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I am writing this the morning after a night of drinking, silly board games and flagons of mindless frolicking. It was awesome, my head is heavy, the sun hurts my eyes but together we drank and went on a boozy, hilarious adventure. We played mini-games, laughed and got through quite a lot of alcohol. Welcome to Night Quest: An Epic Drinking Adventure, a game of drinking for large groups.
Gameplay
Get Ready For Hilarious Minigames
The rules and setup for Night Quest is as simple as any game I have played. It is just a deck of cards, separate the champion cards and get everyone to pick one at random. These hero cards all have an archetype and special ability, you can keep them secret from the group until you use your power and then your identity is known by all. You then shuffle the rest of the cards, made up of Foes, Quests, Curses and enchantments.
On your turn, all you do is flip the top card and perform whatever wacky task it asks you to do. The aim of the game is to collect the most foes by the time the deck runs out. There are 12 foes in the deck and when one is turned over, the minigame contained within must be performed, with the winner slaying the foe. These wacky games had us going outside, lying on the floor, and even throwing cards around my garden.
For example, to slay the Gloom Harbour Kraken, all players must lick their hands, slam it on their champion hard and everyone lifts their hands in unison. The card that stays attached to their layers hand the longest, wins the battle and therefore, the foe. This is at the less insane end of the spectrum of mini-games but they were all fun and all brought the best out of the players at the table. Alcohol helps, obviously.
Curses, Damn Curses
Next up are curses, little ways to make the players have a slight disadvantage while playing. They will be things like close your eyes, or lying on the floor and having another player tip a drink into your mouth. There was a really fun one that appears twice in the deck, the first time it is drawn all players tip a smidge of their drink into a glass and the second time it's drawn, the player who drew it drinks the drink. We were waiting for it and when it came out there was a collective cheer from everyone apart from the player that drew it. Hilarious.
On top of curses, you can also possibly draw enchantments, which are the opposite of curses, they give you boosts and advantages and help you out in little ways. None of them were overpowered and it was nice to skip the odd drink here and there if you did not want one. Finally, we have quests, which again, are little quests everyone has to complete. Fail and you drink the amount listed on the card. Ranging from a sip to a guzzle. Most cards have this info on, as well as a level of sorts, so you can tell how difficult the task is as well as the amount of alcohol you are likely to consume.
That is about is for the gameplay, it's very simple, very quick and extremely raucous. If you have the right group, who like a tipple and don’t mind getting a bit silly, I highly recommend it. It created stories, it created happiness and we will be talking about if for years to come.
Components
As I said above, there's not too much to talk about here really. Night Quest is a small box that contains a deck of cards, a rules leaflet and a map, I am not sure what that is for but it did add a bit of depth to the world and its characters I suppose. The cards are of a nice quality, the artwork has a Saturday morning cartoon look, a bit like something like Adventure Time. While there are not many components to talk about, what was there fit the theme of the game and the type of experience it is trying to create. A silly, shouty one!
Final Thoughts
We loved Night Quest. It has been a long time since, at board game night, we were running around like idiots shouting at each other. Night Quest creates a fun, entertaining atmosphere and I am sure it could be enjoyed even without the beers. We, however, normally have a few on board game night and this game went hand in hand with the flowing alcohol to create something quite unique. While I will not be playing it often, now and again I would not mind a bit of carnage at board game night. Right, I am off to drink mead, slay foes and complete some quests. Maybe not actually, my head still hurts.
