Flaming Fowl Studios‘ digital edition of Isaac Childres’ tabletop game Gloomhaven, previously released for Windows on October 20, 2021, and MacOS on November 25, 2021, will now be released for Nintendo Switch, PS4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on September 18, 2023. The ports are already available for pre-order.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SGDEP-zFHo]
The original tabletop game came via a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, which raised $380,000 from over 4,900 backers. Following extremely positive early impressions, a second campaign ran from April to November 2017, which raised about $4 million from over 40,000 backers. The game was then released to retail for a suggested price of $140. It went on to remain the top-rated game on BoardGameGeek for six years straight and receive six Golden Geek awards on the same website, with IGN reviewer Matt Thrower, as well as Geek & Sundry and Ars Technica, giving the game glowing reviews. In Q2 2019, the game received an expansion titled Forgotten Circles, with a new character class and 20 new scenarios, as well as Jaws of the Lion, a standalone version with 25 scenarios aimed at casual players. A campaign for a standalone sequel, Frosthaven, was also launched in 2020.
Set in a fantasy setting, Gloomhaven is a cooperative tactical skirmish game, in which players play through campaigns and fight increasingly challenging battles, which are gauged to the number of players. Cards are played to perform combat actions, and elements such as stickers and envelopes to be opened when certain requirements are met apply permanent changes to the game as multiple sessions are played. While it drew comparisons to classic dungeon crawlers, the layered gameplay and careful managing of resources is closer in spirit to modern eurogames.
The videogame adaptation faithfully reproduces the gameplay and includes the original 95 scenarios, plus a “Guildmaster” game mode with 160 missions, a tutorial for the main game and a different progression system. An “Adventure” mode with all characters unlocked and procedurally generated scenarios is also available.
