From analog to digital – does Gloomhaven lose its magic in conversion?

Gloomhaven is probably the most hyped board game of the last five years. It’s a 10 kilograms box of dungeon crawling, legacy mechanics (you make permanent modifications to game material ie. put stickers on the game map), and various different playable characters. During its second round in Kickstarter 2017, it gathered about 4 million dollars while its stand-alone sequel Frosthaven was backed by 13 million dollars. It has been ranked #1 in the well-known board game site BoardGameGeek since its release and showered with prizes and nominations. In this text, I try to cover some of the notable differences between the different versions.

My personal experience with Gloomhaven is that during two and half years our playgroup progressed maybe halfway through the campaign. I’ve played the tutorial scenarios of Jaws Of The Lion, which you could call Gloomhaven-lite, being a more compact and beginner-friendly game in the same world. My play hours of the Steam version which was released last year clocks over 400 hours now. This version I have played only as a single player.

In short, the digital game is pretty good. The long answer is it depends on what kind of experience you are looking for. Obviously, the social aspect will be hugely different in an analog, live setting. Gathering around the table with your friends means good times – it’s a cooperative game after all – but it also means someone needs to handle all the game material. Considering the weight of the game box, there’s so much stuff you probably need to invest in different kinds of containers and ways to store everything. Even setting the game up takes easily from 30 to 45 minutes and playing one scenario about two hours. The game is not easy, so you are most likely going to spend some time failing scenarios which might be frustrating if you are short on time. In this sense, one click to open or close the game is quite pleasant.

My favorite feature of Gloomhaven is retiring characters. Upon choosing the character you are going to play, you also draw a random personal quest. Fulfilling this quest means your character will retire and you will open a new character from a sealed box – marked only with a symbol presented in the personal quest card. This is better than any Kinder surprise and keeps the game fresh and interesting. In the analog game, you get to open a sealed box which is much cooler than the digital counterpart. On the other hand, if you are eager to test as many characters as possible it’s much easier in the digital game.

Transferring the progress from the analog game into the digital one is somewhat possible. It’s not officially supported at least yet, but I’ve seen a workaround that involves editing some game files. In the latest major patch, the digital game received an option to use the most commonly used house rules so maybe there will be official support for the analog to digital transformation later. There are also Gloomhaven assets for Tabletop Simulator, but that’s something I’m not familiar with.

So, what exactly is my suggested way to use your money? Well, the Steam version is 35 euros compared to the tabletop version’s 120-150 euros, so there’s a big difference. If you can’t or don’t want to play the digital version, consider buying the Jaws Of The Lion. It has a much more reasonable angle to approach the game ie. you don’t necessarily spend several hours dying in the first room of the first scenario. If you think JOTL is not hardcore enough for you, it would be a good idea to wait and see what the reviews will say about Frosthaven, which will be released in March 2022.

 

The header picture is courtesy of https://www.igdb.com/games/gloomhaven/presskit

Other pictures are taken by the author.

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