As a rule, digital board games leave me pretty cold. They’re between a rock and a hard place – they can’t capture the tactile joy of the real thing, yet also fall short of ‘true’ videogames on immersion and atmosphere, tending to get tangled up with clunky UIs and janky animations. For a masterpiece like Frosthaven, though, I’d always make an exception – and, after an early sneak peek at Frosthaven’s new PC adaptation, I’m cautiously excited.
Let’s cover off the news first: as of today, publisher Arc Games has announced, via the Future Games Show Spring showcase, that Frosthaven – reigning ice queen of our buyer’s guide to the best board games in the world – is coming to PC in early access by the end of 2025. There’s even a closed beta version kicking off much sooner (read on for details).
It’s being billed not as a digital board game, but as a full blown “dark fantasy tactical RPG” (for PC only), playable both single player and via c-op online multiplayer for 2-4 players. From what we know about Isaac Childres’ mind bogglingly big fantasy RPG board game – and what I saw in my preview session with the developer last week – I don’t that’s overselling it.
Given that we awarded the game a cold, hard 10/10 in our Frosthaven review (one of only a handful of perfect scores Wargamer has ever given) this news is already a very spicy meatball. But wait, we have a lot more delicious detail to dig into here.
First off, it’s being developed by Bulgaria based PC strategy game studio Snapshot Games – an outfit set up in 2013 by original X-COM designer Julian Gollop. Snapshot is best known for Phoenix Point, a spiritual successor to Gollop’s 1990s X-COM series, and – for all that game’s mixed reviews – it’s still an encouraging home for a Frosthaven PC version.
Second – as I found out from Frosthaven Game Director Hristo Petkov in my preview session – Snapshot “inherited part of the code base” from the wildly successful Gloomhaven PC game made by the Lionhead veterans at Flaming Fowl Studios. And the Snapshot team has reportedly been meeting with Childres and his team at Cephalofair “every two weeks or so” to make sure they’re on the right track. Strong foundations indeed.
But even with a solid, expert team, a decent technical head start, and direct support from the original designer, digitizing a $250 board game that weighs 35 pounds and contains over 2,000 cards is a herculean job. The studio isn’t making it easy on itself by slimming things down in the adaptation, either.
Early in our one-hour demo, Petkov tells me that “The game is meant to be 95% accurate to the board game”. The missing 5%, he says, isn’t made up of heavy revisions, but small quality of life tweaks, including a “story difficulty” setting that’s “easier than anything in the board game”.
Some minor parts of the board game that simply don’t work digitally – such as certain sections (no spoilers) built around preventing players from speaking to one another – have been removed.
As we breeze through a couple of scenarios and a couple of views of the campaign maps, Petkov casually confirms that practically all of Frosthaven’s original tabletop content is making it in. That means hundreds upon hundreds of hours of branching storyline; around 150 different dungeon crawl scenarios; 17 separate player classes with their own card-based skill progressions; a big world map; an upgradeable home-base (the outpost town of Frosthaven); and on, and on…
As Petkov and Lead Game Designer Rossen Cholakov were only too keen to remind me in our session, Frosthaven (the board game) is a big step up from its 2017 predecessor in terms of the complexities to be replicated in videogame form. For a start, in Frosthaven, time passes and seasons change – doubling the variety of environments the game needs to replicate, compared to Gloomhaven.
“We’ve developed a lot of biomes,” says Petkov, “and they have both summer and winter versions to them, so this is really faithful to what the board game is trying to achieve”. This works inside missions, too, he says: “We have dynamic seasons that change the environment in scenarios depending on what season it is.”
And, while Frosthaven’s total range of 17 character classes is the same size as Gloomhaven’s, Petkov says the “card complexity is way higher in this game”, adding that “the most complex characters in Gloomhaven are easier to display than the easiest ones here.” All those card interactions need simulating, and many of them need animating.
Other roadblocks were less predictable. Petkov says the developer’s been having terrible trouble with doors, for example. “There are a lot more outdoor environments than in Gloomhaven,” he explains, “so we had some problems creating doors that people can actually see – we really needed to get creative”.
