UnderQuest

UnderQuest is in many ways a spiritual successor to my previous solo titles including: Iron Helm, Tin Helm, Dustrunner, and Desolate. It combines the very best of these games and adds many new twists, creating an expansive world for you to explore. Each time you put UnderQuest on your table you will experience a fresh and unique adventure!

Image above shows UnderQuest in play using the available Game Mats.

• UnderQuest uses a character creation system that has you pick a race, class, and familiar, with 180 combinations out of the box to explore.
• The game is driven by a quest system that helps create a different story arch each time the game is played.
• UnderQuest uses a combat system that rewards taking risks which creates a lot of tension, but also requires careful decision making.
• You will be able to cast incantations from three schools of magic including: Fire, Ice, and Holy.
• On your adventure you will find ingredients that you can combine to create your own powerful potions.
• There are 18 base enemies that can be altered by abomination cards to create over 1600 unique foes.
• You will gain experience points that can be spent on learning new skills or to re-roll your dice.
• UnderQuest comes with many random encounters that you will run into that will challenge you and add to the narrative of your adventure.
• Over 200 unique illustrations and no two cards are the same!

Below you will find a brief look at some of the highlights of UnderQuest. To learn all the details of gameplay, you can watch the tutorial videos below or read through the rulebook.

The first thing you will have to do is create your character. First, you will pick from the six races (top row). Next, You will flip over the remaining race cards to reveal the available classes (second row). Lastly, you will choose a familiar to tag along with you on your adventure (bottom row). Each one of these aspects will help to create a truly unique character with different stats, skills, and starting gear. As it stands, there are 180 combinations of characters for you to explore right out of the box!

On your turn you will draw two dungeon cards from the dungeon deck, keeping them both face down. You will reveal one of the two cards and decide if you want to resolve it, or pass and take your chance on the unknown card. This simple mechanic creates a lot of tension. Resolving the first card is typcially the safer route, but perhaps you reveal a skirmish card and want to avoid combat. Resolving the second card is a high risk/reward decision. Negative cards like combat are deadlier if resolved as the second card, but positive cards like the treasure card are actually better if resolved as the second card.

Resolved cards are added to your tableau. Each dungeon card has half of an icon on each side. When added to the tableau, if you match up the icons to make a complete icon, you gain the matching quest tokens. Quest tokens are spent to advance the story of the game towards the final boss battle.

You will advance through the game by way of the quest cards. There are six phases to every adventure and at the beginning of the game you will randomly select one quest card from each phase (1-6) to create your unique quest deck. These are kept hidden and only the current phase is known. You resolve each phase by spending the required quest tokens shown on the card. Once resolved, you will reveal the next quest card. This system creates a unique story arch for your game. Above is an example of what six random phases could look like.

Along the way you will battle many different foes. The base game comes with 18 enemy cards, however often times you will be asked to augment your enemy using the abomination deck. Sometimes you will add a prefix to the enemy card and sometimes you will be asked to add both a prefix and suffix to the enemy. Both will increase the difficulty of the enemy and make them very unique. The use of both base enemy cards and abomination cards makes for over 1600 possible combinations of foes!

Here is an example of a simple skeleton being augmented with both a prefix and a suffix. What was once just a skeleton, is now a Stout Skeleton of Sivlic. He now has extra health, deals more damage, and is immune to holy attacks. Because he is more difficult, you will gain extra rewards for defeating him. In this case you will gain an extra ration and an extra experience point.

Whenever you resolve a clearing dungeon card you will be asked to draw an encounter card. There are 27 encounter cards and these will challenge you in many ways. Most will have you test either your Agility, Brawn, or Mind stats and they will offer you many unique rewards including: unique treasures, quest tokens, and companions to join you on your adventure

Lastly, you will find a lot of loot along the way. These will include: treasure, trappings, trinkets, rewards, and ingredients. Let's look at each one briefly.

Treasures - These are powerful items that will mainly be found on the remains of defeated foes.

Trappings - These are items that you can purchase before your adventure in order to be prepared for the world ahead. Sometimes they will also be found during play.

Trinkets - While UnderQuest does have gold as currency, you can also find trinkets, which can also be used as currency. They also typically have one time uses or are tied to certain characters you may find along your adventure.

Rewards - These are very powerful items and companions that you will find during your adventure if you complete certain quest cards or encounter cards.

Ingredients - You will combine these cards to craft potions that can restore health, create rations, heal poison, and more.

You can read or download the final rulebook by visiting the the Grey Gnome Games website (greygnome.com) and going to the free downloads tab.

I am dedicated to supporting my games once they are published. For example, Iron Helm released in 2019 and in the 5 years after its release, I supported it with 10 expansions and numerous promo cards. I have done this with about every game I let out into the world and UnderQuest will be no different. The plan is to release 36 card adventure packs that will add all sorts of new content to expand the world. I also want to release 18 card booster packs and allow for fan feedback, much like was done with the Fanny Pack for Iron Helm. I want to build a solid community around UnderQuest and I look forward to making a lot of content for this game. Here is a sneak peek at the first expansion, The Silence of Bal Morg, which will release in 2026!

The game mat set for UnderQuest includes two large full-color neoprene mats measuring 24" x 14" each. The player mat can be placed on either side of the main game mat to accommodate both right and left hand players. These mats will make it easier to organize your game during play, roll dice quietly, pick up cards more easily, and add to the theme of the game during play.

The UnderQuest character sheets are an optional way to track your characters progress for those of you that like that old-school vibe. They also work great as a way to pause your play between sessions.

You will also be able to add most of the Grey Gnome Library of games to your order during checkout. This is a great way to save on some shipping costs.