Gloomhaven

I wish I could recommend this game, I really do.

The gameplay is great (not perfect), but the engine is so damn buggy it's not worth playing it. There are frequent desyncs between players in multiplayer, which boots you back to the menu in the worst case, and foces the leader to kick all other players in the best case. The line of sight tool barely works.

It's more frustrating than anything. Your time is better spent elsewhere.

A faithful adaptation of the hit board game that does all of the heavy lifting for you. I enjoyed the multiplayer game for 38 hours before it started to feel too repetitive.

It's a co-op tactics game. That's kinda neat. And much love to the friends I played it with, but: that's kinda where it ends.

Gloomhaven is a game that uses a novel-but-kinda-annoying card mechanic to make generic dungeon crawls complicated and time consuming. If you want to kill Not-Exactly-Orcs and Not-Exactly-Elves in caves that are exactly 3 rooms, in search of treasure that consistently kinda sucks: well here ya go I guess. Gloomhaven's claim to fame is largely in board game-ifying a deeply videogamey experience, so feeding that back into a video game is sort of a Pooping Back And Forth Forever vibe.

Also it got mega buggy when the devs changed and rebuilt large chunks of the game for some reason? But that's mostly been worked out at this point, so if your only concern is bugginess, I can attest that it is Mostly Functional as a software product as of the last time I played.

There are a very limited amount of interesting choices in battle, rather you're always forced to figure out what the optimal choice is if you don't then you loose your progress in the battle and have to start over. The game does not respect your time at all.

Because of this limiting factor, it makes the battles feel more like bookeeping rather than an engaging affair. I feel this is another case of "the emperor's new clothes syndrom" where if you don't like it there must be something wrong with you instead of the actual gameplay being with the weak "get good" mentality.

I played tabletop Jaws of the Lion with a group of 4 and it had its moments, but was honestly kind of a slog. But the core Gloomhaven experience still seemed interesting, so I took a chance on the Steam version and really glad I did. I'm a tabletop gamer by default but this is a rare exception where I preferred digital. Really good experience, easy to manage the overhead and just focus on the mechanics and core game. There's a little oddity to the interface on Steam Deck but I got used to it quickly.

Invested 200 hours of gaming show that I really wanted to like the game.

I generally do like challenging games, but the regular campaign played on normal is for masochists. I had to retry >50% of the scenarios, some of them multiple times, to solve them. Most of them have a nasty twist requiring a very specific strategy which you usually find out when you are already half-wiped or out of turns. This becomes a brutal repetitive grind. Not my idea of fun. Mind, that was AFTER I learned the mechanics with the sandbox campaign. I found the boss fight scenarios were by far the easiest (I had 3 which I all managed easy on the first try) This also shows that the overall difficulty balancing is, well, strange.

The additional sandbox is MUCH easier because of the more predictable scenarios (also on normal difficulty I usually manage every scenario on the first try) but repetitive, Gets boring.

Add to that that the game is buggy and crashes from time to time.
Meh, feels like 200 wasted hours now.

I want to like this. It has everything I love in a game. But holy cow... your goal: Kill all enemies in all rooms.

In the very first room: Killed all enemies, all good guys are at 30% health, burned half of my cards. Double check to see that I'm on easy mode. Yup. Open door and see double the enemies at full health.

How does anyone beat the very first quest? Easy mode acts like insane ultra death mode. I can play Honor mode on BG 3, but this... this is a challenge I'm not sure I am willing to accept. I want to. I want to see this through, but holy poo poo. I just do not see how anyone can get pass the second room, let alone complete the quest.

Tutorial guides you through every button click you have to make until you start your first mission and then you are thrown into a fight with zero further tutorial of any combat mechanic.
You have to figure out your self that rests take place during the fight, that you need to rest to re-use your discarded cards, that you die once you have no more cards, entering the next room (and all further rooms) is part of the same fight and probably a lot more I don't want to figure out by retrying the fight again and again. It feels like this game expects you to have read the manual of the board game.

