Dungeons of Demus Dungeon Crawler | A True Competitor for HeroQuest? | Retro Board Game Review
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- čas přidán 15. 07. 2024
- Always Board Never Boring invites you to imagine a situation where instead of getting HeroQuest for your birthday, you got a horrible mistake. That mistake is Dungeons of Demus, a dungeon crawler from 1990 that manages to fail in just about every way. Let's point and laugh at it in this light-hearted review.
Time stamps:
00:00 Intro
01:00 Overview
02:32 Cover art
04:09 Game setup
06:30 Gameplay
14:11 Final thoughts
#dungeonsofdemus #dungeoncrawler #boardgames
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5:54 Alright. I recognize three of these drawings that were plagiarized from art from the Time Life's Enchanted World book series, Dragons and The Fall of Camelot in particular. The Dragon and the Siren are from pages 85 and 87 respectively. At 15:10 the head of the hydras are taken from the guivre serpent on page 33, also from the Dragons volume. The altered the faces a little for each head but it's derived from the same art. The Enchantress was taken from art from The Fall of Camelot, page 66. They change the color palate of her. I did reviews on all the books on my channel for those who are skeptical.
Ha. That's fantastic. The game just keeps finding new ways to be even worse.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring it's the gift that keeps on taking
The necromancer appears to have his slippers on? Every hero fears the slippers of doom!
Slippers are essential for those cold dungeon flagstone floors.
The Slippers if Static let him cast Shock Touch up to 2 quares away.
But does it have a Brode Sode?
There are three swords in the game. Their broadness has yet to be determined.
All fantasy games need a Brode Sword! 😂
Oil yooz moi brode sode
I understood that reference.
Fiyah of Wroth.
I'm glad THE SPINNER is labeled because otherwise I'd have no idea what that was.
You often won't be able to see what number you spun, but you will never be in any doubt you used the spinner to spin it.
Wow. I saw this at a car boot sale circa 1994 and have spent the last thirty years trying to decide whether I dreamed it or not! So thank you very much for helping me box it off in my brain!
It has a fever dream quality to it. Thanks for watching.
I never played it but even I love it for how much there is wrong with this, it belongs in a museum. Great vid.
And in a museum it would be kept under glass, where it couldn't hurt anyone anymore.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Ha ha ha!
The art on the box looks like AI generated! It was advanced for its time!
It does have that sort of quality to it. Apparently some of the art in the game was "borrowed" from other sources, which explains why it doesn't always feel like it's part of the same world.
Oh no, I’ve been living a lie, I thought your fair and balanced videos were the pinnacle of reviews, but it turns out your mean ones are even better 🤣👏👍🤣
Ha. I reserve this sort of treatment for special cases. Fortunately they are very few and far between!
You know, I wouldn't mind having the cover art framed on my wall, although for all the different reasons than HeroQuest's cover. Just seeing that absurd mess got me in such a good mood.
I know exactly what you mean. It’s so bad I find it incredibly funny.
The critique of the box art, oh my ... 🤣💀
And this was me being nice about it.
I love how the goblin looks. He has sharpened a rod from the back of a chair and has a stone nose.
Dragon's toothpick. Very dangerous weapon.
I feel so blessed to have never received this. 🤣
A blessing for sure.
Feeling sad for the kids out there who did get Dungeons of Demus instead of Hero Quest in 1990 :(
I hope nobody ever had to endure that kind of disappointment!
To qoute Viktor from the 1st UNDERWORLD movie: 🤨 "Abomination!"
And not the good HeroQuest kind!
Demi’s appears to be wearing slippers!!! 😂
And that’s NOT a Thief… it’s a Mime!
Just because you're trying to take over the world doesn't mean you have to sacrifice comfort.
Clearly the wizard was played by the classically trained actor who wanted the money and thought it would just be a few months. That look speaks volumes.
I imagine this is what Alec Guinness looked like day one on the set of Star Wars.
This is the same reason I keep a copy of a Dean Kootz novel on my shelf. A reminder that if this can get published, then so can I. Game Designers, take heart!
Oh, which novel? I've only ever read a few of his books.
@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Relentless. Not only is it formulaic and badly written, but I don't think it's even seen an editor, at least the edition I've got!
Looks amazing
I was certainly amazed.
I never had HeroQuest as a kid, which used to make me sad seeing the cult following it has today. On the other hand…I never had this eiher, so I guess it evens out somehow.
