How Frosthaven Expands the World of Gloomhaven

The world of Gloomhaven is about to get a whole lot bigger. Earlier today, Cephalofair Games launched the Kickstarter for Frosthaven, the long-awaited sequel to the hit strategy board game Gloomhaven. Gloomhaven was a groundbreaking tabletop game when it first came out in 2017 and remains the most highly rated game on BoardGameGeek.com, a leading aggregator for board game reviews. Gloomhaven combined a branching narrative with intense strategy-driven scenarios and a legacy format. As players journeyed through Gloomhaven, they unlocked new classes, retired old characters, and slowly built up the prestige of the humble town that they lived in.

"Gloomhaven was just a game that I wanted to make because I was interested in playing it, and having something like this in the world," Childres told ComicBook.com in a phone interview when asked about whether he anticipated Gloomhaven's explosive success. "But it was also this very expensive, gigantic, huge, complicated, full of components game. You can't imagine something like that having so much traction, and selling so many copies and becoming number one. It was unprecedented."

While technically a sequel to Gloomhaven, Frosthaven is a standalone game with 16 new playable classes, 24 new types of monsters, and 15 new bosses. The massive box also includes over 30 new map tiles, 100 new overlay tiles representing obstacles, and all the other components you'll need to play through the 100+ scenario game.

Childres explained to ComicBook.com that he always planned to make Frosthaven as a full sequel, as he felt the traditional "expansion" model of board games didn't fit with the Gloomhaven experience. "The idea behind Gloomhaven and the giganticness of it was to give everything at once, right?" Childres said. "It's not a game that I was planning on selling all these expansions for because Gloomhaven is like a game plus like 10 expansions. My plan was to release Gloomhaven and then wait a few years and then come up with a whole new campaign. I still wanted to flesh out the world and tell more stories but not just nickel and dime people on these smaller expansions. The plan was always to make this big thing, and then sometime down the road, once I'm ready, I'll make this other big thing to just keep the story going."

Although Frosthaven has been in some form of development for over three and a half years, Childres notes that the upcoming sequel was a bit easier to design, in part because the core mechanics haven't changed from Gloomhaven. The core turn-by-turn mechanics of Frosthaven are identical to Gloomhaven, but other parts of the game system has gotten a major overhaul. Players will build out the outpost of Frosthaven over time, adding buildings and beefing up its defenses. "The story of Frosthaven is that you're constantly under attack and you've actually got to put more effort into making sure this town survives and doesn't get destroyed," Childres said. He cited the old video game Dark Cloud as an inspiration and noted that town building in video games has always interested him.

While the city and road events return in Frosthaven, the new game includes distinct events for the summer and winter seasons. The winter events will be more brutal, with enemies invading the settlement, buildings shutting down, and road events becoming a lot more dangerous. Building up your town will be critical to surviving the winter, and will also attract new classes of characters that can be used in future scenarios.

Other changes between Gloomhaven and Frosthaven were also inspired by the remote setting. The loot system was changed from collecting gold to collecting resources, because money was less important at the edge at the world. "You can't make weapons out of gold," Childres explained. "People care about metal, and wood and things like that. So, there needs to be more important things to get when you're looting, and so just that made sense to me."

One notable change in Frosthaven is that the starting classes are more complex than the ones found in Gloomhaven. Although the more complex classes aren't meant to exclude new players (Childres said the game is a good jumping on point for new players to the franchise), he wanted to come up with something more interesting from the outset. "I've already made these more basic classes," Childres said, adding that he was also designing more basic classes for the upcoming spinoff game Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. "I'm just more interested when I sit down and create a new class to come up with something interesting, find new twists on the system and new ways to manipulate different resources and get people to think about how they're planning out their longterm strategy."

Players can also look forward to a new puzzle book in Frosthaven, which will help advance the storyline. Puzzles were a part of Gloomhaven too, but Childres said it was structured more like an escape room game that players can enjoy throughout their campaign. "It'll direct you to various clues that you can find in the game, either in a scenario or in some artwork. And then using that clue, you'll be able to solve the puzzle of that page, which will then give you some story and then direct you to turn the page to the next piece of the puzzle that you have to solve.

Frosthaven backers can pledge $100 to get the main Frosthaven box, while additional tiers are available to add premium items like removable vinyl stickers, metal coins, or a box organizer. The Kickstarter will remain open until May 1st, and there is a $1 option available for fans who have had their finances impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but still want to pledge later. You can check out the full Kickstarter here.