Also the UI feels a bit messy, I'm never sure which fighters turn it is or if I just accidentally skipped an action instead of confirmed it.

The computer is a cheating bastard and the difficulty is way too hard. 10/10, hard recommend. Looks great on any hardware too.

I thought this game looked cool so I shot my shot. I returned it lol. It felt un-intuitive and clunky. I had to read 100 pages to figure out how to attack. I killed the enemies in the first battle and it never ended and after 53min I simply had had enough. VERY UN FUN. 1 out of 10, would not recommend. Not for casuals who don't want to read a manual for 30 minutes trying to figure out how to attack :( Then have to search for how to end the FIRST mission. The art and design was cool tho.

Tabletop > this version.

That being said, both are absolute masterpieces in my eyes. If you have ever played the OG game, you will understand. It is such an elaborate board game and I am pleased with the way it translated to online play.

The game offers solo adventure and group campaigns. This online version is actually more beginner friendly and eases you into it nicely. I really like the lore and the voice acting they have incorporated. You get to pick from a vast array of mercenaries (and unlock more along the way), you get to choose a personal mission to work towards throughout the game and you can customize your player deck and equipment.

I can appreciate how much work must have gone into making this adaptation and that's why I love it so much. What I don't love are the bugs and glitches that I encounter on a regular basis when I am in the full swing of a campaign with friends. It is easily resolved with a hard reset of the game but it is still annoying. Thank god the game saves every player round >.>

Even with the resets, I have spent over 140 hours in this game and I have enjoyed every moment. No regrets.

I would recommend getting both versions of this game, seriously. Such an amazing dungeon crawling experience <3

P.S. please make Frosthaven x

Gloomhaven the tabletop is a great, fun experience that comes in a box the size of a small child.

Gloomhaven the video game is a MISERABLE multiplayer experience. Constant disconnects and loading errors. Which is a shame, because automating a bunch of the game is a great idea. Some effects in the game just don't work either sometimes. For example, there's a map where you're supposed to be pushed around by the wind every turn, and it just...didn't...

One other thing, I just can't understand how the visibility check tool works...very unclear.

I can't recommend getting this unless you're going to play solo at this time. Try the TTS mod or if possible, get the physical version.

I first played the tabletop version of Gloomhaven and never finished it. Not because I didn't like it, but because it was hard to find time for my group to get together in person. The digital version was our answer! It has some bugs, and there are a few things I wish could be added (house rules for rolling modifiers for example); but it's a great game overall! My friends and I have a great time with this every week! I just hope they make a digital version of Frosthaven...

This has to be the worst way to play Gloomhaven. I'm bummed out this has been my only experience with the title. I would recommend instead going and using one of the many, many comprehensive Gloomhaven deployments for Tabletop Simulator instead. This is a buggy mess, with a terrible interface, and those bugs and glitches will cost you hours of your life.

I understand the translation from a difficult tabletop RPG to PC. I understood the rules and the mechanics of the game but if you're like me and value your time and actually want an enjoyable PC RPG experience this may not be the game for you because it's a tedious, boring slog of a game. You have to set up your cards, then choose the top and bottom of 2 cards to move/attack....no problem, but after killing monsters I now have to use even more cards to move over to the loot pile to pick up the loot. Then I have to use a card to move to the door in order to open it to get to the next area and repeat this process over and over. But the process is BORING. IT does not make me WANT to go to the next area, it does NOT want me to attack the next group of monsters because it's BORING. The graphics are horrible, there is lag in the game. the variety is very limiting and just not fun. And yes, I have played table top RPG decades ago and those were actually fun, this is not for me, which will get me bashed by all the fan boys out there who will say I didn't understand the game....the problem is I did.

Great for people who love to micromanage every conceivable thing in a game... otherwise pass.