Absolutely loved your review, felt so refreshing.
Ha. Sometimes you lose on the swings and gain on the roundabout. I'm glad you liked the video!
The spider is quite nice....
Never heard of this one, can't think why!
He's a happy little fella. I like how even the enemy standees look like they are from a different game to the hero standees.
It's such a baffling collection of bad choices.
the box art is insane and amazing
I love it and hate it at the same time.
This game reminds me of something, as a kid I really wanted Heroquest but never got a copy, so as part of a school project some friends and I made up our own HQ like game out of card based mostly on what we thought the game would be like from the tv advert. Looking back our game was pretty awful (we were 10) but honestly it was probably not much worse than this supposedly professionally designed product. I wonder if given this game maybe a bunch of ten year olds could invent their own fun rules to make it a more enjoyable game.
I think there is just too much to deal with. Even if you sort all the rules out it still looks ugly as all sin. But it could be a fun exercise for kids to tinker with different rules.
Wow. That is one special game. Keep if. It is Le extraordinary
I will keep it under lock and key to protect the masses.
Wow.
Wet messes like these really help with my imposter syndrome as I finish my own game 👌 so I'm grateful for that much.
I am sure you are doing something better than this!
I never thought meeting a m
Nanard board game. A nanard is a specific word from french that describe generally a movie that is so bad that it became involontary hilarious. We use it for any piece of media
I actually owned this at one point, a guy on our local market had a job lot of these on his stall for £1.50. I guess that would have been in 1991 or 1992. I played it a few times before it disappeared into the ether. I can't say I miss it.
I paid £4 for my copy. I was robbed!
Despite everything I really like the art style
I suppose someone has to.
While it definitely takes a back seat to Heroquest in box art, it has a quaint sort of home-brew feel like the old original dungeons &dragons books from the 70s. And I may get flack for it but I kind of like it.
I think it's absolutely awful, and yet quite charming in its awfulness. Each terrible element stacks up to create one of the most spectacularly amazing messes I've seen in some time. Unfortunately, it appears that some of the artwork was plagiarised from other sources, which is a shame.
I would probably love playing this... with some house rules and/or modifications. It's almost as if the Dungeon board game from TSR had an idiot brother (to be fair, we usually altered the rules for that game as well).
Nifty find.
I think it's the sort of game you could run out once in a while to laugh at as you play.
I’ll never get over the decision of the 8-year old me, deciding to go for the horrible game “Dark World” instead “HeroQuest” when asked what I wanted for Christmas.
Both games were being advertised all the time in Greek TV (Dark World being named “Dragon Game System” for whatever reason, since no dragons exist in the game). I hadn’t seen any of them in real and nobody in my tiny village was into board games so I had to decide based on the looks of the games. I loved Heroquest having 3D-furniture and it had a great ad. But Dark World had these really cool minis and that awesome looking castle. How should I know that it was gameplay-wise absolutely horrible?
I can’t imagine how it must have felt for people who got something like that Demus gemstone while others had Heroquest…
Ha. If you missed it, I reviewed Dark World on the channel only recently. I don't hate it - it has some solid ideas baked into it - but compared to HeroQuest, there's no contest at all.
Dark World was actually a series of three games, the other two being Village of Fear and Dragon's Gate, and the Dragon's Gate did indeed have a massive dragon in it (I mean really huge). I doubt that was the reason they called it the Dragon Game System though. That was probably just down to some advertising exec who thought using the word might make people who like Dungeons and Dragons buy it.
It's like Key to the Kingdom, only with absolutely nothing going for it, so I guess that makes it not like Key to the Kingdom at all, because Key to the Kingdom was freaking awesome!
I still need to add Key to the Kingdom to my collection. Not my favourite game but still a good laugh.
"Prevent Demus from seizing the throne and enslaving the land."
Just let Demus have that crappy land.
If you can seize power with five goblins and a handful of monsters, the world could probably use a stronger leader to get things in order!
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring That realm has topsy-turvy logic. Perfect for Demus the Demented. ; )
Demus sounds like a kid who was pushed into lockers a lot at wizard school and that's why he grew up to become an evil necromancer.
He's over-compensating now by being a necromancer, a knight, a barbarian, and a pirate all at the same time.
Congrats on the 18
Thank you!
