Gloomhaven - roguelike dungeon-crawling adaptation of the board game

[Agame]

Great info here, I have completely missed out on the recent boardgame resurgence so very interesting to know!

 

[DemonKing]

I have the boardgame - very impressive (the box when full weighs about 10kg) but sadly haven't got it to the table yet as we have too many players in my current group to take on a game that only has 4 players max. Hopefully soon. I don't particularly like the art design (I prefer the Descent style) but looking forward to giving it a whirl.

Eurogames generally bore me to tears - Ameritrash IMO is much better with regards to creating a feeling of immersion than assigning meeples around a board even if balance tends to be trickier.

 

[Galdred]

One exemple of these different approaches is the handling of special cases:

For instance, in Space Empires 4X, one of my preferred AT games, there are rules for boarding, and an exception for transport ship. Then if you capture the opposing ship, you can use it, or scrap it to reverse engineer it. If you use it, you can benefit from its technologies, even racial ones, but not from the racial advantages from the original empire.
So you have to check whether said racial advantage is a technological one (like very fast ships that also happen to explode a lot), or a cultural one (berserkers, or expert tacticians for instance).
Same goes for reverse engineering the ship.
Also, if you upgrade a captured ship with a racial tech advantage, you lose the advantage sometimes (ie if you upgrade the engines of the aforementioned very fast exploding ships, you lose their benefits, but not if you upgrade the weapons).

Eurogames have much more streamlined rules, and very little special case or exception, if any. Also, they usually don't need you to check the rulebook. If there is any exception, it will usually be printed on the action/technology card, or component itself.

Even though I prefer Ameritrash, Eurogames usually flow smoother, but nowadays, there has been so much crossover that many games fall in between (Khemet and Eclipse for instance draw from both schools).

I have the boardgame - very impressive (the box when full weighs about 10kg) but sadly haven't got it to the table yet as we have too many players in my current group to take on a game that only has 4 players max. Hopefully soon. I don't particularly like the art design (I prefer the Descent style) but looking forward to giving it a whirl.

Eurogames generally bore me to tears - Ameritrash IMO is much better with regards to creating a feeling of immersion than assigning meeples around a board even if balance tends to be trickier.

I was told there were a ton of ideas to steal for my own Strategy/Tactics RPG, so I would really love to hear from your experience once you have checked the game (which mechanisms would translate well to a PC Tac RPG? )!

One key advantage Table top games have over PC games is that they try to reduce downtime to a minimum, while many PC games have you waste time doing trivial things (even Master of Orion 2 had you shuffle colonists back and forth every turn to max your pop growth...), or worse, watch slow animations unfold for the 453rd time.

PC RPG/Crawlers usually don't really suffer from this issue much, but I had noticed that you make a lot more decision/turn in a board game than in your usual 4X (where you spend a lot of turns waiting for something to get built or researched, or just for your ships to reach their destination).

 

[LESS T_T]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/780290/announcements/detail/1703943496309729427

Dev Diary: The Dungeon Crawl - Conception

Greetings my beloved denizens of Gloomhaven!

For the past ten months we have been working on a very exciting title: Gloomhaven. What usually happens when you spend that kind of time working on a game, is that you end up wanting to talk about it. Our friends, families and pets ultimately begged us to stop chewing their ears off about it every second of the day, so I will talk about it here on this blog from now on.

To get you started, we just released our first “Making of” video: The Dungeon Crawl. This episode focuses on Gloomhaven’s conception as a video game. So, strap yourself in, watch the video and then keep on reading to learn more!



Let me take you back to a time, when dreams resided in the hands of those who would reach out and grab th—I guess this might be why my friends and family hate me talking to them… It all started with Isaac Childres. In 2017, this epic man came up with a huge legacy board game—the kind no one had ever seen—and built his own Kickstarter success story. If you are new to board games, “Legacy” means that the game is supposed to be discovered and played only once. When it comes to Gloomhaven, once means hundreds of hours crawling through 90+ dungeons and a huge story.

However, I think it is something else that makes the game so unique and successful. To keep you entertained for all that time, the game offers a massive amount of gameplay mechanics and tactical depth: the kind of scale you would usually only find in video games, Isaac put it on the table then polished it with love, cardboard and numbers. It felt only natural to us that Gloomhaven needed a video game adaptation. I like to think that it was a video game in the first place, but Isaac only had pencils and papers at his disposal at that time.

