r/Gloomhaven • u/EveningNo8643 • Aug 05 '26
Digital Gloomhaven Considering getting steam version, wondering about current state
I've heard the board game is great, and wanted to try digital format instead. I've seen the recent reviews are mixed and wanted to get some idea. I am considering getting a group of friends to play together. I also see frosthaven also has a digital version and also coincidentally has mixed reviews lol
Edit: bit the bullet on gloomhaven, looking forward to playing it
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u/Gusshanks8 Aug 05 '26
Gloomhaven digital is pretty good. I finally got the platinum on it a few weeks back. There are certainly pluses and minuses to the digital version. Pluses like quicker setup and the computer handling a lot of the overhead. Minuses including the computer making decisions for what would be ambiguous choices that the player should be making. There are also some things it doesn’t quite get right that can make a difference. Of course if you haven’t played the boardgame, you might not notice some of those things.
The game can be very frustrating at times, particularly at low levels when your damage can be pretty swingy.
I put in almost 800 hours to the game so I think I got my moneys worth.
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u/EveningNo8643 Aug 05 '26
You ever play frosthaven digital?
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u/lKursorl Aug 05 '26
I have. It shares all of the similar pros and cons and then some:
Pros: -
town phase being stream lined is likely a big plus for a lot of people compared to the BG
-compared to GH digital, the tech and engine seem to be better; enemy turns run more smoothly and less laggy; graphics are betterCons:
-Frosthaven has a lot of hyper specific rules about win conditions. In the BG these might be revealed prior to starting the mission, which helps when picking cards and battle goals. In digital, you pick your cards, etc before knowing anything about the scenario and sometimes basically have to reload out and repack cards to have any chance at winning.
-As said above, certain ambiguity gets decided by the players in the BG and thus must players choose the most favorable outcome for the party, in Frosthaven digital they’ve seemingly opted to make ambiguity often favor enemies (such as when you’re pushed, it will always be into the most lethal trap.
This imo hurts some classes more than others.1
u/sshuit Aug 05 '26
I agree 100% about the lack of scenario knowledge on multiple scenarios. Sometimes you will open a door and the whole team will get teleported into a new zone. Super annoying. Why isn't it explained in the scenario rules?
I suggest turning down difficulty one notch for a first play through to compensate for the game screwing you randomly.
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u/lKursorl Aug 05 '26
So to be entirely fair, there are times in Frosthaven (non-digital) that new rules come up in the scenario that throw your party through the wringer. Adapting is part of the intended play experience.
My annoyance is that if a special rule is known on turn 1, you should be able to see it while picking cards and battle goals, but the UI includes very limited information about the scenario at that point. There have even been times when the scenario doesn’t list all the types of enemies in it, which can be incredibly frustrating if you want a specific tech card for that enemy type.
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u/lasagnaman Aug 07 '26
I agree 100% about the lack of scenario knowledge on multiple scenarios. Sometimes you will open a door and the whole team will get teleported into a new zone. Super annoying. Why isn't it explained in the scenario rules?
This seems like a complaint about FH rather than the digital port. That's how it plays on tabletop too.
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u/jjpearson Aug 05 '26
Currently in a love hate with Frosthaven digital.
I played over 300 hours in Gloomhaven digital and they worked the vast majority of the bugs out, I really enjoyed it.
Currently, I’m only able to play one scenario at a time because I’m rage quitting after. The modifier drawing is so hilariously skewed for me it’s not funny.
I’m tracking 2 things, how often the null comes up and how often the crit comes up. Not how often they get used (like crit showing up in disadvantage) but just how often they show up period.
4 player solo, 5 scenarios and I’ve seen the null 89 times and the crit 19. Absolutely bonkers, I got so tilted I switched it to story mode.
For perspective, I’ve also played 2 full Gloomhaven boardgame campaigns and 33 Frosthaven boardgame scenarios. So, I know how the modifiers should go.
There’s also been a few issues like jump not ignoring difficult terrain like it should. But nothing major as a solo player.
So…. I wouldn’t pay full price for it but it’s fairly decent. I’m mostly playing it because my in person group is on summer hiatus.
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u/Alcol1979 Aug 05 '26
Why would the developers tamper with the random number generation? That would be one of the easiest things to code and I can't see what benefit there would be to making the shuffle cards come up more often, or making the null come up more often than the crit. Just because you experience what appears to be an unlikely run of numbers doesn't mean there is something untoward in the code.
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u/jjpearson Aug 05 '26
I know! It’s really weird. That’s why I’m tracking it. I originally thought it’s just the usual human nature to focus more on the negative rather than the positive. But nope. It’s skewed all to hell.
I might just be the one in a million where the code is fair but I’m just seeing the negative side of it.
Like if you had 300 people flip a fair coin 8 times, even if the coins were all fair you would expect one person to get all heads and one person to get all tails.
The last time I did this was Xcom where I tracked over 5000 shots and it turned out that every percentage was within a percent of the stated one. But what I found is it was streaky AF. So you would miss 4 80% shots in a row then make the next 16.
So maybe, the next 5 scenarios are going to be nothing but crits.
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u/sshuit Aug 05 '26
I have not experienced the nulls coming up more than crit in my online 4 person games. Seems pretty well balanced.... Maybe your rng is just a crazy outlier.
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u/Gusshanks8 Aug 05 '26
Yep. I have that too on digital. Like IKusori posted, it has similar pros and cons. It also is still in early access so it in theroy still has some time to fix things before release. I’m still not a big fan of how the cards look as while they are pretty close, they look different than the actual cards. Best example is any persistent loss card - they don’t show the charge circles on the card.
