A 2nd edition of the smash-hit dungeon-crawling boardgame Gloomhaven is crowdfunding now on Backerkit, and along with it comes the exciting announcement of a new spin-off game, a super compact version designed as a one-player experience. Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs even features tiny little miniatures!
As you can see in the (admittedly goofy) announcement video (skip to halfway to get a look at the game), Buttons & Bugs takes up a whole lot less table space than its older brother. Gloomhaven and the recent sequel Frosthaven are notorious for their massive, heavy boxes stuffed to the brim with components, but this new miniaturized entry measures something like 4x3 inches. The campaign for the game also promises a much reduced, more manageable playtime of around 20 minutes per scenario... meaning a better chance of actually getting it to the table.
It looks like this new solo standalone game tells the story of heroes that have been shrunk down and must explore a new diminutive realm within the Gloomhaven world. You can expect to be performing lots of actions familiar from the original game: choosing from various character classes each with their own unique ability cards, planning out your moves on a tactical grid, venturing through many unique locations and collecting loot. The amount of the Gloomhaven experience they've managed to pack into this small-box game looks truly impressive, as is the reasonable price they're asking for Buttons & Bugs: around $15 US.
The Gloomhaven Grand Festival crowdfunding campaign is running until July 19th. In addition to Buttons & Bugs, you can pre-order the new 2nd edition of Gloomhaven, as well as the official role-playing game in the same universe, or if you're feeling truly extravagant, a huge upgrade set of miniatures is on offer. I've only recently dipped my toes into the waters of solo tabletop gaming, but I'm excited to get my hands on this one. If you want to know more, you can check out this Designer Playthrough to get a deeper look at the intricacies of Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs.
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