We’ve managed to change that. A few phone calls later, I was on board with ex-Lionhead members’ new studio: Flaming Fowl. I was nervous at first, these guys worked on the Fable games which I played when I was a teenager and had enough beard creativity to humble me instantly. Isaac has been involved with us since the very beginning as well of course, sharing advice and opinions along the way. If you ever read this Isaac: thank you.

Today we are ten months into the production and I can start to reflect upon the work that has been done, which is far more comforting than looking towards all the work left to be done. Our first challenge was to respect the source material and give it justice while working with very limited information about the world and the characters populating it. We needed to deliver, for the fans to recognize their favorite heroes, just like a movie adaptation but without all the context and personality a movie provides. We had visuals and illustrations made for 2D board game tokens, we had color palettes from dungeons tiles; the rest came down to our imagination, which was kept in check by Isaac’s comments.

Our talented artists came up with a very cool style: a 3D game to provide a good tactical isometric view of the hex-based levels and hand painted textures to give the game a unique, comics-ish look. It allowed us to stay close to the source material while expanding on the universe and giving it flesh. Isaac’s world is incredibly unique, which is admittedly pretty hard to come by these days in high fantasy. There are no goblins and no elves here! The best part was that the board game only started to cover all of it. Races, cultures, religions, spells… so many concepts and ideas only mentioned in the board game for the artists and designers to elaborate upon.

With a pretty solid creative process in place, the team was able to move onto what would prove to be the game’s most challenging and most interesting part: combat. Gloomhaven has 16 playable characters, each character has around 30 abilities, each ability is comprised of 2 distinct and unique powers. Add the enemies in the mix, and you have more than a thousand abilities with unique gameplay and mechanics to implement, and ultimately play with.

Gloomhaven is all about tactical decisions, using your abilities and combining them in the best possible way. The sheer amount of options at the player’s disposal is what makes the game so dense and addictive, and what gave the developers a few cold sweats on occasions. Spoiler: it still does.

Overall, we feel privileged to be working on this game and we want it to reconcile two worlds: Gloomhaven fans of the highest order and tactical gamers, like myself, who spent one too many hours on far too many rogue-likes. Speaking of which, we also decided on implementing a brand-new Rogue-lite mode to complement Isaac’s campaign: you guys will discover that one when Early Access kicks in. Talking about you guys, the community and support has been amazing so far, thank you so much for that! It keeps us going and dedicated to make the best game we can!

 

[Snorkack]

Fuck that ameritrash vs euro discussion. Gloomhaven is the combination of the best of both worlds and deserves the #1 BGG rank alright. Also, according to Matalarata definition, combat mechanics are heavily on the ameritrash side of things.
And most of the game's biggest flaws (quality of components, legacy nature, setup and teardown time, necessity for getting together players) can be mitigated by a digital version, so I'm looking forward to that.

 

[LESS T_T]

I have not listened to this but apparently this is coming to Early Access with 4 classes, and the rest will be updated gradually.

 

[XenomorphII]

The boardgame is great, hopefully this won't be shit.

 

[Edija]

I know nothing about the boardgame but this looks interesting enough. The artstyle is neat as well, not too cartoonish. I hope they darken it up a bit more.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/780290/announcements/detail/1711831772468618748

Initial Early Access Character Previews

Hello to all of our fellow denizens of Gloomhaven!

So much has been happening over the past months, we dove deep into the development of Gloomhaven and spoke with the developers through Q&As and even a "Making of" video—we are looking to create an episode two in the near future due to interest in the previous one!

Amongst all of this content we've also released information on both our Facebook Group[www.facebook.com] and Discord Server[discord.gg] that have caught the attention of the community; more specifically, character reveals! We're excited to talk with you today about the four characters that will be released with the Early Access Roguelike mode.

The Cragheart

The Cragheart is the one that throws rocks and makes explosions! But it is so much more than that in Gloomhaven.

