When Gloomhaven the board game was successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2015, it had earned a modest $386,104. The game’s creator, Isaac Childres, probably had no idea that seven years later he would make the most successful Kickstarter game of all time in Frosthaven, and that a PC version of Gloomhaven would see an average of more than two thousand concurrent players on Steam. That success could be indicative of a game that is painfully overrated, or of a creation deserving unprecedented praise. I opt for the latter, with Gloomhaven being one of the greatest creations in all of gaming - whether that be at a table or on a computer screen.
Innovation is hard to come by these days. Gaming is a saturated space, with thousands of titles piling up in our collective backlogs every year. Most of them will fall neatly into a specific genre, bringing with them the same trappings we have seen a hundred times over; an RPG with a story about saving the world, a rogue-like game with the same set of skill trees, or yet another racing game with a twist on how drifting works. But just as Hades transcended its own genre and became something wholly unique, Gloomhaven has done the same.
While technically a dungeon crawler, Gloomhaven asks the player to approach its missions with a sharp mind instead of a sharp weapon. Every turn plays out like a puzzle, where you practice risk assessment, do minor calculations, come up with the perfect plan, and then wince in pain as an unpredictable enemy thwarts you and cackles with triumph. One of the best party tricks it pulls off is the ability to provide pure joy and pure sorrow in one fell swoop, keeping you on your toes at all times. It’s thrilling, challenging, infuriating, and captivating in ways no other game has been for me. That’s not to say it’s my favorite game of all time, but it is certainly some of the most fun I have ever had while playing one.
I do think it’s worth getting the bad stuff out of the way before I start gushing about the things I love, because Gloomhaven is pretty rough around the edges. It is clear that this game is a work in progress from a technical perspective, as it is riddled with minor annoyances. Clicking the same button multiple times because it doesn’t register the input, inconsistencies in how the various inputs work in the first place, the odd frame hiccup when the screen transitions, obtuse controls that lead to incorrect choices in battle (the game desperately needs a “back” button), among other issues, all add up to more frustration than I would like. To the developer’s credit, there have been more than twenty updates since April of 2021. Being dedicated to solving issues is a great thing to see, but it’s also important that I don’t sugar coat the game’s current state. Considering the amount of content it offers, I think the list of problems is fine if you have some patience. But if you need new purchases to have a glossy sheen, I would hold off on picking it up for a few months until they iron out the few bugs that clearly remain since it came out of early access.
The rest of the game’s problems are more subjective for me, and you may not mind them. It has some flat artwork outside of combat, where most things look like static drawings rather than a nice render of the game world. I wish the NPC’s and their various locations felt more alive. As someone who loved the board game, I was looking forward to the mechanism where you give some gold to receive a blessing, because when playing the board game, I always visualized that location as this grand, beautiful thing. Instead, it’s abstracted out entirely, with a generic lady taking my money while a meter fills up each time I give. Kind of a bummer. It also bums me out that they didn’t breathe a bit more life into the items and equipment. While recycling the artwork from the board game is fine, I wanted to see the various armor and consumables in action. None of the items are rendered during gameplay, and all of them share the same generic animation when consumed. It is functional but not sexy, which is probably a good summary of my feelings on the game’s presentation. Let’s just say you won’t be sending any screenshots to friends because of how pretty it looks.
The sexiest part of Gloomhaven is its tutorial
That isn’t to say the game isn’t sexy at all, and I know this might sound odd but the sexiest part of Gloomhaven is its tutorial. I am admittedly biased here, because I was in a small camp of folks that found the first mission of the board game to be fucking impossible. At the risk of using an analogy, imagine if Halo 1 began in the second half of the Library mission before teaching the player how to calibrate the controller. That’s kind of how the first mission in the tabletop game felt, with our group fumbling and cursing our way to the final room just to die three tries in a row. Which is why the PC game is so wonderful at first blush; the tutorial welcomes you into its home like an honored guest.
The most compelling thing about Gloomhaven is its cast of playable characters, with each of them having their own unique deck of cards that allow them to behave more differently than you probably expect. Considering you start with six of them unlocked, it’s a tall order to sift through fifty plus cards before ever playing a mission–but this is what the game’s tutorial helps you avoid! The developers have made a set of unique, curated missions for all six of the starting classes and they are, in a word, sublime. It highlights the puzzle-like nature of the game, teaching you how to avoid common mistakes, and asks you to approach basic situations with specific intentions. This ain’t your momma’s tutorial, with pop up menus that teach you what the “A” button does; this is an in-depth introduction to the strategic, tactical world of Gloomhaven, with a focus on the wildly unique characters you get to choose from. It’s brilliant and deserves to be recognized by the industry at large, if for no other reason than to teach budding developers how to do this kind of thing correctly. Making a first impression is so important, and Gloomhaven starts by holding your hand, becoming your friend, taking care of your expectations, before it walks you to the edge of a black hole, laughs, and tosses you in with an evil grin on its face.
Gloomhaven is a hard video game
No two ways about it: Gloomhaven is a hard video game. Until you get a handle on what you’re doing, I highly recommend playing on Easy mode unless you are well-versed in tactics games. Even then, most of the things you have learned from other titles won’t work here. Gloomhaven marches by the beat of a very odd drum, and its rhythm is likely to throw most people off the first time they experience it.
