Review: FROSTHAVEN Digital is Good But Not for Everyone

A few weeks ago, Arc Games released the 1.0 update digital version of the hit board game Frosthaven developed by Snapshot Games Inc. The game is available now on Steam and Epic Games Store with standard pricing at about $40. I am grateful the team was kind enough to supply me with a Steam review key, but all thoughts are my own. If you’re interested in playing Frosthaven now that the 1.0 version has been released, consider using our affiliate links for Humble and Fanatical to help support us.

My gaming rig features an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVME drive, 32GB DDR4 RAM running at 3600 MT/s, and has Windows 11. I had no performance problems at any point with this game. I also played a little bit on my Steam Deck OLED and found that it would average close to 30fps. I will say that there’s so much happening sometimes that the smaller size of the Steam Deck screen can be less than ideal at times.

From an audio and visual standpoint, I think Frosthaven is really well done. The characters and environments look fantastic, the ambient sounds and music help you feel the world and do not distract you in any way, and it’s a pretty game that looks like plenty of thought and care was put into it. I honestly love all of the character designs. From the more monstrous Drifter to the human Banner Spear, there isn’t a bad one in the bunch.

Frosthaven’s gameplay is similar to a turn-based tactical RPG and there’s a lot to engage with in this game. You control a group of four heroes, each with their own abilities and playstyles through various levels. In my experience, the goal is typically to defeat a large number of enemies (or something else that involves killing a large number of enemies) although some levels do have different objectives for you to complete. As you play through the campaign, you’ll unlock additional heroes, an outpost to manage, and upgrades for your heroes.

There’s a lot of depth to the game and it requires a lot of brain power. Each hero has about 10 cards in their deck and over time you lose access to cards meaning that there’s an informal counter going on in the background. Every turn, each hero will play two cards which means that after about 5 turns, you are out of cards and will have to rest.

Every time you rest, you have to lose access to a card until the level is done. You can also choose to lose cards instead of taking damage which speeds up the process of losing cards. When a hero is out of cards or their health hits 0, they’re done. Interestingly enough, I found on average, it took about 45 minutes to an hour to complete any given level. Thankfully, you can save in the middle of a level in case you have to step away from it.

To me, the biggest downside of Frosthaven is how long the levels take. Taking an hour on average for a single level where I’m using only four characters against a dozen or more enemies and my characters have about 10 options that dwindle as you play feels very tedious and repetitive to me.

Combat often frustrates me because of the damage modifiers. Each hero has a second deck of damage modifier cards. At the beginning, you’ll typically have cards such as x0, -2, -1, +0 (I think this is the most common), +1, and x2. Of course, as you play the game and level up characters you can modify each of their modifier decks and attempt to offset the really bad ones.

However, in my experience, most attacks only deal 1-2 points of damage without modifiers and so anything below +0 really sucks to draw and it’s not uncommon in my playthroughs to have entire rounds feel wasted all because of the modifiers drawn. In addition, this adds to my personal complaint about how long a single level can take.

As I’ve played Frosthaven, I’ve discovered that it is a good game, but it is not a game for me. I found myself wanting to like the game far more than I ever actually enjoyed playing it. For me personally, it felt too repetitive yet convoluted and I was constantly frustrated because I misunderstood or misplanned something (although I did have a moment where I think the game was bugged because my heroes would use heal abilities, I’d watch the animations, but then no one was healed). There is definitely a larger group of people who like these kinds of games. It’s an extremely popular board game and from what I can tell this is a very solid digital version.

I do want to make a note that I have played exclusively single-player content. I have seen some comments online about how the online multiplayer is broken, but I cannot speak to that at this time.

At the end of the day, Frosthaven is not a bad game, but it is definitely not a game for everyone. If you enjoy the physical board game or Gloomhaven (physical or digital versions) or want a very brain-intensive strategy game to really sink your teeth into for hundreds of hours, this is going to be your thing.

If you’re just looking for a tactical RPG experience, I would look elsewhere. The score below reflects how well the game is in general and not how much of a game it is for me personally (even if I wish I liked it more).