The Cragheart is one of the most versatile classes in the entirety of Gloomhaven and can play a variety of playstyles—a frontline tank, utility through heals and crowd control, or even an AoE damage dealer. Take advantage of the Cragheart's flexibility to complement basically any team, but watch out for its AoE skills which are capable of dealing friendly fire damage!

As such a versatile class, capable of so many ways to play, it is perfect for players of any skill level.

The Spellweaver

The Spellweaver is the most well-rounded mage in the game, but at the same time the most complicated of the starting characters. Like the Cragheart, she is very versatile, able to be played as a ranged glass cannon, a support/utility character, or even a mix. She has a low health pool, meaning you always want to keep her far from the fight, but has some key abilities to help with this. She is capable of preventing damage, healing and even summoning minions.

As a high damage character with lots of cool single target and AoE abilities, as well as the capability to heal and support, she works well in any group to round out the team.

The Brute

The Brute is your team's powerhouse. He is a straightforward character that makes him easy to understand and enjoy for any new player. He has a high health pool and massive single target damage which, at later levels, can pierce through armor! This makes him capable of hitting hard, but also have the ability to take heavy hits in return.

With all of these traits added together, they make him an optimal starting character that can be used for taking down even the tankiest of opponents.

The Scoundrel

The Scoundrel is a guerrilla-style assassin—she gets in range to deal as much damage as possible, then gets out just as quick with stealth abilities. She has super-high damage, but sacrifices defence and utility. She is capable of hitting multiple targets with some of her skills, applying poison to her foes, and assassinating vulnerable targets.

She is straightforward and excels at what she does, making her a solid damage dealing choice for your party. Her looting abilities are also unparalleled, capable of grabbing up gear and gold like no other.

We still have so many things left to reveal (without spoilers ) for this amazingly complex and beautiful world that was originally created by Isaac Childres. Even from the starting six characters, we still have the Mindthief and Tinkerer to show off.

 

[LESS T_T]

Early Access in Summer: https://steamcommunity.com/games/780290/announcements/detail/1619518761232454620

 

[LESS T_T]

July 17th: https://steamcommunity.com/games/780290/announcements/detail/1611639361532648322

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[oldmanpaco]

How much is this going to be I wonder? $40 maybe? If its $20 I might even buy EA.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/780290/announcements/detail/1610515909003153420

Gloomhaven will be arriving on July 17, featuring four playable characters, a slew of monsters, items and several zones for you to explore through the exclusive Adventure Mode on the new map created in conjunction with Isaac Childres, creator of the board game. All of this will be releasing at the cost of 24.99€ or $24.99.

Gloomhaven’s Early Access will be cheaper than its full launch, as we offer more features and the campaign for the Full Release. However, the price of the game during Early Access won’t increase due to the additional content added during its development. Any players who purchase Gloomhaven during Early Access will obtain full access to the game and its contents for free at Full Release.

Something that we have been hearing from all corners of the city is that everyone wants to know more about how the development of the game will progress once we enter Early Access. In order to cover this, we've created this awesome graphic to show how the game will progress over the coming months and when you can expect specific content or features to arrive.



As you can see, we have plenty of content coming just this year alone. We will be implementing before the end of 2019 both the Tinkerer and Mindthief, alongside a slew of new biomes, enemies, items and bosses. Throughout 2020 we continue this trend, releasing more of the content that will flesh out the game and make the full 95-mission campaign of the board game possible.

By the time we hit full launch of the game we will be, or already have, implemented the entire campaign as well as the multiplayer coop system. We want to make sure that the Full Release of the game will offer the complete digital Gloomhaven experience that even the most die hard fan can celebrate.

If you have any questions about the upcoming Gloomhaven experience on Steam, feel free to ask us all of your questions in the comments section. We will be writing up a full FAQ for you shortly and would like to know more about the burning questions you have about the game.

The last point we want to add is that Gloomhaven is a game that we want to develop with and alongside the community. We will be listening to all of your feedback and implementing features, options, content and making changes based upon what we hear that the community wants to see. So if you're interested in offering us your feedback once the game has launched, or even now, come and join us on the forums or on our social channels!

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Why is this one of the most wishlisted games on steam?

 

[Jimmious]

Why is this one of the most wishlisted games on steam?