👍
Can you review Middara at some point? Act 2 & 3 is going into production soon.
I'm afraid I don't have a copy to review.
I've never heard of Dungeons of Demus.
You are very lucky.
One can only wonder if it was even play-tested prior to publishing.
Or did they send version 1 to the publishers instead of version 8?
It has a strong sense of being thrown together under a very strict timeline, probably to capitalise on the success of HeroQuest. I doubt much though or testing went into any of it.
Please review more horrible games. This was a blast.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I will have to see what weird and wonderful monstrosities I can unearth!
I kind of likethe board's layout, if not the presentation.
It just looks so horrible and it’s too spaced out for moving 1-6 spaces per turn.
One quare 😂💀
It does not bode well when the cover art shows the big bad boss wearing his slippers! 😲
I see it as a show of disdain for the pathetic heroes. He can't even be bothered to get dressed properly to deal with them.
BRODESODE!!!
i can't get past the knight in his slippers lol
I can’t get past he’s not a knight. He’s a necromancer!
So...when are the play through videos coming?
I was thinking a ten part series would be a good start.
The box art looks like some kind of ai abomination 😂
Need to take a good look at the hands.
Never heard of this and I've played a LOT of bad games over the years! 😂
I can't imagine why it might have slipped under the radar!
So, going out on a limb, we shouldn't be expecting multi-part game play-throughs? ; )
I’m not sure the internet is ready for that degree of excitement.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring LOL!
Bite your tongue, good sir! Better then Heroquest. Pshaw!
Few games are better than HeroQuest. Dungeons of Demus most definitely isn't one of them.
Well,I see it this way. I think all up and coming film makers should have to sit through some bad movies to understand why they are bad and what not to do when making their own films. Likewise,it makes sense that up and coming game makers should play some bad games to understand why they are bad. So having bad examples is a good thing.
It's also why this game should be played,at least once,by anyone looking to make games. You need to get into the trenches and feel the pain. So technically speaking,it should be in your collection and it should be played. If nothing else,it makes you appreciate better games.
Ha. I think I played this enough before reviewing. I am happy for it to sit in the vault now!
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Yeah,but it's nice to know you can pull it out and inflict it on someone if they get too uppity.
Misery loves company.
It feels like a game that had a lot of neat ideas, at first, but the production was rushed and not fully play-tested before being released to market. This game clearly needs revision. While it it nice to engage in some houserules to spice up a game or quell some minor rule disputes, this game is like the Bethesda of Boardgames -- a game that gets released so buggy and unbalanced, fans end up fixing the game in spite of the publisher.
They probably really thought they were on to something with the tiered spinner.
I think this game would really need reworking from the ground up.
What is the best thing about dungeons and demus? 😂😂
When it ends.
Ya know..? Now I kinda wanna take a crack at rewriting the rules...
I think it needs to be stripped back to such a degree it wouldn't be anything close to the same game any more by the time you were finished, and if you are doing that you might as well start from scratch (then you could get some better components too).
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring You are not wrong. The components to this game look rather cheap. They remind me of cereal box quality. Still, there is some interested ideas in there. I was thinking replace the spinner with a set of dice. So the Warrior would have: "Fighting: d8 Magic: d4 Speed: d6"
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I saw the "Guardian" monster cards in your video, but what were the other monsters?
The spider (yellow 2), the snake (yellow 2), the giant (blue 4), the hydra (yellow 5), and the skeleton (blue 3). They are all in the video at different points. Also, five goblins - 4 yellow circles with a 1, and one blue circle with a 1.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Hmm... so they have two different Giants, one as a Guardian and one as a basic monster? Most curious...
it does look pretty bad. Fun video thou.
Absolute shocker. A real treat if you occasionally like to do "bad board game" nights where you have a few drinks and play terrible games.
Wow the bad guy no witch lord is he 🤣🤣🤣
He's doing his best. Probably.
Lets be honest, this isn't Heroquest from, Wish it's Dungeon! from, Wish
It definitely has a bit of Dungeon! in it, but the timing of the release suggests they were trying to ride HeroQuest's coat tails. Of course the name is also trying to sound a bit like Dungeons and Dragons, and someone in the comments could tell me the game uses art half-inched from other sources. So, the game is pretty much trying to be anything other than what it is!
