Frosthaven devs tell bug reporters they probably just played it wrong

Snapshot Games has a message for Frosthaven players flooding the bug tracker with reports: most of what you're calling a bug is probably a rules misunderstanding, not broken code.

Frosthaven — the sequel to the cult tactical boardgame Gloomhaven — is one of the most complex games in the genre. The physical box weighs 36 lbs and comes packed with cards, plastic miniatures, and a rulebook dense enough to intimidate veterans. The digital adaptation handles all the enemy AI, movement calculations, and bookkeeping automatically, which speeds up play but also hides the underlying rules from the player. That invisibility is apparently causing problems: experienced boardgame players, used to manually resolving every action, are seeing the game do something unexpected and immediately assuming the software is at fault.

Gloomhaven, the predecessor, already had a reputation for rules complexity — Rock Paper Shotgun's review dedicated a significant portion just to walking through a single turn. Frosthaven layers additional mechanics on top of that foundation, so even tabletop veterans can misread a situation when the digital version resolves it differently than they expected.

Snapshot Games hasn't given hard numbers on how many reports turned out to be user error rather than genuine bugs, but the message to the community is clear: before filing a report, double-check the rulebook. For new players coming in from the PC side with no boardgame background, the learning curve is steep regardless — but it's the tabletop crowd, confident in their knowledge, that's apparently generating the most noise.