Because this is quite popular

 

[LESS T_T]

Out now on Early Access:





It's currently #1 global top seller. I don't think this will stay there long (like, few days) but anyway it's a good sign of interest (and the effect of wishlist notification).

 

[MicoSelva]

Judging from the trailers, it looks like a pretty faithful adaptation of the board game, which is generally a good thing. In the cardboard version there is some hidden info between players that makes the game more challenging, but digital version can probably balance that by scaling up enemy strength one level up above standard, or something like that (enemies already scale to party level by default in the board game).

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Judging from the trailers, it looks like a pretty faithful adaptation of the board game, which is generally a good thing. In the cardboard version there is some hidden info between players that makes the game more challenging, but digital version can probably balance that by scaling up enemy strength one level up above standard, or something like that (enemies already scale to party level by default in the board game).

It didnt bode well for pathfinder:kingmaker. Casuls hated it and told that giving enemies more stats is lane and unfair.

 

[Alex]

Why is this one of the most wishlisted games on steam?

Because this is quite popular

The art in that is pretty

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/gloomhaven-steam-early-access-impressions/

Gloomhaven on Steam isn’t a full adaptation of the stellar board game, but it's a strong start
Now in Early Access, digital Gloomhaven offers a singleplayer roguelike slice of the full board game campaign, coming in 2020.

My Cragheart was out of cards and needed to rest, but the room was empty and the Scoundrel was itching to stab someone. I opted to open the next room and pop her Smoke Bomb for invisibility, just to be safe. The door revealed a large room with over half a dozen foes, including Bone Rangers and Living Spirits, who were all too happy to shoot me from afar when my invisibility ended. By the time the slow Cragheart ran up to help, I'd taken too much damage. It was a slow, painful loss, and a lesson in being better prepared.

Despite its occasional difficulty spikes, I adore Gloomhaven, the tabletop game. It's a tactical RPG in board and card form, and has been the best board game on BoardGameGeek since 2017. Gloomhaven captures the turn-based combat and progression of Dungeons & Dragons along with unlockable hidden classes, a huge campaign of nearly 100 scenarios, over three dozen monsters and bosses, and a Choose Your Own Adventure story with multiple avenues and choices. I've completed dozens of scenarios and sunk well over a hundred hours, and now I'm starting over with the new digital version on Steam.

Adapting such a behemoth was never going to be easy. Flaming Fowl Studios, born from the ashes of Lionhead, is taking an interesting approach by directly tapping the passionate Gloomhaven community and launching via Steam Early Access. The bad news: It's definitely not the full Gloomhaven campaign. Right now it has limited enemies, classes, and tilesets, and only supports single player. But the pieces are in place to eventually create a worthy adaptation.

The full Gloomhaven campaign features 17 classes, each with their own decks of cards, character sheet, and playstyle. Only six are available when you start a campaign. Right now, digital Gloomhaven features only four classes: Brute, Cragheart, Scoundrel, and Spellweaver. The only available mode is Adventure, which creative director Mike West describes as "a replayable, infinitely varied roguelike mode."

"The Gloomhaven campaign is a HUGE undertaking, and it has to be released in one drop," says West. "Therefore, the best way of getting the game to players early is to add a completely new mode where players can take on fun adventures with the currently implemented characters and enemies. All the content and mechanics in Adventure mode have been vetted by [Gloomhaven designer] Isaac Childres to ensure consistency with the quality standards of the board game experience."

Normally in Gloomhaven you progress through a story campaign, unlocking specific scenarios and gaining rewards while building up the town of Gloomhaven and leveling up, retiring, and creating new adventurers. In Adventure mode I can select any combination of party with the four available classes—with the major caveat that I first have to beat it with a party of two to unlock bigger party combinations.

The goal of Adventure mode is to defeat three bosses, including the Bandit Commander, an early boss from the tabletop game. To get there I choose from multiple paths on the new map, with each path featuring different randomly generated scenarios and difficulty ratings. The roguelike portion is a bit of a hybrid, as losing any one scenario in a path causes me to reset and fall back to where I was. Given my experience level with the board game I was playing on 'Insane' difficulty, and failing a scenario was a devastating loss of progress. One of the hallmarks of playing the board game is that even if we fail, we still keep any earned experience and gold, but that's not the case in Adventure mode.

