Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs

The table footprint on this one is the whole pitch, honestly. I’ve compared it in my head to Tiny Epic Dungeons more than once, and the difference is real, Tiny Epic still eats a surprising amount of table once it’s set up, and Buttons & Bugs genuinely doesn’t. This is a game you play on an airplane tray table, which is a strange sentence to write about anything with Gloomhaven’s name on it, but there it is.

Getting there costs something though. There’s no physical rulebook in the box, it’s all online, and for a full priced boxed product that’s a choice I keep bumping against every time I have a rules question mid scenario and have to pull out a phone instead of flipping a page. My cards started warping within a few plays too, slightly at first and then more, which for something you’re handling constantly is a real problem, not a nitpick.

Price-per-play wise this one’s actually solid if you stick with it, a small box, a real price break from the full Gloomhaven experience, and enough scenarios to get a few weeks of solo evenings out of before you’ve exhausted it. The combat system carries over the hex tactics that make the original click, item cards doing double duty as map pieces is genuinely clever, and I get why people compare the puzzle feel to the big game favorably even in this shrunk down form.

Where it loses me is that the shrinking cost more than just table space. The dials are loose and hard to read at a glance, the card text on enemy cards is small enough that I’ve caught myself hunched over the table, and a couple of scenarios in a row just didn’t grab me the way I wanted them to. It’s a clever idea that I respect more than I love, three stars, worth it if the size is genuinely what you’re shopping for and not just a bonus.