It's a little glitchy at times, and very occasionally it won't follow gloomhaven rules with monster movement, but it's still a great and fast way to play the best board game of all time. Also heavy recommend if you've been interested in gloomhaven, but don't have a group to play with or are just more of a solo gamer, because this is so much easier and more fun than playing solo in the physical game.

Its fun as a board game with friends.... its not fun as a solo computer game. Sitting there having to plan out all your mercenary card burns eats up most of my gameplay time and the rewards are NEXT LEVEL uninteresting. Maybe if it was 20 bux? With the DLC. I can see mad fans of the board game enjoying it but thats if you are crazy about their card/combat system. I'd rather just have a Descent game plz. More adventuring less battling your weird deck of cards. This is coming from someone who loves tcg and deck builders lol.

Another example of someone taking a concept I'd like to see (Running a guild of adventurers) then slapping needlessly complex, or "creative" gimmicks to it. I just don't see the point or appeal of this particular card system.

I need to play more, maybe it gets better as you level up and stuff but holy cow as a start iT IS really NOT FUN SOLO. Would rather deal with missing 3 times in a row on a 99% chance to hit than this card system. Cuz I own all the board games hah, but this just isn't clicking for me.

This game can be brilliant at times, but it's also a constant rollercoaster of frustration.

1: Difficulty is Nonsense

The difficulty curve of Gloomhaven is literally, by far, the worst I've experienced in any game ever. As you learn the basic rules, you will start out getting absolutely slammed by every scenario even on Easy and everything will feel completely unfair. As you learn to play your cards correctly and your characters unlock perks, cards, gear, and enchantments, you will start to get noticeably more powerful, and will probably bump to Normal or even Hard. And then, just when the "flow" state really sets in and you're enjoying the clever tactics and synergy of your party, your characters start retiring. And you don't get a choice about this - if your Personal Quest is complete, that mercenary is deleted.

The ruleset *claims* that this is a victory - you've unlocked a new character! And they will even start with a bonus perk! Unfortunately, without all those levels, items, and perks (not to mention having to learn one or more new characters), the game is suddenly stupidly hard again. You see, even though monsters "scale" to your level, they don't scale anywhere near enough. Normal for Party Level 1 (0 gold) and Normal for Party Level 5 (400+ gold in items and enchants) are radically different difficulties, and you will be forced to repeatedly retire and reset back down to sh*tty new characters frequently in your campaign.

2: Events Are Total BS

Most Road and City events in this game are a binary choice between A and B, and you don't get information on what clicking either button will actually do. Despite this, some of them carry SEVERE negatives like losing 10s of gold, losing checkmarks (3 checkmarks unlock a perk, so losing checkmarks is the worst feeling in the world. imagine if you could lose talent points in WoW just for clicking the wrong dialogue option in a quest), or harsh penalties at the start of your next scenario (remember the difficulty rant above? well what if you randomly started combat with 3 damage and Poison on all your characters too).

And it would be more understandable if events were generally positive, with some risk involved - you'd feel mostly rewarded, with the occasional bad beat. Or if they consistently presented you with clues as to how to approach them. But no - roughly 20% of the time, both A and B choices are negative, and 60% of the time one does nothing / one is negative. And sometimes the designers punish you for being safe, while sometimes they punish you for being bold. There's even several pairs of events with text that is IDENTICAL, except for a single word (e.g. "red" vs "white") that flips the outcome. Overall, this event system was probably meant to be "immersive", but it really just feels crushing and unfun. The constant risk of a terrible outcome encourages players to google spoilers for every event so they don't get screwed by a coin flip.

3: Balance and Gameplay Design

For how beloved this game, a lot of the balance and design in it is honestly.... iffy. For example, as you play the campaign, you frequently loot new items - some are even Rare, and are limited to just 1 in your party. And almost all of them are worse than the 10-30g starting items you get in the first 20% of the game. There is never any reason not to vendor 90% of the cool "loot" you find and just spend it on enchantments instead.

