Mentors Rescue

I remember doodling my own levels for NES games as a kid. I also remember entering a contest that appeared in an early issue of Nintendo Power where I attempted to design a game based around insect creatures (I didn't win). Unfortunately, nothing had seemed to survive the last twenty years for me to look back on for some frame of reference. That is until recently.

Since buying my house, my dad decided that there was no reason for any of my old stuff in his garage needed to stay and could be stored in my new garage. Amongst that pile of stuff was an old board game from 1989 called HeroQuest. I had totally forgotten about the game until that point and quickly remembered how much fun I had with the game at the time. After opening the box, some yellowing sheets of graph paper and note paper fell out of the instruction booklet.

Here, I had stumbled onto a map and quest I had created for the game. I guess, you could say it was one of my first complete game designs. The action revolved around saving your captured mentor from the evil Verag and seemed to rely heavily on my Zelda influences (the player needed to find the "Sword of Power" to defeat the end boss). I also included quite a few traps and enemies, I must have been feeling especially diabolical for an eleven year old at the time.

This game still seems to hold up and is easily customizable and seems to be a descent tool to explore level design. I think I may have to dust it off and design some updated levels for this game.