Frosthaven is a digital adaptation of a board game, built for fans of the tabletop experience. Though the game is only in Early Access and changes can be expected to come, I would go out on a limb and say Frosthaven, barring any dramatic design pivots, was designed pretty exclusively for existing fans. As a newcomer, the game did not welcome me to its setting, teach its mechanics well, or impress me with its highlights. At best, this is a title that needs some work; at worst, it is one I suggest you skip if you are not already intimately familiar with the board game’s mechanics.
Something I have been very vocal in the past about hating slow, overly hand-holding tutorials. If a tutorial is a long slog that shows you exactly which buttons to press without allowing for any exploration, it often puts me to sleep and hinders early investment. Frosthaven, unfortunately, suffers from one of these lengthy, sluggish, and overly directed tutorials. This might be more forgivable given the information density and specific gameplay, but long walls of text personally do not help me learn. I often find myself zoning out and absorbing less information because of it. Not every gamer is like this, but those who relate will not enjoy learning how to play Frosthaven.
As it turns out, this slow, hand-holding tutorial was a bit of a waste, as it does not really prepare you for Frosthaven beyond the most simple of mechanics. The game, in every other regard, seems designed around a “figure it out as you play” mentality, making skipping the tutorial a viable option for most players.
If the tutorial aimed to be more impactful, it could have explained the many symbols the game uses that replace descriptive text. Learning Frosthaven’s many abilities was a Babelic nightmare, where I constantly had to reread tooltips to decipher what the hieroglyphs on a card were attempting to teach me.
I could forgive all of this, however, if the game were simply fun to play. So, that begs the question: is it? The answer is meh; it will likely depend on who is playing it.
Frosthaven plays incredibly slowly, even when compared to other turn-based games on the market. Each turn, you play two cards per hero in your party, with each card having two separate abilities to choose from in its top and bottom text, as well as a default movement or attack option. The idea is to pair cards to get value from the top portion of one and the bottom of the other, as you can only play the opposite end on your second card.
It could be an interesting system, but in smaller parties, you spend most of your time crawling across the map with limited movement options available for many of the game’s starting classes. Movement becomes no problem in a larger party, but the game gets significantly harder the more heroes you take with you.
The game’s starting classes failed to win me over either. Neither the playstyles nor the thematics of the characters particularly spoke to me, with the designs on many of the characters feeling like a disjointed mess that failed to convey their identities. You also get no real explanation of a character’s role before you start to play them, so you have to rely on their confusing identity as a hint as to how they might play. I also did not find their designs to be very “cool” or interesting, which is pretty important when you’re playing a game like this, though that is a subjective opinion.
The game’s writing failed to wow me, either. The very first mission in the campaign opens to a raid on a town, which leads to the death of many innocent lives and the threat of another raid looming over the horizon. The response from the town elder is an almost immediate quip or joke, showing very little concern for the tragedy and potential upcoming further tragedy to their village. It’s that sort of Joss Whedification I’ve criticized in writing before that immediately put me off from the game’s writing.
To summarize, Frosthaven feels like a game that is unsure of who it is for. It presents information in a confusing manner, expecting you to be familiar with the board game’s symbols. Conversely, from what I have read from fans of the board game, the writing feels out of touch or even insulting to the original, and the characters feel odd and alien to the setting, at least for Gloomhaven players. It may be different for the actual Frosthaven board game, of which I am not familiar.
Frosthaven is a game I would give some time to breathe. Allow the developers to address their problems, improve accessibility for new players, tweak some balance issues, and perhaps revisit the writing. Keep your eye on it and your fingers crossed, because I do believe the game could be much better, given time.
Pros:
- Deep tactical card-based combat system
- Complex mechanics for those who enjoy high learning curves
Cons:
- Poor onboarding and confusing tutorials
- Unwelcoming to new players unfamiliar with the source material
- Sluggish pacing
- Strange writing tone
- Subjectively strange character designs and vague roles
TryHardGuides was provided a Steam code for this PC Early Access Review of Frosthaven. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page!
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