Developed by Snapshot Games and published by Arc Games, Frosthaven brings Cephalofair Games’ second massive tactical board game to a digital format. Like its predecessor Gloomhaven, Frosthaven is rife with convoluted action cards, impossibly difficult combat, and hard to understand rules. At least in this format you won’t need to spend six hours breaking down the cardboard game tokens and listening to your friend try to explain how the game works.

From Table to Screen

I’m something of a board game fan, myself, so when I saw that Cephalofairs’ newest offering had a fully working digital demo available for Next Fest, I jumped at the chance to give it a try. Right off the bat, the demo does a better job explaining the game mechanics than the board game rulebook ever could. Maybe it’s because I’m a ‘learn by doing’ kind of person and a tutorial better facilitates that than a group of exhausted 30-somethings trying to understand the equivalent of fantasy Wikipedia that is the physical rulebook.

Infamously complicated board game mechanics are densely packed into a 20-minute tutorial available from the new game screen. Frosthaven gives you the option to bypass the tutorial, of course, but I strongly recommend not doing that. Even if you’ve played the board game to death. The reasons for that are two-fold. One, at the very worst, it’s a refresher and maybe you’ll learn an easier way of doing something. Two, in the digital space there is no ‘oops’ option.

When you choose an action, you’re locked into that action. A decent gaming group will allow you to redo a turn while you get used to the game. Even the digital version of their first game Gloomhaven has an undo option. Not this time. It’s likely demo-specific and will change when as development continues, but there isn’t even a quick save/quick load option here. The game autosaves once every few turns and not even upon exiting, if you need a break. Which you will, trust me.

A Frosty Reception

Once I cleared the tutorial and created my party of four, I was off. It took me a full three tries at nearly an hour each to beat the first quest in Frosthaven. I took the meager rewards gained from finally beating it to get a single new item for one character and set off on the second quest. Which gave me a beat-down just as brutal before I had to turn the game off to cool down.

When I booted it up the next day, I got a bit farther in quest 2 than I did previously. Then the game told me to keep an NPC alive by forcing my characters to take damage for it, which got me killed again. All this on the normal difficulty. There are two more degrees of difficulty above it that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

Add on to that the frequent glitches present in Frosthaven’s demo. Such as skipping an action that would result in a character taking damage, only to take the damage anyway but not get the action. Or, moving to a certain tile and committing to the move, then being informed after the commitment that the move is invalid. It makes it difficult to recommend the game in its’ current state.

Cold as Ice

It’s hard to commit to a tactical game like Frosthaven when it’s so rife with issues and limitations. If you want to sit down and think for an hour about every move, there exist better games to do it with. In the case of Frosthaven, if you like the board game, I’d wait for some updates before giving this version a try. If you’re not into the board game’s brand of tight, unforgiving strategy, I’d probably pass on it altogether.

Developed by Snapshot Games and published by Arc Games, Frosthaven is coming soon to Early Access. The demo is available now on Steam as part of this month’s Next Fest showcase.