Loony Quest – Review

Didn’t we all grow up playing platform games like Mario? Well now we can play the board game equivalent of a platformer with Loony Quest.

The concept sounds simple enough – draw lines on levels to collect points, avoid enemies and other objects to stop you losing points. But there is a twist, you don’t really draw lines directly on to the level, you draw on a tracing sheet and then place it over the level once you’re done to see how well you did. With the addition of bonus tokens – which can act as pranks applied to others or power ups for yourself and penalty tokens that will make your drawing all the more difficult, the game soon becomes a lot more fun but a lot more difficult.

With Loony Quest you get 7 worlds to play most containing 6 levels, culminating in a boss level – just like if you were playing a real platformer video game! Each level will have different objectives to complete with different ways to complete them.

Some objectives will see you needing to draw one continuous line across the world and you’ll have to make sure that it draws over certain objects to pick up points. Others will need to you circle objects or draw multiple lines. The higher the level and world you play – the more difficult that challenge will be.

The player with the most points at the end of the world you’re playing, wins!

I’m yet play all of the worlds, so can’t comment on exactly how difficult they get, but judging from the look of them, they look pretty challenging.

To make the game a little more challenge for your opponents you can collect bonuses – mentioned earlier, from each level and these allow you to play pranks on other players. For example one called the ‘Mosquito’ means the player has to balance the mosquito card on the end of their pen whilst they draw and can only draw when it’s on the pen. Penalties are also applied to players who hit any bombs whilst drawing; drawing with your opposite hand, holding the pen in your pinky and thumb and drawing with an entirely straight arm are just some of the penalties that you can acquire. The addition of these elements add a nice mix to the gameplay and help to produce a lot of laughs between us. Watching Murr trying to draw whilst holding the pen with his pinky and thumb was a particular highlight.

The game looks great; with its bright colours and cartoon art style that reminds me of angry birds. It also feels good pretty good quality – although you might want to invest in a few extra pens and cloths to clean up with. But it seems like it will last a fair bit of rough and tumble. I also love that it’s so quick and easy to pick up, which makes it really good for kids to play – we all know that some children don’t have the longest attention spans.

Initially I was skeptical about Loony Quest, but I was quickly won over by it’s simplicity to play and the laughs that we had whilst playing it. it certainly makes a nice change to the more serious and in-depth games that we’ve been playing of late. Personally I think it would be a fantastic game to play if you have a kids, that’s not to say that it’s only for kids though, because we all loved it in our group and whilst we might act like kids sometimes, we aren’t – we’ve got mortgages and everything!

You can find your copy of Loony Quest at your local games store.

-Will