Joe Manganiello’s New HeroQuest Expansion Is Totally Metal

Let’s be real: HeroQuest has always been a little rock ‘n roll. But now it’s full Dio. The new HeroQuest expansion, The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness, is built for tabletop players who like to blare some music while they play.

Joe Manganiello, actor and game designer behind The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness, describes the expansion’s vibe as “that scary, kind of borderline heavy metal Frazetta aesthetic,” saying, “If you like that kind of dark fantasy rock and roll heavy metal — it’s on the dice, come on, let’s go.”

This isn’t your standard dungeon crawl. The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness features ten brutal quests that will take you into the heart of the darkness, featuring a metallic black dragon miniature, eight black dice, 20 foil-embellished game cards, and more. 

For those who’ve only seen Manganiello on screen in Magic Mike, True Blood, Deal or No Deal Island, and more, he might seem like an unlikely dungeon designer. But he’s been doing this since he was a kid.

“Back when I was a kid, I didn’t think I was allowed to do this. Make games? Be an actor? You’re supposed to get a regular job,” Manganiello says. “But I wrote my own movies in high school, and now here we are.”

That outsider energy is exactly what pulses through The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness. It’s filled with personal touches: a mouse companion who’ll scout ahead for you, a map written in Elvish, and one quest where you have to sneak past goblins to bust your friend out of jail.

Even the vibe is custom-forged. This isn’t light fantasy, it’s ripped straight from the Heavy Metal magazine era, complete with nods to the Satanic Panic and the genre’s dark aesthetic roots.

“There’s something awesome about the stigma from back in the day — the satanic panic, the heavy metal vibe. I leaned into that aesthetic.”

The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness is available for preorder now from Amazon and will be available at your local game store starting July 15. To play, you need HeroQuest Game System or HeroQuest First Light, which are sold separately.