- DEVELOPER: Snapshot Games Inc.
- PUBLISHER: ARC Games
- PLATFORMS: PC
- GENRE: Tactical RPG
- RELEASE DATE: July 31, 2025
- STARTING PRICE: 38,99€
- REVIEWED VERSION: PC
You’re probably someone who has spent hours and hours playing the digital version of Gloomhaven, or maybe even the board game version. Or perhaps you’re trying to get into tactical tabletop RPGs that don’t require too much time spent on setup and rulebooks, and you want a proper PC experience. If you’ve come here to understand Frosthaven, you’re in the right place. While I haven’t completed the game yet, I’m about 20 hours in but I wanted to share my first impressions. It’s coming from someone who has completed the entirety of the digital version of Gloomhaven, so I can give you a decent comparison.
What Works Well
Frosthaven is still in Early Access, and it’s pretty rough around the edges. So, while there will be plenty of improvements, right now you should expect a rather janky and confusing experience. What you’re looking at here is the exact same foundation you got from Gloomhaven. That means the core gameplay is identical: each turn, you’ll play two action cards from your hand, one for its top action and one for its bottom action.
The way you get quests is also the same, but the story and everything else is quite different. The quest lines, for example, have been updated, so you’ll get them more often as you travel around the world. In general, the singleplayer experience is fairly decent.
“Resources are really vital here because items are primarily crafted rather than just bought.”
What I really liked about Frosthaven is the entirely new management system where you return to the main town and manage your outpost. You’ll use gathered resources like wood, hide, and metal to build and upgrade structures. New buildings can unlock all sorts of benefits, like new items to craft, special events, or permanent buffs for your party. The outpost itself has its own progression system, growing and changing based on your decisions.
Resources are really vital here because items are primarily crafted rather than just bought. This is what I really like: in Gloomhaven, you had to collect a ton of money to buy things, but here you can do both, craft them and buy from merchants. Also, you get much more loot and much more time to loot things inside the mission, which is quite rewarding if you decide to gather all the bags on the map. In other words, the progression system here is just really good.
Another really good thing about Frosthaven is the vast majority of new enemies you can battle. I honestly expected a lot of similar enemies from Gloomhaven, but Frosthaven brings everything new, and the bigger bosses are also quite interesting to fight. You probably won’t stumble upon the same enemies as you explore, but keep in mind that the scenarios are also a bit tougher and more difficult to deal with. Keep in mind that the game has a steep learning curve.
Problems & Frustrations
The tutorial is absolutely useless. If you want to properly understand everything, you seriously just need to play and play, and maybe read some guides online. The multiplayer is also the same, and it still has the same issues as Gloomhaven, lots of disconnecting and desyncing. That’s a problem that hasn’t been fixed or improved, which is honestly pretty frustrating and annoying.
Another thing that’s overly frustrating is the UI. I’m sorry, but the card descriptions and everything else revolving around them is utterly confusing, often lacking crucial information and details like conditions or attack modifier that are not always accessible at a glance. Let’s not forget the fact that you need to click on a lot of menus to reach certain things, like the window to upgrade perks for your character or get new cards.
“Each character is unique and has certain gimmicks that the game never explains properly.”
This was so much simpler in Gloomhaven, and I don’t understand why they decided to make it this much more cumbersome. The outpost navigation is also confusing; you actually need to click on the top to build new things, and there’s just a lot of clicking in general. And let’s get back to the cards. Imagine showing this to a new player (screenshot down bellow); I’m 100% sure they’d just give up.
The main reason it’s so confusing is that each character is unique and has certain gimmicks that the game never explains properly. For example, the Spear Woman needs an ally to be in an exact spot for her attacks to work. Even when you click the inspection button to read the cards in detail, it doesn’t tell you anywhere. The blue mark shows you where the ally needs to be, while the gray one is your placement, and the red is where you attack.
In general, I think the cards themselves are extremely good, and there are some unique synergies you can do, like what I did with the Spear Woman and the Necromancer who spawns allies. But you’ll waste a lot of time reading the descriptions of each card and trying to understand how each character works. Upon reaching certain milestones or completing personal quests, characters can retire, unlocking new, often more complex, character classes.
Things Gloomhaven Did Better
I honestly thought they were going to learn a lot from Gloomhaven, especially when it comes to perks. Perks are what you use to remove or add card modifiers, or to get special talents for your character. But in this game, they are utterly terrible. I don’t remember a single time I successfully managed to get a perk point. Why? Because their conditions are just absolutely ridiculous. For example, don’t kill a single enemy during a mission, always hug a wall, don’t be connected to your ally on a nearby hex, and more.
Gloomhaven at least had easier ones, like looting a certain amount of gold or never long-resting. Even though you can find those in Frosthaven too, and have more options than just two, Frosthaven fails here very badly. I also thought they’d improve the visibility of moves and card clicking from Gloomhaven, but no. Another annoying thing is that you can’t pause at the start of a round to read what each enemy is going to do as there’s a timer that just goes off. The game in general lacks a lot of visual cues and visibility that Gloomhaven had, or it just copied things without ever improving them. It’s a bit of a letdown.
“I honestly thought they were going to learn a lot from Gloomhaven.”
I also wish it were easier to rewind and restart rounds. They basically copied the exact same system from Gloomhaven, so you have to wait for the entire round to end before you can do so, or only on your character’s turn. You can abandon a quest to either return to the outpost or just restart the entire mission. However, I don’t really advise this, as you’re supposed to play the game without restarting and “save scumming”. But if the game screws you over, which it definitely does happen, it’s totally okay to restart and try a different approach.
Now, here’s the most important question: Is the storyline and plot easy to follow? Yes. But are the images you see good? Sadly, no. And this is my biggest complaint with the game. While they did step up the voice acting with more voices and effects, the images you see when you’re listening are so bad. Why is there a snow-covered frame around it? And the huge wall of text below the images that the narrator reads? I don’t get it.
I can’t see anything going on in the images, which makes it hard to understand why, for example, a new enemy is there. I don’t expect a full script, but the text is all over the place. They could have easily broken up the text into more sequences; in fact, the text in Gloomhaven is much shorter and easier to follow.
Decent Upgrade From Gloomhaven
In the end, you have to be very patient with this game. Otherwise, you’ll lose interest fast. I don’t have experience with the board game, but the digital version is honestly a bit rough, though I didn’t encounter any major issues. The great thing is that each mission in Frosthaven has unique mechanics and special rules, which makes it really worthwhile. The boat-based mechanics, the sleigh, and the climbing equipment are all great ideas that give you more ways to solve quests. But this game is just not as immersive as I thought it would be.
Gloomhaven managed to suck me in because the characters we play with were easy to understand, but Frosthaven? It treats you like you know what Gloomhaven is and have some experience with it. I think you should wait to buy this unless you have a squad to play with as the multiplayer is always worth it. Right now, Frosthaven is good enough, but it’s still in need of a lot of polish.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Really good progression. | Needs lot of polish. |
| Deep tactical card combat. | Quite overwhelming. |
| Enganging outpost management. | Cluttered text and presentation. |
| Faithful adaptation. |
Review copy provided by the publisher
3.8
