Year: 2019 | Players: 1-4 | Minutes: 15+ | Ages: 7+
This Slide Quest review was made after playing the game about 20 times.
What is Slide Quest?
Slide Quest is a cooperative dexterity game in which you attempt to help a knight save his kingdom. You and up to three other players use levers to slide the knight around the board to complete missions.
Slide Quest was designed by Nicolas Bourgoin and Jean-François Rochas, and it’s published by Blue Orange Games.
Rules Overview
To set up a game of Slide Quest, you put the levers in the four slots in the box, put the board on top of them, put a map on the board, then place the knight and any other needed components on the map. That’s it!
Gameplay is very simple. You use the four levers to slide the knight around the map and, after you complete the map’s mission, you have to make it to the numbered destination spot. If you’re playing with the real-time variant, you have to reach the destination spot before time runs out.
There are 20 maps included with the game. On some maps you have to stay on a path and avoid obstacles, while on others your main mission is to push guards and/or a villain into the traps/holes. On the easier maps you can push the guards into any of the holes, but on the tougher maps you have to push each numbered guard into the corresponding numbered hole. A lot of the maps also have sticks of dynamite that you usually want to avoid.
At the beginning of your quest you’ll get a certain number of “lives” based on your chosen difficulty level. You can lose lives in different ways, including when the knight falls into a hole, when a stick of dynamite tips over or falls into a hole, or when a guard or the villain is pushed into the wrong hole. You can gain lives back by sliding the knight over the heart symbols found on a lot of the maps.
Slide Quest has two main game modes. In Mini Quest, you attempt to play through five maps/levels without losing all of your lives. In the A Grand Quest game mode, you try to make it through all 20 maps. If you’re playing the real-time variant with the app, you can choose from three difficulty levels to play. There’s also a Game Saver included with the game that allows you to save your progress.
Check out our Top 10 Three-Player Games!
Pros and Cons
Pros
- I have to give the designers and the publisher a lot of credit for coming up with something original because I’ve definitely never played a co-op like Slide Quest before. There are other cooperative dexterity games out there, but I believe this is the only one where you simultaneously work together to slide something around a board.
- Everything seems to be weighted perfectly. The board and box stay in place while you’re playing, the knight slides nicely, and the enemies are easy to move around without falling over constantly.
- There’s a nice mix of easy, medium, and hard maps. I do find some of them to be a bit too easy, but those maps are great for kids.
- The game has a very colorful and welcoming look to it. The maps look fantastic, and the characters and obstacles look great on the maps.
- When playing the real-time variant, there’s a good amount of tension as you attempt to move the knight quickly around the board while also trying to communicate with your teammates. This is definitely my preferred way to play Slide Quest.
- I also like how quick and easy it is to move from one map to the next. You just pick up the few components that are on the map, switch out maps, and put the new components on. It takes about 10 seconds.
Cons
- The levers work perfectly 99 percent of the time, but once in a while they slip or get stuck and make it tough to maneuver. That’s not a big deal at all when you’re playing without the timer, but it can definitely mess you up when playing the real-time variant.
- Quarterbacking can be an issue. No one is going to make other players’ moves for them in this game, but they can try to control the game by shouting at everyone else.
- The barriers and the boulders sometimes pop up out of the map and get in your way. I think they’d stay put if their pegs were a millimeter or two longer.
Final Thoughts
Slide Quest is just pure fun. It’s a unique co-op that has a great look to it, plenty of tension, and a good amount of replay value. I’d never play it untimed again since that got boring pretty quickly, but I’ve really enjoyed the real-time variant. Once my group is finally able to beat all 20 levels, I’ll be keeping this one on my shelf as a quick filler game option because I know it can work with any group.
I can easily recommend Slide Quest to gamers and non-gamers of all ages who think they’d enjoy this type of dexterity game. If you don’t like dexterity games or you prefer to stay away from games that have potential quarterbacking/alpha gaming issues, you should probably pass on this one.
- Update: Slide Quest made it onto our Top Family Games list!
- Update 2: It also made it onto our Top Real-Time Games list!
- Update 3: And another… It’s now on our Best Board Games for Kids list!
Slide Quest Links
BGG | Amazon | Miniature Market
Thanks for taking the time to read our Slide Quest review!
Be sure to also take a look at our Best Co-op Board Games list and other rankings.
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