A 80s Inspired Tabletop Game with Moving Labyrinths and Physical Traps
Questiny, a fantasy tabletop game designed by a professional magician and inspired by 80 & 90s tabletop RPGs contains physical traps and new labyrinths every playthrough, gets funded on Kickstarter in 2 hours.
Professional magician, Leon Simmonds, takes 5 years to develop a love letter to 80s & 90s tabletop RPGs. Questiny is a cooperative dungeon crawler for one to found players.
No Game Master is necessary, and Questiny can be played as a complete cooperative board game, including solo. Groups that want to inhabit their characters more fully can incorporate roleplaying into the adventure, making it an optional layer rather than a prerequisite for playing.
Players are tasked with recovering a stolen magical artifact while battling forces of the Goblin Queen on the way to the Dark Tower.
The coolest part about Questiny is the moving labyrinths. and the physical traps. You can never play the same layout twice. There area physical traps that you can use to trap enemies – but could also fall victim to them. Also, there are RPG elements, but roleplay is completely optional.
Simmonds decided to make RPG elements optional to breakdown the barriers for new board game players. He wants more people to play board games.
“I think it’s medicine for the modern world,” Simmonds said. “It gets you off the screens, gets you social, gets you critical thinking, all the good stuff.”
After five years of development, Questiny launched on Kickstarter on September 1. The campaign reached its £8,000 funding goal within two hours and went on to surpass 300% funding.
The campaign also includes Demons of Drakor, an expansion for Questiny. Simmonds has previously brought the game to players at events including UK Games Expo and Strange Games Festival, giving people the opportunity to experience its unusual physical dungeon mechanics before the crowdfunding campaign.
For Simmonds, Questiny is his debut published board game, but it draws heavily on decades spent around games as well as his professional work creating experiences for an audience. The result is deliberately nostalgic without simply recreating an older game: an attempt to capture the feeling of sitting around a table and embarking on a fantasy adventure together.
Questiny is currently live on Kickstarter through October 1, 2026. Players can learn more about Questiny and follow the campaign.
