Frosthaven

My first session with Frosthaven digital lasted four hours and ended with my Banner Spear exhausted on turn three because I burned two cards repositioning instead of holding initiative. That is not a complaint. That is exactly what this game is designed to do: punish sloppy card economics until the correct decision-making becomes instinctive. Snapshot Games - the Phoenix Point and X-COM bloodline studio - has built a digital adaptation that automates the physical game's most brutal bookkeeping while keeping every gram of its tactical weight. Line-of-sight calculations, monster initiative tracking, element infusion tokens, modifier deck shuffles: all handled under the hood. What remains is the pure decision layer, and that layer is genuinely deep. The combat loop runs on a two-card-per-round system where the top half of one card drives your action and the bottom half of the other drives your movement, or vice versa. Every card you play moves you closer to exhaustion, so rest timing is as consequential as attack sequencing. The six launch classes - Banner Spear, Drifter, Geminate, Blinkblade, Boneshaper, and Deathwalker - cover distinct archetypes, from the Banner Spear's formation-dependent attacks to the Drifter's persistent ability tokens that sit outside the hand economy entirely. Subsequent Early Access updates added the Astral, Drill, and Shackles classes plus two Lurker-storyline heroes, meaning the roster has grown substantially since launch. Hex positioning on diverse biome maps, scenario-specific objectives beyond simple room clears (escort missions, defend the structure, restore besieged infrastructure), and branching campaign decisions that affect which quests unlock next all layer on top of that card spine. The Outpost management phase between missions adds resource gathering, building upgrades, and Town Hall challenges that feed back into combat options - ignore it and you will cap your gear ceiling mid-campaign. For newcomers, here is the honest calculus. The tutorial is present and covers the basics, and a Story difficulty mode exists for players who want to feel the campaign without losing every third scenario. The UI, however, is a legitimate complaint in the early build: missing tooltips on certain cards, buttons that require too many clicks, and a card readability problem that the Awakening Protocol update began to address. Snapshot has been iterating on quality-of-life in each content drop, and the trajectory is clearly positive, but if you have zero patience for information density that occasionally obscures itself, this will frustrate you early. Gloomhaven veterans will hit the ground sprinting; pure video-game players coming in cold should budget a couple of lost scenarios for orientation. The co-op side is where the game arguably lives. Up to four players can run the full campaign online, with roles splitting naturally across the class roster - crowd control, burst damage, support healing, and summon-based zone denial all need covering in harder content. Early connection stability had some reports of drop issues, but reconnection is quick and does not punish the rejoining player. Visually, the hex maps and character animations translate the dark northern aesthetic convincingly, and Forteller voice narration adds genuine atmosphere to scenario openings that the tabletop version delivered only through static text. The third and final Early Access content update, Into the Abyss, has already landed, suggesting the game is approaching its 1.0 state with a complete campaign arc in sight. The core concern right now is that this is still Early Access with the full 130-plus planned quests not yet in place, the UI still maturing, and some puzzle-book side systems that feel tonally disconnected from the otherwise clean tactical focus. If you bounced off Gloomhaven Digital's UI clutter, check community patch notes before committing - the improvements are real but ongoing. If you can meet the game halfway on its complexity, what you get is a cooperative tactical RPG with card hand management, initiative racing, hex positioning, and Outpost progression that few games in the genre can match for sheer decision depth. Diego, Scout Team

Valve rates this game Steam Deck Playable. Runs flawlessly on Linux out of the box. Based on 3 ProtonDB community reports.

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