Every round of Gloomhaven plays out in the following way:
~ You and your friends choose two cards to play
~ The lowest number in the center of either card is your initiative
~ Enemies reveal their initiative ~ In initiative order, enemies resolve and everyone plays their two cards
But it is the various wrinkles found within that simplicity that makes Gloomhaven so damn special. Each round gives you perfect information tactically, but unlike in most tactics games, you have no way of knowing whether or not your plan is a good one. The reason for this comes down to clever level design and unpredictable enemy AI. Due to the way initiative works, and because you must choose your two cards before it resolves, you never know if you can actually get to the space you are running toward, or whether you can actually reach that treasure chest shimmering in the distance. Instead, you plan and hope with bated breath that everything isn’t going to go to shit. Sometimes, things shape up exactly as you intended and it’s glorious. Other times, things go to shit so badly that you start to wonder if anything good will ever happen again.
To illustrate my point, allow me to paint a fictional picture by using a made-up scenario. Let’s say my Tinkerer is down to 2 health and has two healing abilities left on his available cards. My Brute is also low on health and is near two skeletons that are on the other side of some nasty traps. My plan is simple: have my Tinkerer go before my Brute, heal both of them up, have the Brute jump over the traps to avoid taking damage from them, and then shove his hand up those skeleton’s assbones. But when initiative is revealed, the skeletons move faster than the Tinkerer and attack the Brute from a distance. Their attack immobilizes him, which means he can no longer jump towards those assbones, and my day is ruined.
He can no longer jump towards those assbones, and my day is ruined
But it may not actually be ruined, because every card has a top action and a bottom action. The Brute was using a bottom action to move, but the card also has a ranged attack option at the top! It’s less effective than the assbone smashing would have been, but it might be enough to do the trick. It’s this exact kind of roller coaster of emotions that always propels me forward in this game. No matter how many times I play a mission or fight a certain enemy, every round can turn sour in the blink of an eye, or blossom into something beautiful to behold. It creates an unmatched tension for me, because where most games can be brute-forced with raw numbers, Gloomhaven is always ready to kill you at every turn. But don’t be surprised if you end up at fault for your own demise, because there is a high likelihood that you will be. At least until you know what you’re doing, and how the game expects you to engage with it.
One of the most brilliant mechanisms introduced in Gloomhaven is the way it handles pacing through playing cards. Every character has a set amount of cards they are allowed to take into battle. Should they burn through all of their cards in a mission, they become exhausted and have no turns left. Burning a card cannot be reversed, and you die if you run out of cards completely. So you need to plan your burned cards efficiently whenever possible - which is easier said than done, because the best actions available to you also burn the card in order to use them. It creates interesting decisions throughout every mission, because you’re always weighing the value of your actions against the possibility of your death. When you combine that with the risk assessment of your modifier deck (more on that below), it becomes even more of a mind fuck. You find yourself balancing these different plates of engagement: your health, the actions themselves, initiative, the cards and how to efficiently play them, and whether or not you want to push your luck from time to time. While it sounds like there is a lot going on, it all gels together like a delicious pan of slippery Jello just waiting to be consumed in spite of its unwieldy properties.
And believe me when I say you will be consuming the living shit out of this game, because progression in Gloomhaven is incredibly rewarding. Leveling up provides more options in your deck construction, which unlocks some truly insane cards in the latter part of every character’s journey. Leveling also has you adjusting your “Modifier Deck” - arguably the most innovative part of the entire experience. Every character has the same modifier deck, with the same distribution of each card. Every time your character resolves an attack action during a mission, you reveal the top card of the deck to see if the attack was successful or not. It’s basically the equivalent of rolling a dice for damage in a game like Dungeons and Dragons, but it becomes so much more once you start upgrading it. What starts out as a deck that modifies your damage by small increments could eventually stun or set fire to enemies, create massive combos that change two damage into twenty, push enemies into traps, apply positive buffs to yourself, or even add additional enemies to your attack actions. It all amounts to some wild character growth that will make you fall in love with your loyal companions. I mean, how could I ever forget Bubba the Brute, who went from a humble warrior hitting things for two damage, to flying through the air like a goddamn fireball of death with no concern for his own well being? But don’t be like me and get too attached to your characters, because every hero deserves a good retirement. Part of creating a character is choosing a life goal for them to achieve. Once accomplished, that character will retire from the game and you will no longer be able to play them in that campaign. A new character will unlock, along with a new deck of cards and modifier deck. You can choose to play as them if you wish, but you can also choose any of the original six classes instead. I would highly recommend checking out the unlocked classes as you earn them, though, because they play quite differently from the basic six classes, and have some unique gameplay elements that will surprise you. I want so badly to tell you about the Three Spears and Music Notes classes, but I refuse to ruin it for you. In all, you have eleven of them waiting to be discovered, so get out there and retire a Bubba the Brute of your own. You never know what might follow in his footsteps!
I would highly recommend checking out the unlocked classes
While I would highly recommend the campaign, it isn't the only way to engage with Gloomhaven. The game recommends checking out its Guildmaster mode if you are intimidated by its odd mechanisms after having played the tutorial. I would mostly agree, as the missions in Guildmaster are a bit shorter and far less brutal when it comes to punishing a player’s mistakes. The mode has more than 100 missions in it, and is designed as a way for you to play the game without feeling dedicated to an entire campaign. So if you are hesitant about scheduling a weekly Gloomhaven night, it’s a welcome addition and adds to the overall value of the purchase.
In the end, what all of this amounts to is a title deserving of its reputation. It’s a game that subverts expectations, giving the player a sense of trust and wonder. To anyone that isn’t afraid of a decent challenge, has patience, and wants to finally learn what all the hype has been about, I cannot recommend Gloomhaven enough. Don’t expect it to blow you away visually, and know that as of early 2022 the game has some kinks it needs to work out. But I promise that even with those caveats, this is a game that will deliver an experience unlike anything else you have played. For the low price of $35 it is hard to argue against picking it up.
And it’s a hell of a lot easier than picking up its 21lb tabletop sibling.
Comments