Classes are in a similar boat - there are very clear S-tier and D-tier choices here, and depending on what you unlock, you may just get stuck in a loop of remaking the same class you just retired.

Enemy ability decks have some wildly OP things in them (e.g. an Initiative 5 card that will go before 99% of characters and make that monster virtually invulnerable for the round), which can make some combat turns feel more like rock-paper-scissors than an interesting tactics game.

On the character side, there is also lots and LOTS of cheese, and the most powerful strategies are all about how much you can cheese and exploit the broken mechanics. Go invisible in every door, find a broken card and Stamina Pot it back 3 times, instakills, mind control, etc. Sometimes the scenarios feel like a satisfying puzzle, or you get use fun synergies and combos. Other times you just find a gimmick and abuse it over and over.

4: Digital Problems

Gloomhaven was a board game first. The digital game is a huge convenience for automating the monster behaviour and not requiring 30 minutes of fiddling with tokens just to set up a scenario. The digital game is also a clusterf*ck of bad UI and half-finished implementations that will require you to keep a PDF of the rulebook open on your 2nd monitor if you actually want to play the game.

Some especially bad offenders here:
- The game doesn't show you the map or any of the special scenario rules in the screen where you choose cards and battle goals. This is a TACTICS game, meaning your loadout is extremely dependent on the scenario goals and parameters - for example, you may need lots of healing to keep allied NPCs alive, you may need to disarm traps (or push enemies into them), you may need lots of burst AoE damage, or pure single-target. In the board game this is all open information before you start. In the video game, you need to consult an out-of-game PDF or do a clunky Start - Abandon - Back to Map - Travel sequence to redo the whole thing. This is not a one-off, but a *frequent* issue that comes up in almost every scenario.
- Sometimes the combat UI shows you Personal Quests, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it shows you Battle Goals, sometimes it doesn't. It's all over the place.
- Certain UI prompts will lock you out of panning or zooming the camera, so you can't see what's going on in another part of the battlefield.
- Certain UI prompts will lock you out of seeing the items or cards available on your characters.
- A lot of items are quite buggy, and the UI can simply break if you press items or elements in the wrong order.
- The Restart Round button only works on your turn, so if you misclicked something on an enemy's turn, you may have completely f*cked the battle.
- Even after you enter combat, a lot of scenario rules, especially with regards to spawning monsters or upcoming events, are simply not explained at all. In the board game, if a monster spawns at hex F in Round 9, this is open information. If a boss teleports between hexes A-B-C-D, this is open information. In the digital game, it may not tell you why, how, or when things happen at all in a number of scenarios. This is actually where I got so tilted that I decided to write this review - the endgame Dark Rider boss fight was so poorly explained that I had to spend an hour googling its AI, rules, and strategy.
- The Solo Scenarios DLC also seems like it was rushed and has a number of issues - see the negative reviews on that page.

In summary, Gloomhaven has some brilliant ideas and one of the most clever and fascinating card rulesets of all time. It is also extremely, extremely frustrating to play, and keeps finding new ways to disappoint and infuriate you even 75 hours into your playthrough.

Liked playing it as a board game. Its great as a video game

Game keeps getting more and more lagged. Near unplayable now. Devs keep promising to fix it. They made it worse and then went radio silent. Maybe if you have a top of the line rig, then it runs at a reasonable speed. My system works fine for games of this type, but this one grinds to a halt. Very fun game when I first got it and it was slow but not unplayabley so.

Super sad, really, I'm a huge fan of the IRL board game version.

Great game, but unplayable for mac users. There is a bug sind around 6month that you cannot continue on your own safe file - you'd have to start over again. I've posted the bug to the DEV team but got no reply or support.

