Gloomhaven Buttons and Bugs board game review

 Gloomhaven Buttons and Bugs solitaire review

This is a solo review of the brand new gloomhaven game buttons and bugs.

Before we start i need to issue a quick spoiler warning for anyone who hasn’t played the game yet. The spoilers will be super minimal and have almost no affect on you experience of the game, but if you want to go in completely fresh then please don’t continue reading.

In this review I will cover.

• A brief gameplay overview.
• Replay ability
• Theme / story
• Is gloomhaven buttons and bugs good?
• Component quality
• Should I buy gloomhaven buttons and bugs
• Gloomhaven buttons and bugs final rating

Gameplay overview 

Gloomhaven buttons and bugs is a solo only rpg adventure board game where you play as a shrunken down mercenary trying to return to their previous size. You will play through s series of levels that focus mainly on the combat system used in the previous gloomhaven games. On your turn you play two cards from your hand one which decides how far you move and the other decides how much damage you do the enemy follows by doing what is set out on their enemy card which could be moving and attacking, healing or dealing out special effects. The game ends when you meet the goal set at the beginning of the stage.

Replay ability 

What i thought going into this game was that it was going to be a once off experience where i get to go through a story learn the gloomhaven combat system, and that the game was trying to get me familiar with the gloomhaven system so that i would go buy the much more expensive and much larger big box gloomhaven or frosthaven. Jeez was i wrong the game consists of a cast of 6 playable characters.

Each character has different abilities and strengths which will transform the way you play particular scenarios. Some of the scenarios are even character specific. All of this makes the game reasonably re playable. I think that you will have a max of 6 play throughs, where you get to play at least once  with each character before you will start to get bored.

Story and theme

The story and the theming in this game is average, which i actually think is quite an achievement sine that was not the intention of the game. The game was made with the intention of being pretty much just the cambat system from the big box gloomhaven games so the story was probably just an after thought. The story is also constrained by the size of he game having to fit each section of story before a scenario onto the the back of a card means that they probably left out a lot of really cool stuff. For example in scenario 5 you fight king button the only things you know about king button from before is that he will give you access to the area you need to go to, you have no idea who he is or what role he plays in this miniature world. The previous gloomhaven all elaborated on the story while this one just lacks a lot of oomph.

Is gloomhaven buttons and bugs good

I first saw this game while scrolling instagram and the hype was incomparable. I was about to start jumping up and down in my seat from excitement, but unfortunately where i lived i just couldn’t find a copy so i had to wait and wait until 7 months after the launch while travelling in Scotland i stumbled upon it I couldn’t believe my eyes it was this game i had been looking for for the past couple of months and it was right in front of me. So like any sane person i bought it immediately and sped back to my hotel. Once i was there . In gloomhaven buttons and bugs they have stripped down the original gloomhaven game to pretty much just its combat mechanics this has allowed them to fit the game into a tiny box. Here is the box next to a tea bag for reference.

Obviously this is a major bonus for me and anybody who travels because it means that they can easily find space to fit in this little board game. 

Now to answer the question is gloomhaven buttons and bugs good? Well the answer is yes it’s good, but it’s not great. The game lacks a lot of things that i consider essential for a board game for example it has a very short rules overview in the box and then requires you to go online to see the rest of the rules, I hate when board games do this it ruins the whole feeling of owning something and having physical media. Another major issue I experienced with the game was the difficulty curve, wow is this game hard i must have attempted the 5th scenario (buttons arena) 6 times. I can maybe understand the difficulties from the designers point of view, since they are much fewer scenarios and the scenarios are much shorter but the difficulties wasn’t done well mainly relying on a dice roll instead of actual strategy. The card play is the same incredible card play we have had with the last 3 gloomhaven games and it carries this game on its back since a lot of the other systems and features are lacking. The card play works by you choosing two cards from your hand. Each card has 2 sections a movement and a damage section on your turn you must pick the movement section on one card and the damage section on the other. After you have played these cards they return to your hand flipped to their b side (the b side is just the same as the a side but the affects on the sections of the card have changed for example the movement part of the a side could say move 3 hexagons while the b side could say move 4 hexagons) once you play a card that’s on its bs side it gets sent to your discard pile. This gameplay loop is incredibly engaging and interesting, each turn feels like you are having to solve a puzzle. Other than this card play they aren’t many more mechanics used in the game.

Component quality

The pieces in this game are immaculate the cubes that you use to track the attack modifier are so nice and tactile,  the attack modifier boards and the enemy boards are all double layered card board and best of all are the tiny miniatures.

The only bad components in the box are the scenario and character cards which start to warp so easily, this is a pretty big issue since you have to place all the pieces and tokens on the scenario card and if it is warped it can cause the pieces to move around. There is an easy fix to this problem and that is to put on high quality cards sleeves i put them on it drastically improved how comfortable i was while playing.

Should I buy gloomhaven buttons and bugs

The simple answer to this question is yes. This game has so many things going for it first of all its size the game is minuscule which allows for easy travelling and storage. The other major thing going for it is the price it is only 20 dollars where else are you going to find a game with this much personality and charm that gives you the gloomhaven experience in such a small form factor and for such a cheap price. This game is perfect for what it is and is, in my personal opinion the best travel game.

8.5/10 stars 

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