the end of each game as I would have to score both my own as well as my daughter’s plays. But in latter plays of the game it became one of her favourite parts as she would count her stars herself and practice writing numbers on the score cards. Whilst the game does a good job of providing adequate score sheets in the base game, no additional sheets are provided in the expansions even though the same scoring system is used throughout. We ended up having to laminating a few of the sheets and scoring the game with non-permanent markers.
A Quest Most Fantastical
The fantasy setting is what helps attract children to this game. They enjoy imagining themselves as brave heroes exploring a cave, battling monsters, discovering treasure and protecting the kingdom. My daughter always had her favourite monsters that she loved defeating and would always want to be the one to discover the most of Tolk’s valuable gems.
The replay value of the base game is solid. Without the expansions, my daughter and I played the base game a total of 11 times. The variability in placement of the card tiles helps to keep the excitement up and she would always tremble in anticipation when revealing a new tile. With the expansions included, our total plays of The Quest Kids amounted to 39 plays amounting to almost 33 hours of gameplay, cementing this as her favourite game to play as a 4-year-old.
Saying that, for adults the simplicity of the game does become tiresome and now that she is 5 years-old, more recent additions to our games collection with slightly more advanced decision-making mechanics have supplanted The Quest Kids as her go-to games. However, this game was targeted for young children, and it truly excels in bringing enjoyment to that audience. To date, I have yet to find a children’s game that has rewarded us with more play value for money and, as a result, I highly recommend The Quest Kids to any parent of a pre-schooler.