Gloomhaven itself is an amazing game (with some balance issues that are mostly addressed in Frosthaven). That is not what this negative review is about; my review to Cephalofair is "9.5/10, amazing game, be proud".
The Gloomhaven game which was released by Flaming Fowl Studios is a decent game; very good graphics for a game of this type, interfaces are a bit clunky, a few things needed tweaking, but overall a 7/10. This negative review is not for them although the game still needed polishing at the time it changed hands.
This negative review is for the peabrains at Embracer Group who somehow managed to dumpster the PC version of the game without actually changing anything. Multiplayer has become effectively unplayable due to the servers dropping players if they lag for more than 0.02 seconds. Despite the existence of a Steam Community Workshop, modding is quite literally unplayable: if you close the game, it will rename your modded campaign's save files to something which game can no longer read. I Googled it and it looks like someone on Github made a plugin which might fix it, but I've honestly had it with this game.
The straw which broke the camel's back was playing >60h of a campaign before realising that the "enhancements carry over after retiring a character" setting was switched off; then starting over, playing the new campaign 40h, and then realising that no, the problem is that the setting no longer works. I then found a "free enhancements" mod which I was gonna use to replicate the functionality - but hey, guess what! Modded campaigns are also broken.
Anyway, yeah, another broken title - welcome to 2025. Don't waste time or give money to yet another garbage gaming company, just play it on TTS for free. (And please support the Cephalofair game creators, they are amazing.)

I have never played the board game version. At first I experienced some of the frustrations listed in the negative reviews that I have seen. Especially with the burn mechanic and hand management requirement I found it very hard early on to play and I considered quitting the game. If you are feeling this way I highly recommend that you check out a video walk through for the game. After I watched a few videos from a dude who plays both digital and boardgame versions on his channel, the game play clicked much better and I have been able to make pretty good progression in the game. I started with a team of 2 mercs and now run 4 fairly easily. There are still some quests that remain difficult, but one really awesome thing is you can leverage the wealth of Gloomhaven board game discussions to work though the challenges along with understanding optimal character hand composition.

If you are interested in a complex tactics game, which many say is a faithful port of the board game, pick this up!

I haven't played multiplayer, so can't comment on those features.

Yes! Gloomhaven is excellent, and the digital version is where it shines, even better than the actual boardgame it's adapted from.

I cannot recommend this game. Unfortunately, it was not enjoyable to play. The fights felt unbalanced right from the beginning, which made the experience frustrating...

The netcode does not work properly:

- Stuck in a softlock loop when trying to play with a friend
- No interest in playing it solo

Shame because I love the boardgame and this looks otherwise like a good 1 to 1 recreation (minus manually moving the enemies around)

Coming into this without ever playing the board game, this was rough. I wanted to enjoy this game so badly but it's just... so brutal, even on the normal difficulty. Played co-op with a friend and we both slogged through it. Played for several sessions before finally realizing that we were forcing ourselves to come back and play it, not enjoying it. I am sure there is an audience for this game, but it wasn't us.

I want to like this game, but the developers should genuinely be ashamed of themselves.

It's already a somewhat difficult game to understand, made worse by the absolutely worst UI ever conceived. The game demanded the skills of someone at least mediocre to code it- and they did not meet that threshold. DIsconnects, bugs, and layers of ability selections and confirmations that often deselect previous confirmations so you have to play a memory game of what order you must hit the buttons to not glitch them.

I truly do not how you can make a turn based game have flaky net code that drops players at the slightest jitter. It's morbidly fascinating.

Great RPG style fights with using multiple characters and tonnes of quests, all made easy by the digital version running the game for you and doing all the set up. There are various difficulty levels. I have played on normal so far and have still lost a few scenarios. In Guildmaster, different from the old Gloomhaven, there are a dozen or more character classes but many of the new ones are hard to play against more difficult scenarios. There is no penalty for losing a scenario or abandoning a quest, in fact it unlocks new character classes.

Love the board game and absolutely love the digital edition 10/10. Over 70hrs in both in more to come for sure.

