Intimidatingly enormous fantasy board game Gloomhaven coming to PC in 2019
Weighing in at 1.75 Absolute Units.
I'm always up for learning a new board game, but whenever I see the towering monolith that is Gloomhaven and its multitude of boxes-within-boxes, I start looking for something more my speed... like Snakes and Ladders. Thankfully, I'll soon be able to enjoy its complex world of co-op dungeon crawling without fear of losing hundreds of key components under sofa cushions, as it's being adapted to PC, and releasing as early access at the start of 2019.
If you've never seen Gloomhaven out of its box, then go take a peek at BoardGameGeek's enormous gallery of images. It's a co-op (or even solo, if you so wish) dungeon crawl with an utterly preposterous number of tokens, counters, boards and info-cards involved. Worse (better?) still, it only gets more complex over time, being a Legacy-style game. Depending on choices made by players over the course of multiple sessions, you'll open up additional sub-boxes with new monsters, locations and classes. Apparently it's really rather good, too.
Publisher Asmodee Digital say they're working closely with original board game designer Isaac Childres, but have mentioned that the digital version won't be an exact copy of the original's mechanics. Developers Flaming Fowl (formerly of ill-fated CCG Fable Fortune) are already touting an "infinitely replayable roguelike mode" as among its initial early access launch features. While that sounds like it fits the rough concept of Gloomhaven, it has me envisioning a narrower, more focused design than the original. I hope I'm wrong.
Asmodee Digital have a lot more digital tabletop adaptations coming to PC over the coming months, including the solo/co-op The Lord Of The Rings: Living Card Game, due for an early access release on August 28th. Historical mech-war game Scythe: Digital Edition (sharing a setting with the upcoming RTS Iron Harvest) is already on Steam, and is planned to launch in full within the next few months, too.
Gloomhaven won't be making its early access debut until 2019 (you can find it on Steam here), but if you're hankering for some cardboard-turned-digital, there's a big Steam board game sale happening right now.