With its cute-looking art by Rodrigo Camilo Alves De Almeida, Ekaterina Chesalova, Angga Dwipayana, Pauliina Linjama, Dann May and Kevin Sidharta, Companion Quest is an adventure-style game played across three quest cards where you'll be drafting dice from the six available pools and using them to catch up with Gu'Gu, your nemesis, before he reaches a portal. Gu'Gu starts off one step ahead of the party and he has just three steps before he reaches the portal. In addition, there will be challenge cards available which offer other ways of using dice. You can expect Gu'Gu to move forward if you fail to complete a challenge card and the token chasing him, which represents your party of gnomes and their companions, only advances when you complete a quest card.
To satisfy some requirements you'll need dice showing a particular number or dice of a particular colour, and there are some challenges that specify both colour and number. For some challenges you'll just need to have dice that are equal or, for example, in ascending order.
Mark McIntyre has designed Companion Quest to be playable solitaire and as a fully cooperative game with up to four players. However you play, each player has a main gnome character and an assigned companion, so you'll have at least two cards with powers you'll be able to activate (for example, to add or subtract 1 to the number on a die or to trigger a re-roll) and you'll be able to spend 'snack' tokens to recruit additional companions along the way. The game generates a natural tension, particularly if players have struggled to complete a challenge card and so been unable to prevent Gu'Gu from advancing towards the portal.
Once you've made use of a companion's ability you'll have to refresh it before you can use it again, and that means selecting a specific colour die. Success in Companion Quest often depends on triggering a cascade effect so that the dice you select incidentally activate companions which give you effects that make those dice all the more useful. This is essentially then a puzzle game where players aren't merely pushing their luck over dice rolls but where you need to work out the most effective way of using what's available to you.
Shown here on Board's Eye View is a preview prototype which Ghostfire Gaming has produced ahead of Companion Quest's upcoming Kickstarter campaign which is due to launch on 4 March. Click here for more details.