Adventure mode puts a unique twist on loot. I still gather coins during battle and spend them on items like Boots of Striding (+2 movement) and Eagle-Eye Goggles (Advantage on ranged attacks). But in Adventure mode each item has a limited durability that counts down for every scenario I have them equipped, whether I use them or not. It's annoying, but the amount of gold I earn and frequent items for sale balances it out.

Singleplayer Gloomhaven is still a blast, but the lack of multiplayer is maybe the community's biggest complaint in Early Access. "The Gloomhaven board game community REALLY wanted multiplayer earlier than we initially planned, so we adjusted our roadmap in order to have co-op multiplayer released during Early Access," says West. Even then, multiplayer support, along with the full 95-scenario campaign mode, won't be coming until 2020.

One major advantage of the digital version is that it performs all the monster actions for you, which is a huge time-saver. The animations are a lot of fun to watch, like the Scoundrel hurling a poison flask with the bottom half of Special Mixture, and Cragheart leaping into the air to perform a Hulk smash with Rumbling Advance. A lot of work has been put into how each adventurer and enemy attacks and animates, making the tabletop game come to life.

It's not all that nice: Environments suffer from excessive bloom, gold, chests, and traps are a bit small and hard to spot, and my framerate bottoms out whenever I select multiple targets for attacks.

More egregious are the limited enemies and tilesets. After several hours of Adventure mode, I've fought nothing but an endless horde of Cultists, Living Bones, and Living Corpses in a series of green-glowing crypts—though the Bone Ranger is an example of an enemy new to the digital version. It's a testament to how much I love the tactical design that I still enjoy these repetitive dungeon crawls, but playing with only a tiny fraction of the game box makes me desperately yearn for the rest of it, as well as future modding support.

"We have a backlog of features we want to add, and from watching streams and listening to our community on Discord, we can better understand what people are passionate about," says West. "Previously the community shared some insights regarding the Brute aesthetics, and we improved its design. Currently there is a lot of feedback asking for tweaks to the UI, or the need for better onboarding as the game is quite complex. Later during Early Access I think new features and content will become more requested once the initial feedback has been implemented. If something new comes up that people want then the release dates and order may change; it's very agile development."

With such limited content and no real tutorial, the current Early Access version will probably only be of interest to Gloomhaven veterans looking for a singleplayer option divorced from the campaign. The UI definitely needs a less cumbersome way to end movement or skip actions (and please, for the love of Gloom, give us an Undo button). But even a limited, somewhat clunky digital version of Gloomhaven is still one of the best board game experiences around.

 

[eggdogg]

I'm still deep in the board game. Currently running 2 parties in 2 different boxes.

 

[chuft]

The main divide between Euro and Ameritra - er, thematic games - is how randomness is handled.

Euros have input randomness. This means the randomness occurs before your decision and you then try to work out the best thing to do. Your actions have a known effect. For example in Mage Knight you draw your cards from your (known) deck of actions, and then decide how to spend those cards during your turn, with full knowledge of the enemies facing you and what cards you have left in your deck. Effectively every spell you have is a "no saving throw" spell that always works. The question is when and where to use them.

Thematic games have output randomness. You decide what to do and then roll dice to determine the outcome. Computer RPGs all use this in my experience. You decide to attack and then a die roll determines if you succeed. Good moves can still fail due to bad luck. Desperate moves can succeed due to good luck.

Both game types can involve spending precious resources to guarantee or amplify an effect. I believe in Gloomhaven this takes the form of spending cards from your personal combat deck that are powerful but one-use-only. In effect every attack in Gloomhaven is a "no saving throw" spell.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/780290/announcements/detail/1599265246179847757

Gloomhaven's First Major Content Update
A Tinkerer, A Tutorial and so much more!

An all new patch for Gloomhaven has now arrived. This is our first of many major content updates that we will be delivering over the course of the Early Access phase of the game's development. With this major release we have a slew of new features and content that have been requested by YOU and so much more.

Read on to learn more about everything that you will find in this new patch, or click the following link to read the full patch notes:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/780290/discussions/0/1643169167151064379/

Don't forget that with this update we have also launched our Publisher Weekend sale, which includes Gloomhaven at 10% off. If you or a friend have been considering getting Gloomhaven, with the release of the tutorial and a sale on top, now is the best time to do it!

