Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion makes the megahit more accessible

cardboard.arstechnica.com . There’s a reason Gloomhaven (read our 2017 review ) is so popular. There’s also a reason why half of my friends who own a copy have opened it once, stared in despair at the contents within, and loosed a timid box-fart as they reassembled the package. “More is better!” can be true, especially when it comes to fighting your way through a dungeon. “More” means more monsters, more classes, more loot-even additional varieties of stonework decorating the corridors. It also happens to mean, you know, more . More to learn. More to remember. More to sort and keep sorted. Gloomhaven basically defines “more.” But now there’s Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion , the largest box to ever feel small. With only four classes, a single (mostly) linear campaign, and some clever quality-of-life improvements, this is Isaac Childres’s attempt to make a Gloomhaven for the rest of us. (Or the rest of you , since I played Gloomhaven until I was well and truly sick of it.) How does Childres go about streamlining a game so monolithic that it once bestowed sentience upon a chimp? The answer is: easier passage into the game systems, fewer components, and a more focused quest line. Let’s take those in turn, because there’s more to each than you might think, including some drawbacks you may want to consider if you’re already curious about diving into Gloomhaven . Tutorials get a bad rap. I’m speaking mostly of video games, where tutorials have been a staple ever since we collectively decided we weren’t going to read the manual anymore. The problem is twofold: either the game belabors the stuff we already know, like how to look around and click to shoot, or it fails to really dissect all the little subsystems that make the game purr. A good tutorial walks a tightrope between talking down to us like we’ve been living in a cave for the past fifteen years and assuming we hold a PhD in Interpreting Game Design Intentions. Yes, I know how to move the mouse. No, I don’t know why my king is in love with his biological sister. Meet me halfway here, game.

Preview: ~362 words