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I would say it does have Dungeon! in its DNA, maybe the love child of Heroquest, and Dungeon! with such a simplicity of the game they were trying to ride coattails for sure, but it's ok to be late to a party, rather than showing up drunk and ruining the party, but that's just me
The thief on the cover art look so depressed... looks like a guy who need to go to the bathroom because he had a mess in his underwear...
Well, he's opened the door and realised the warrior got there first.
It's at least charmingly incompetent. The Ed Wood of fantasy tabletop games?
Charmingly incompetent is a great description. It makes me want to stick it on the fridge.
I still think I'd rather play this than Heroquest.
Your disdain for HeroQuest is noted, but here... I think maybe misplaced. Dungeons of Demus struggles to have a redeeming quality.
Never said Hero Quest
Yes I did. Several times.
Nope the kid said I want that new dungeon game never specifically said Hero Quest 😂
Oh I see. Yes, a cautionary tale of making sure to ask for exactly what you want. I can only hope this never really happened to anyone in real life!
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring good video I just found that hilarious
It's truly beyond bad. I honestly feel sorry for any kid who received this thing as present back in the day.
The artworks looks like ripped off from some illustrated book and who knows, maybe they did just that: I would not be surprised🤔
In the comments here someone has indeed revealed that at least some of the art was "borrowed" from books, with minor changes to disguise it.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring As I said, I'm not suprised: such level of bad would have been somewhat incomplete without some stolen...sorry, I meant "borrowed"... elements too 🤣
could I just get the money they used to produce this please.
What are you going to do with £1.50?
I have to disagree with the claim that 'art is subjective'. This is an oft proclaimed piece of received wisdom, one of the core tennets of post-Christian, relativistic materialism, and it doesn't hold up to philosophical scrutiny (which is my profession so you'll have to excuse me). There are many forms of artistic competance and whilst someone may find virtues, and things to like in this box art (particularly the parents of the artists, I have to imagine) there are quite clearly a litany of further virtues displayed by more competently executed examples of box art (Heroquest being the obvious example).
Not merely subjective.
I’m being very tongue in cheek in this review and poking fun at the artwork and possible defences for how ghastly it is. The subjective line was to set up the gag that the art is a mess of different styles. Obviously I think this art doesn't bear comparison to other contemporary art, which is why I flashed up images of clearly better board game art while expressing that it would be cruel for me to do so. Nothing too serious.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring oh I know, I just can't help but try to fight the tide of 'art is subjective' wherever it laps against the shores of sanity. I had a good giggle at your brief overview of this box.
This game leaves sanity well behind. It is a baffling disaster. Apparently some of the art was taken from various books and modified, so the whole thing really has no merit beyond being an example of when everything is wrong with a game.
hahahahaha
Bummer the game is weak sauce. I kinda dig it’s retro art. Even the board quares.
It is the weakest of sauces.
i might get a copie just becuse it looks so bad
If you can find a dirt cheap copy I think you could have a fun session with friends poking fun at it. Probably a one time thing though.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring yea
looks god awful but great for a collection and Historical reference of what not to do )
I think all designers should have a copy on their shelf!
I my gosh. That game is terrible. And a bit painful!
It’s a rare and unusual kind of bad.
i dont know why it would be incredly funny if you would do a full playthrough of this board game just cuse its so bad
I'm not sure which would wear out first - the joke or my patience!
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoringdo it!
This look like a bad prototype. Like some thing you do with the left overs of other bad games components and make a game of it. lol
The mix of art styles and different standees really does make it look like they threw it all together with whatever they could find.
Wow, sounds terrible lol
It's a real shocker.
Wow... I don't like to say this (cause it sounds arrogant) but... I could design a better game than this! 😂
I think they have set an exceptionally low bar here. I would like to think I could knock up something better too!
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Hmm... now I kinda wonder what your "Top 5 Worst Board Games" list would look like
This and Destination London would be on that list for sure.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring oh boy! Did you do a video on Destination: London?
Not a video. There is a written review of it on my blog, including a photograph of me putting the game into a toilet. Unfortunately, I don't have it in my collection anymore, so I can't do a video review of it. It's probably for the best. I think people prefer me being balanced and fair about games that have obvious merits regardless of whether or not I like them myself.
this has got to be perhaps the worst dungeon crawler I've ever seen... honestly. the worst of games workshop has a weird charm to it. but this is... terrible. every bit is just terrible.
It’s rare to see something where everything is so wrong.