The Tinkerer

Gloomhaven's fifth mercenary is now available, including all of his level 1, and 3 of his X cards, as well as 10 cards to unlock while leveling up. Featuring a distinctive gameplay as a support-orientated mercenary, the Tinkerer provides new options and synergies when combined with the rest of the roster.

Tinkerers are a fairly common class of Quatryls, with an innate affinity to engineering and machinery, the Tinkerer is an expert in crafting all manner of gadgets and elixirs. His buffs and debuffs, combined with strong mobility and decent damage makes it a valuable addition to many rosters.

See the Tinkerer in action in our all new trailer:

The Tutorial

A highly requested feature that we are pleased to now have available for any struggling or new adventurer arriving at the Sleeping Lion. To help more players to enjoy the digital Gloomhaven experience, this tutorial covers all the combat basics for new players. Turn structure, movement, card abilities, damage, target priority and more: the tutorial aims to help new players better understand the strategic depth, and its opportunities.

Be sure to try it out from the main menu if you or someone you know is wanting to improve their abilities as a mercenary in Gloomhaven.

My items and I are...UNBREAKABLE!

Due to the enormous amount of feedback that we have received since launching the Early access, we have made the decision to remove Durability from the game. This will allow players to better build their characters the way they want, and experiment with a wider selections of items and combos.

In the same vein, we have also changed the way failures work—when you lose a dungeon now, while you will still be sent back to the last town you visited, you will keep any gold, experience and items earned during your failed journey. This is to improve the experience and ensure that there is a constant feeling of progression during your adventures.

A Slew of Features and Content

There is even more for you to enjoy in this patch in addition to everything that was mentioned above:

• We've done a massive overhaul to the party selection and save files UI to improve everyone's experience with organizing their adventures and creating their group of mercenaries.
  
• The Battle Log is now implemented and available in your adventures so you can review all actions taken so far.
  
• All remaining X cards for the all the current mercenaries of Gloomhaven have been implemented.
  
• Several new items have been implemented for use in your adventures!
  
• Your travels between dungeons and towns will be all the more exciting now, with over 30 new road events now available.
  
  
  New Party Selection UI
  New Save System UI
  The Battle Log
  
  
  
  
  
  

Make sure that you jump in to Gloomhaven to try out all of this as we're excited to hear back from you about what you think!

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.shacknews.com/article/114160/gloomhaven-interview-a-chat-with-creator-isaac-childres

Gloomhaven interview: A chat with creator Isaac Childres
We get the scoop on Gloomhaven directly from the source in this exclusive interview from PAX West.

As one of the most popular new board games to be released in the last few years, Gloomhaven turned heads with its intriguing mix of tactical strategy and fantasy action. Following its success in conquering the board game world, a digital version was built by developer Flaming Fowl Studios and it saw an early access release on Steam earlier this summer.

While on location at PAX West 2019, the Shacknews video team stopped by the Gloomhaven booth and got the opportunity to speak directly with Isaac Childres, the creator of the game. He explains his motivations for creating the game and much more.

Cephalofair Games, the company Childres created to house Gloomhaven and his other projects, offers a short bio of the game’s talented creator:

Isaac is the one-man driving force behind Cephalofair Games. He started the company back in 2014 to self-publish his first game, Forge War, and has been doing all the design, development, writing, art direction, promotion, publishing, and fulfillment for all games ever since. He does have outside help for art, graphic design, editing, and community management.

Isaac’s “magnum opus,” Gloomhaven was Cephalofair Games’ second title, published in early 2017. He could not be happier with the reception it is receiving and is now working on a small expansion, Forgotten Circles, with Marcel Cwerteschka. He also published another game in the Gloomhaven universe, Founders of Gloomhaven, a heavy city-building and logistics Euro that will soon be in stores.

For more coverage of gaming and technology, check out the Shacknews and GamerhubTV YouTube channels. There you'll find exclusive interviews, demos, and event coverage. You'll also find exclusive walkthroughs, gameplay video, and more. Subscribe to both channels and stay tuned to Shacknews for gaming and tech updates.