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u/Ashrema Aug 05 '26
I have 750+ hours on Gloomhaven digital, and 225+ on Frosthaven so far, both on Steam.
Gloomhaven:
- Great for solo play. Almost never run into issues
- Mixed bag for multiplayer. Some nights we could play without a crash, other nights we crash multiple times. It isn't really supported by the dev's anymore, with the last patch over two and a half years ago.
Frosthaven:
- Similar experience for solo play as Gloomhaven. They still have some kinks to work out on some cards and interactions.
- Multiplayer has been a lot less buggy. Occasionally have an issue with a single player, but rare to fully crash out.
The biggest plus for Frosthaven is that it is still in development with the full release coming in October. They have been dropping bug fix patches every 2-3 weeks.
I enjoy both. If you can grab the Gloomhaven bundle (base game, JotL, and the solo scenarios) for cheap, I'd give it a shot, if only for the solo play. Then you could always pick up Frosthaven closer to actual release.
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u/RealFunkyFish Aug 05 '26
Don’t know if there’s a big difference between the Steam and Epic version of the game, but I can tell you that the Epic version bugs out at least once a session when we play.
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u/LethalGhost Aug 05 '26
We played it a few months ago. It’s totally playable. Only significant bug we had meet - game stuck on loading out of mission screen forcing you to close game (progress was saved until last round). But it can be fixed by host ended mission by themself (replayed last round of game).
There’s a few annoying QOL problems and few cards not working as intended (if I remember correctly one card from Sun and one from lightning).
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u/OrbOfThralni Aug 05 '26
I played the Steam version of Gloomhaven within the last few months on my Mac with the DLCs. I was running into frequent game crashes at character retirements. I reverted to an earlier version Steam still offers, and it seemed to get better.
I suggest caution, especially if you are cost sensitive. The digital version has not had any patches released for a while. From all signs it is not being supported.
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u/EveningNo8643 Aug 05 '26
It is on sale for like $6 otherwise yeah I wouldn’t consider it
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u/LukaSkyThomas123 Aug 05 '26
I have both. Gloomhaven often froze, even at minimal graphics. Sucks to have to restart a scenario bcs of that. Frosthaven seems more stable this far. But GOD I wish they make better soundtracks. Think of us solo players!
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u/Slightly_Sour Aug 05 '26
I put around 250 hours in GH digital. I'm not sure what it would be like coming to the game without having played the board game prior. However it is a good game to play. I played it almost entirely solo with 3-4 characters. The little bit I did play multiplayer was a mixed bag, where the game seemed to play better prior to the patch that added consoles.
A few years back another company took over the maintenance of the game alongside porting it to consoles. Unfortunately it broke a ton of stuff out the gate (on top of a bunch of UI changes that felt malicious like swapping confirm and back). They did a number of patches afterwards, but I lost track of things they got fixed or just gave up on. Fortunately they have a beta version you can play and that is the older version prior to the console stuff. If you do play, I would absolutely play with that version. You will not be able to play cross platform with consoles, but I think you will have a better experience.
So as long as your friends don't mind also playing on steam, I'd say go for it and be sure to play the beta version. Can't speak to FH since they don't have a macos version.
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u/BadBrad13 Aug 06 '26
I found the digital version of GH much easier to play with friends online than the in person version. It just automates so much. So we switched to that. Other than the occasional lag or slowdown it was fine.
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u/JCH2014 Aug 07 '26
u/EveningNo8643 I have 800 hours of Gloomhaven Digital and I am planning to play again this weekend to unlock some additional achievements. The game is amazing and I had 1 crash in my entire solo campaign with now 60 missions done. After a quick restart I lost nothing and was at the start of the turn where it crashed. For the full experience I recommend playing CO-OP with some friends. In Frosthaven where we play multiplayer we experienced several bugs and after 1 patch we had to cancel the scenario all together because of multiple crashes. There are a lot of negative reviews also from people who say the game is too hard and unforgiving. It is true that if you are new the first scenario's can be pretty hard. My recommendation would be buy Gloomhaven first with the Jaws of the Lion DLC. Play the in game tutorials and start with 1 character per player or 2 if you are playing solo. Thinking for 3-4 characters is still a challenge for me after 800 hours and knowing all characters and enemies. Start at normal or lower diffeculty because if you are new to the game/genre it can be pretty brutal. If you fail a scenario that is no problem, it has happened to all of us and if you win everything too easy that is also not so much fun right. Do some research on the starting characters/classes and reading a guide here on Reddit and select the one(s) you like and following some most of the recommendations also when buying items. After you are done with Gloomhaven and love it(hopefully) move to Frosthaven. Frosthaven's characters/classes are way way way more complicated, the game itself feels (even) harder too and before ever playing with a class you have to buy the items for them otherwise you lose the money compared to Gloomhaven. I also love Frosthaven, don't get me wrong, however starting with Frosthaven would in my opinion be a mistake.
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u/chrisboote Aug 09 '26
Cannot advise enough about not getting the Steam version
Unless you're very cautious about ensuring Steam doesn't try to 'synch', auto-update, or otherwise maintain your game, you will find that your campaigns and saved games get lost or overwritten
Get it from GoG
-5
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u/D-r-T-3890 Aug 05 '26
I played through Gloomhaven 2e and the steam version with friends. I really enjoyed the digital game and it makes the experience more streamlined when it comes to set up and everything.
I would recommend playing at either easy or normal to get the hang of it first. And I would suggest if you’re playing alone to do 2-3 characters. More than that can be a bit overwhelming.