Fans of tabletop games have heard about Cephalofair Games and their crowdfunding success story, Frosthaven. It is a sequel expansion to the studio's last board game, Gloomhaven, a complex dark fantasy adventure board game packed with multiple characters, questlines, and side missions, all in a 22 pound box. For those without shelf space, there is also a digital adaptation on Steam. It's a project that lead designer Isaac Childres has been open about regarding changes to the game's design, either due to feedback by sensitivity readers or from playtesting. Now, Childres has made a major announcement: his studio will be partnering with Lucky Duck Games to develop a Frosthaven app.
This announcement came from an update on Frosthaven's official Kickstarter page. According to the post, Lucky Duck has a strong history of developing apps that can integrate with board game experiences to help keep track of complex systems and rules, helping to take such responsibilities off of players. Their past projects of using smart device apps to enhance a board game experience include the southern gothic horror game The Dark Quarter and Chronicles of Crime.
Lucky Duck is one of the best in the business, and we are confident that they are fully up to the task. We're still ironing out development timelines, but the plan is to first release a Frosthaven app that supports full in-combat character, summon, monster, ally, and objective tracking, initiative order tracking, as well as loot, monster abilities, and monster/ally attack modifier draws. Basically, our goal is to streamline the combat process as much as possible. After the Frosthaven app is released, they will then assist us with quickly delivering a counterpart Gloomhaven app as well, to bring everything under one roof.
What About the Gloomhaven Helper app?
The update did also address why an earlier partner, Esoteric Entertainment, were not developing the Frosthaven app. While the studio did develop the Gloomhaven Helper app, they stated they could not continue supporting and maintaining the app, citing time and scheduling limitations. Childres and Cephalofair Games continued to thank Esoteric Entertainment for their work on the app and seemed to part with the studio amicably. Once Lucky Duck has finished working on the Frosthaven app, their next project will be an official app for Gloomhaven as well.