Visually, the game I saw in my preview looks at least as good as Gloomhaven. The 2021 game’s cel-shaded graphics have been swapped for a more realistic style – which currently looks a little less sharp, at times, than Gloomie – but it all retains the ‘Haven games’ high color, slightly kooky, cartoony vibe.
The ‘campaign’ sections – which see you exploring the world map to visit mission locations, and managing the construction of buildings and upgrades in the town of Frosthaven – look especially impressive.
Petkov says the town’s buildings will change their appearance based on your current Prosperity level, which grows as you develop the outpost with resources from successful adventures, and when you ‘retire’ a leveled up character to unlock new classes for your party.
All this is good news, because the board game’s deep world exploration and ‘base building’ elements are key expansions over the Gloomhaven experience. I’m looking forward to poking about further in the beta build, especially seeing the settlement grow and change over the game’s long campaign.
So, where is development at? Petkov and Cholakov reassure me that the game is “currently about 80% done when it comes to content” – and Snapshot now has 55 staff working on the game, having started out with just 20. The upcoming closed beta, they say, is merely to “polish the game” before it releases its full early access version towards the end of 2025.
Primarily, it seems, that ‘polish’ is going to focus on creating an on-screen UI that elevates, rather than obscures, a quite complex, tactical board game. “The one thing I’m committed to is improving the interface,” Petkov says.
“One of the bigger things about the game is removing some of the tedious micromanagement – enemies, AI, and so on,” he explains. “We removed a lot of these and put them under the hood – the idea is to hide as much of the information as possible while still keeping it accessible.”
“We want to reduce the amount of clicks needed for each action,” he adds, as well as adding what he calls “shortcuts” that ensure that if an in-game action or choice doesn’t need to ask you for approval, it won’t. That’s a big deal in a game with a lot of itty bitty mechanical details chugging away at all times.
My 30 or so hours in tabletop Frosthaven so far has left me completely in love with the gameplay, but also tired of the admin and dead time, even when I do have physical things to push about the tabletop – so hearing that this streamlining is such a focus for Snapshot’s PC version is music to my ears.
Perhaps more exciting for those with stronger ‘Haven chops than me (like our own Mollie Russell, who unlike most fans has played the whole damn thing), is that there are even features making it into this game that got cut from the board game. That’s right, Frosthaven could have been even bigger, and there are bits of Isaac Childres’ gigantic vision that will get their first airing in the digital edition.
The PC version of Frosthaven will have several full scenarios set in the Metallic Ruins – “steampunky, Captain Nemo style” environments full of quirky clockwork traps and enemies, which feature in Frosthaven’s story but didn’t have playable scenarios in the board game.
Snapshot also says all the in-game cards (as a reminder, that’s at least 2,000) will have pictures attached, something original creator Isaac Childres “really wanted” in the board game but couldn’t fit into the scope. And the early access version of the game will have a completely new “small introductory campaign”, made up of missions co-created between Childres and Snapshot boss Julian Gollop.
All in all, it seems like a sudden and very enticing gift to drop in the laps of folks like me who want to lose themselves in Frosthaven, but haven’t found the time or willing friends to endure the sheer, token moving, card organizing rigmarole of the board game.
You can apply to test the game in closed beta starting just one week from today – it goes live on Thursday, March 27.
The beta build, which Petkov tells me will be opened up to around “a couple of hundred players”, includes Frosthaven’s six core ‘starter’ classes – Banner Spear, Boneshaper, Drifter, Geminate, Blinkblade, and Deathwalker; 20 quests; a limited slice of the gameplay around developing buildings in the Outpost phase; and a structured tutorial.
We’ll be watching this one’s career with great interest – so keep your eyes peeled for further, in-depth coverage and interviews on Wargamer very soon.
In the meantime, if you’re after more immediate tabletop fantasy gratification, check out our picks for the best DnD games on PC, or go the whole hog and roll up a new character using our guides to the DnD races and DnD classes.
Source: Wargamer
