4 players can be heroes and level up, get better gear and find magicial artefacts.
One player controls monsters and reveals a event card at the begining of his turn, place traps, secret doors and put each new room/passage when heroes advance deeper in the dark dunjeons.
Dice results can be read according to your hero level :
Monsters too have a level and a number of actions per turn.
You can have close combat, launch spells, use bow etc
Mouvement points can be used to do tiny actions like opening a door or closing it, taking a potion, search a room for treasure or traps, talk to a monster and so on.
Mecanism of the game is very similar to HeroQuest or Space Hulk even Descent itself and this game introduces a roleplaying part with the "talking to mobs" option... something very exclusive & interesting !
As for Space Crusade, each GM turn starts with the event card which add more difficulty to the exploration.
It can be a wandering monster, a ambush, a trap, a closed door to force, special powers to mobs etc
The box contains 4 set of 4 different figurines with 4 different colors (red, yellow, blue, black) :
1 hero, 1 soorceer, 1 orc and 1 troll
As for DOOM & Descent (18 years later) the game difficulty can suit to the number of players for each quest !
To every battle won, heroes win experience, gold & items.
So they can level up & buy a better gear.
Dunjeons are composed of rooms & passages floor tiles with doors.
A infinite possibility to create places and it 100% compatible with HQ board...
Dragon Fire is a swedish UFO, a nice precursor and a huge step into dunjeon crawling adventures but totally unknow.
Yes, I think the tiny box contain played a bad role here.
More figurines and different heroes, a little bit more of things or 3D furnitures and it could easily kill HeroQuest for sure...