Something that would be really cool to have and would also reuse much of the existing material is a new game mode akin to "Hero Quest". https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/699/heroquest

The heroes would basically be competing to become the greatest hero ever, while the Overlord will ofcourse try to kill the pesky heroes. The quests themselves will unfold some background story and the heroes delve into dungeons, opening doors one by one to reveal whatever is inside. At the same time, heroes finds loot, become stronger, etc. The usual.

I can only assume this isn't a new idea, but I can't find anything that remotely does what I just described. It's still different than what Descent First Edition tried to do. There needs to be competition between the heroes themselves for things to balance out and to put a timer on the game. I know there is also the application now that eliminates the Overlord, and I guess that game mode comes closer to what I'm looking for, but I'd like to keep the Overlord player.

I don't remember Hero Quest working that way. I suppose heroes could compete, but separating the party was usually a good way to die, and it seems like they all had to return to the entry stairs to end the quest.

I came to Descent 2nd Edition hoping it was a dungeon-crawling experience like HQ, but I quickly appreciated why it wasn't. That D&D-like element of HQ may have been its strength (and why most of us remember it fondly), but it was at the Overlord player's expense. At least in my experience, that role wasn't much fun to play after one or two times. It occupied a strange middle ground between a neutral, storytelling DM and an active competitor. Officially it was supposed to be the latter, but foreknowledge of the map and monsters gave you zero tactical advantage, given that all of your actions had to be activated by the hero players' choices. The inability to truly compete against the heroes meant you might lean more toward the DM role, but that wasn't much fun, either, since HQ was a board game and not an RPG. You could surprise players with the content of rooms or treasure chests, but that was pretty much it.

Descent overcame this problem by picking a side. It's a board game, so they favored active competition by giving the Overlord player more control. Removing the dungeon crawl experience means the Overlord doesn't have to wait for the heroes to do something and can surprise them with his own skills and resources. Even the Road to Legend app retains this element with story and Peril effects, despite there being no Overlord player to enjoy dishing them out.

So I think if it's a competition against an Overlord player you want, the present game is set up for that. If it's the dungeon crawl experience you want, the app facilitates this quite well, even if there's still a ticking clock. But I personally don't see how a competition between heroes would work in Descent , given they were designed to balance and assist each other. Monster group limits are built on the idea that the heroes work together to defeat them, and so on. It sounds easier to turn to a different game that is built on full competition and not cooperation.

I guess the competing in HQ was a houserule we used, maybe not an even good one since I remember it was mostly based on much loot one could gather more than the other and completing the quest objectives. I know there were limitations on how many times one could search a room for treasure. So yeah, houserules, but still fun.

Don't get me wrong, I like Descent how it is (I collected everything!), but both games have a different approach to the dungeon crawling genre. Dungeon Saga for example ( https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/160081/dungeon-saga-dwarf-kings-quest ) builds more on top of HQ, proving that an approach like that can still work since the Overlord there isn't exactly defenseless like in HQ.

DS plays quicker, but Descent has more depth. I think both games can perfectly coexist next to each other. So again, it's not impossible to have a game mode like that in Descent as well. I guess technically I could try to take the rules from DS and apply/adapt them to Descent. Might not be feasible though.