Good game if you like the board game, and/or if you want a highly tactical roleplay gaming experience.

lots of campaigns; lots of mercenaries to select from; lots of card choices to pick from so it plays differently each time. pretty stable game for me. love it

It is a fun game that you have to plot and plan to win each scenerio.

This game is a bit confusing. The mechanics are a little overwhelming and the combat system will regularly fuck you, because a standard part of every single attack roll is rolling the dice to see if you get extra damage, do less damage, do double damage, or get completely fucked and have a x0 modifier. Terrible system.

The pc version of this game is a great choice if you dont have the time and space to set up the table top version. Though there are no take-backs on anything you do it is very important to understand the controls so learning the game can come with some frustration. Aside from that its very good.

Good game, but it automatically opens up a browser window to other content without me having any control to prevent. Naughty naughty.

Just a good time. Super engaging end-game builds.

I would rate the game at 7/10. It is 'simpler' to play this than the board game, in the sense that you don't have to look for cards, to put the tokens on the board, etc. This is a plus, for solo gaming. The board game, with friends and all around a table is more enjoyable, but this can scratch the itch. I have not tried multiplayer yet.

This is probably fun as a board game, where you control one character and have a bunch of other people to chat and strategize with, but as a vidya game, especially a solo one, it's really fiddly and restrictive. You can only move if a card lets you, and you only get cards back after a discard if you "burn" one of the discarded ones. It just makes every move feel really difficult and expensive. I can see how this can lead to a lot of delicious tension for the right player or players, but for me, it was just annoying.

We were enjoying the board game version. We only got to play one game every couple months, because we live so far apart. I thought this would be a great idea, so that we could play a few rounds every other week. After playing about 20 minutes, I have had to hit the restart entire round 4 or 5 times. We keep trying to click on a monster, and apparently the monster was hiding behind the skip attack button... This happened multiple times. We also had a few where the wrong card was picked to move. instead of undo and selecting the right card, we have to restart round. The game has made it way to easy to make a mistake without a way to correct it. This game version is simply unplayable, which is too bad. We were really hoping for it to work out.

You really need to be in the mood for a game like this. But once you start and work your way through its mechanics, it is really enjoyable! Solo playing this is really nice and you avoid all the tedious set up of the actual board game.
Really recommend this over the actual board game, since it is so easy to play!

I enjoy this game. A group of friends all looked forward to jumping online at night to work through the next step on the campaign. The ease of jumping in and marching through the campaign on the video game is pretty great, and they did a really great job of bringing the board game to life. The only thing lacking from the board game version was the intrigue of the sealed envelopes and boxes that you had to earn to open. Commit a lot of time to it, but it's a real fun turn based game.

So many choices! A must play for those who enjoy turn based tactical strategy games. Gloomhaven takes turn based tactics, turns it on its head and ramps it to eleven.

Like the board game but without the 45 minutes of set up/tear down. Has allowed our group to continue playing together more regularly since we don't live close to each other.

If you like the board version, you will like this one as well. I have spotted some minor bugs when compared to the board version, but nothing too major. I recommend.

Any game that relies on prayers to RNGesus is usually an automatic no for me. But this is a direct digital version of a TTRPG, not an original game in its own right. So if you are already a fan of Gloomhaven, then yes, this is for you. If you've never heard of Gloomhaven, then I'd pass on this. It's not the game you're expecting, trust me.

Runs well single player but really needs an undo button. The interface is well-tutorialised and includes a seperate set of tutorials for new players. I haven't played multiplayer yet, so I don't know how stable it is (it saw complaints on Reddit).

The app does cheat as far as monster targeting is concerned; not allowing you to choose when targets are equidistant and sometimes shooting and characters when summons or allies would be the legal choices.

Love gloomhaven, lots to explore and the setup for tabletop was tiresome so this became a great solution for me

It's like the board game Gloomhaven except it doesn't take 65 hours to set up the board and you don't have to calculate/debate enemy actions.