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Jump to:

• Age target
• Setting
• Your character
• Mechanics
• What did my kid think
• Overall
• Find a copy!

Age target: 4+

Color My Quest is an SRD that also comes with a pre-made adventure!  So, you can use the SRD to make any kind of story that you want to match any age range, and then the pre-made quest is made for ages 4+.  There’s baddies to fight or trick your way around, but they are intentionally made to look a bit cute, so you won’t be running into anything too scary.

From the super adorable art style to the easy flow of the stories to the plethora of coloring pages that this comes with, it is really great for kids 4+.  I played with my little one, who is about 4 years old, and it was perfect – it kept kiddo’s attention, it was engaging, and it provided coloring breaks and doodling space throughout the entire game.

Setting:

Since Color My Quest is an SRD, you can make the setting anything you want, but the pre-made characters and adventure focus on a classic medieval setting.

Your goal is to explore around a map, covered in forests, mountains, and more, to find key locations where magical scrolls (and the only answer to breaking a curse!) are being kept.  There’s a town, a camp, creepy ruins, and a spooky castle to check out, each with their own encounters, and there’s a random encounter table to use while exploring.  The setting was a very cute and still engaging version of a fantastic adventure!

Your character:  

Color My Quest has several character pictures to choose from, and, after picking a picture, it’s an easy walk-through to determine your stats and your character’s backstory!

You pick your skill modifiers in whatever order you want (it’s OK to not match the stereotype for your picture… my kid picked “the ninja” but chose speed as the lowest stat).  There’s also some questions to help you fill in your character’s personality a bit, a companion for you to pick, and special ability cards to choose. After that, you’re ready to go (and color)!

Character creation is nice and simple, because of the pictures my kid was able to track the stats without reading, and it was great to basically have a character coloring sheet available for the whole game.

Mechanics:

Success, struggle, stuck! 

Color My Quest uses a dice mechanic very similar to Adorablins (another awesome game by the same authors):

To determine what the result of your actions are, you roll two dice, add your modifiers from your character card, and check the result versus the success, struggle, and stuck ranges on the actions card.

On a success, you do the thing you wanted!  While playing Color My Quest, this could mean you dive underwater to try to grab something glimmering beneath the surface of a stream and you are able to successfully swim down to see what it is with no issues. 

For a struggle, you kind of get to do what you wanted, and some new challenge is introduced by the game master.  In our game, kiddo wanted to try to grab a scroll out of a gelatinous cube but rolled up a struggle, so… that character needed to use a Hero Point to activate their fire magic and get the cube to release them!

Then comes… STUCK!  If you get a struggle but don’t know what to do or are out of Hero Points and companions to help, you can get STUCK!  After a couple of tough encounters (so no Hero Points or companion remaining), we rolled a storm from the random encounter table and rolled VERY low to find shelter.  As a consequence, the character waited it out and then had to spend an extra day in a nearby town to recover to dry out and get well before continuing.

This mechanic is a lot of fun because… on a success, you definitely progress things, but on a struggle or stuck, you are creating more story.  They’re opportunities for your kid to get creative and say what could happen in addition to learning how to handle failures well.

Companions:

Each character gets a companion in this game that they can use to get an extra boost when they’ve got a low roll.  Companions can be used to turn a struggle into a success, and, once used, the companion takes a rest and can’t be used again until the players stop to recover.  

This is a great way to teach strategic use of resources – there’s no potions or items to really track, but the companion, who is right there in front of you and another picture to color, is available to use when needed.  Kiddo was careful to save the companion until it was really needed (there was a skeleton fight!), and had to make that call for boosting the struggle roll to a success.

Hero Points: 

Color My Quest also uses Hero Points!  Hero Points are earned by doing something awesome (like helping an NPC in need to turn over their wrecked cart), and they let players tap into their abilities, which range from skills like sneaking about to using magic (my kid picked fire), wake up a fallen comrade, or recover.  

This gives positive reinforcement and a reward (without having to track items, money, etc) for doing side quests or participating in RP.  It also is a really easy way to track spell usage since these essentially get used for casting. 

I also really liked how they were tied into the character sheet.  To track your Hero Points, you just fold over the little stars on the side of the sheet, which is a great visual that doesn’t require extra pieces at the table (with little ones, it can be easy for things to get bumped around and lost as they reach).  

What did my kid think?

Kiddo had a lot of fun playing Color My Quest.  The color, cut, and tape part was a big hit: kiddo liked coloring the characters and companion, putting the locations on the map (we used tape to stick them on) and then color our path as we explored, and cutting the tabs on the character sheet to set up.  Getting to mess around with the character sheet and the map I think really helped with giving feelings of control within the game, and it was really easy to keep engagement as we played. 

The story was great too!  My kid has been really into skeletons since last Halloween and reading some books on how bodies work, so the skeleton encounters and the end baddie were big hits!  The exploration elements and random encounters went over really well too – the variety in challenges was really fun, and kiddo liked rolling to see what weird new adventure would happen in each square between the main locations.

Overall:

Color My Quest is a great rules-lite and coloring forward game to use for playing TTRPG’s with kids! It’s easy to understand, and it’s fun (and engaging for kids) to set up.  The actual game play is smooth and fosters creativity, risk-reward balance, and development of tracking skills.  For me, it was easy to run the adventure and a good way to bond with my child (and keep said kiddo busy) for an afternoon.  Color My Quest is an awesome game, and I hope you can check it out!

Where to find a copy:

Color My Quest can be found on DriveThruRPG and the Dice Up Games website!

Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions or decide to try out this game because of this post!