Slide Quest

Buy your copy of Slide Quest here.

Is there an emerging trend of designers using game boxes as game components? 2015’s delightfully zany Loony Quest emulated platforming video games by having players scribble paths on transparent plastic sheets before laying them on ‘level’ boards in the game’s packaging to see whether they’d managed to avoid deadly traps. 2016’s finger-flicking penguin pursuit game Ice Cool transformed its box into an Antarctic high school full of corridors and classrooms for players to navigate. And recent family-friendly dice game Troll & Dragon used its box as a subterranean grotto full of glittering gold and diamonds.

Now there’s a new addition to the bunch in the form of Slide Quest, a co-operative dexterity game that sees players collaboratively navigating a plastic knight across a succession of perilous environments, finding their way around obstacles and attempting to avoid plunging into gaping chasms.

The game uses some simple but clever engineering. Before you play you’ll place a cardboard map sheet on top of a plastic tray that sits suspended in the centre of the box. Players can tilt it in different directions using four plastic handles, causing their plucky hero to roll on his steel ball-bearing base as the ground beneath him shifts. Each successive zone comes with its own set of objectives, obstacles and enemies to confront, and getting it right requires perfect co-ordination. It’s all too easy for one mistimed jolt to send the knight crashing unceremoniously through a hole in the ground.

It may rely on a physical gimmick, but it’s a hell of a fun one. One downside is that with fewer than four players, someone will have to control multiple levers. But if you can reliably round up three reasonably dextrous teammates, it’s an absolute blast for families, or even for suitably childish grown-ups.

OWEN DUFFY

PLAY IT? YES

Designer: Nicolas Bourgoin, Jean-François Rochas

Artist: Stéphane Escapa

Time: 15-45 minutes

Players: 2-4

Age: 7+

Price: £20

Buy your copy of Slide Quest here.

This review originally appeared in the August 2019 issue of Tabletop Gaming. Pick up the latest issue of the UK's fastest-growing gaming magazine in print or digital here or subscribe to make sure you never miss another issue.

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