Gloomhaven is a phenomenon. Coming out of nowhere on the back of a 2015 Kickstarter it has become an all-conquering ur-game. Acclaimed by critics and players alike, it spans multiple genres by marrying the depth of a strategic board game with the narrative of a role-playing dungeon crawl. It’s seen multiple reprints, despite a high retail price, and has spawned a prequel, a sequel and successful PC adaptation.
The game’s designer, Isaac Childres, was startled by its success. ‘I wasn’t thinking too hard about genres or breaking new ground,’ he says. ‘I was just trying to make the game as fun as possible. Just simple decisions of “is this fun or not?”’ Still, while Childres might not have set out to create such a diverse melting pot, he’s aware that’s what he created. ‘That's a reasonable characterization,’ he admits.
The game grew out of Childres’ enthusiasm for role-playing games. ‘If you give me a dungeon filled with monsters and tell me to run around killing them all, I'm probably going to have a good time,’ he laughs. ‘What I think is nice about them is that even without other ingredients, any dungeon game can be fun, if not great, due to its very nature.’
Yet despite this, Childres shared the same common frustrations with role-playing that many players have. ‘In a roleplaying game, someone always has to DM, and that someone is always inevitably me,’ he says. ‘Being a good DM requires a lot of preparation. With a board game, you can just break it out and play, which is nice.’
But that’s not the only reason. Prior to Gloomhaven, Childres designed and published another game, Forge War. With its fantasy theme paired with a heavy engine-building system this could be seen as a dry run for its successor and marked its designer as someone with a keen interest in exploring tactics and strategies, things not often found in role-playing games.
‘Every RPG I've encountered relies heavily on dice rolling to resolve combat and skill checks and everything else,’ he complains. ‘I understand why, as asking players to engage in deeper gameplay can take away from the primary goal of an RPG, which is the roleplaying aspect. But that is a definite turn-off for me. I enjoy roleplaying, but I wouldn't mind some deeper gameplay alongside. An emphasis on choice over randomness. Deep character progression. Variability through monster types, dungeon goals, and playable characters. And a campaign world that feels alive and is affected by the choices you make. All the ingredients I added to Gloomhaven’
Hence Gloomhaven’s winning combination of cooperation, rich strategy and wordy narrative, so central to its success. What’s surprising, though, is how few titles had even attempted that combination before, let alone done so successfully.
‘They are very different skill sets, so finding someone who can execute both may be rare,’ Childres muses. ‘But game development teams can have multiple people with different skill sets, so it shouldn't be hard to combine them.’
This begs the question of just why there hasn’t then been more cross-pollination. ‘I think it goes back to the old dichotomy of Eurogames versus American games,’ Childres says. ‘These were two different cultures of games that developed for a long time independent from each other. And I'm not saying I'm the first, but it seems that Gloomhaven got in there early enough and executed it well enough to emerge as a prime example of merging narrative and heavy strategy. Certainly, since Gloomhaven, we've seen a lot more games successfully blend the two. A lot of Awakened Realms stuff, and Descent: Legends in the Dark is a great example as well.’
