Founders of Gloomhaven

Players take the roles of competing fantastical races that work to construct a new city and earn prestige among its future residents. On each turn players play action cards to place resource buildings, convert basic resources into advanced goods, and deliver those goods to proposed building sites to gain influence and prestige. Each race can import only certain resource types, so players must trade and cooperate strategically to produce higher-tier resources. A periodic auction lets players vote on which building proposals appear and where they are placed, with accumulated influence increasing voting power and shaping the city’s development.

Players: 1–4 best 4
Playing time: 90–120 min
Age: 12+
Complexity: 4.1 / 5

5.8 on LudoyaEconomicCity BuildingSolo / Solitaire GameAuction / BiddingNetwork and Route Building

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About the game

Design: Isaac Childres
Art: Alexandr Elichev
Josh T. McDowell

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Full stats in Ludoya

30
Plays logged: 23
Players: 3h 30m
Average play: 32
In collections: 3
On wishlists

5.8/10

from 9 Ludoya reviews

Jan Solo8.7
Eurogame de colocación de losetas y gestión de acciones para construir la ciudad de Gloomhavem. En la partida se desarrollar una especie de árbol tecnológico en el que cada raza tiene el control de un recurso básico. El nombre del juego "...of Gloomhaven" induce a error ya que este juego no tiene NADA absolutamente que ver con Gloomhaven excepto la ambientación. Imagino que de ahí la poca puntuación que tiene en el ranking general. Impro-Reseña⇒ https://youtu.be/HlE9r-V69rw
Evan4.6
It's not bad, but it feels a little underdeveloped. The roads are cluttery looking and are hard to read vs the texture of the board and details of the buildings. Any rule that demands specific terrain types is fiddly and I didn't feel it added anything to the otherwise interesting puzzle of just fitting the building tiles where you wanted them. The rules for buying into someone else's resource vs owning the resource felt inelegant. The follow actions should have been printed on the board rather than the bottom of the activating card. The process of distributing points across the chains of buildings was interesting, but also fiddily. This probably could have been simplified a little more. Also, the mechanism of resetting giving other players income is not intuitive, particularly in terms of when you reset your worker and when you don't. If you thought Founders is almost good, I highly advise checking out The Great Zimbabwe from Splotter. It's clearly a huge design influence on this game, but it's a lot smoother. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ☆ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★★☆☆ Raw enjoyment
moses4.4
Unfortunately, one of the most disappointing games I have received. It probably isn't a terrible game, but after seeing everything about it and having Gloomhaven be the success that it was, despite knowing it was not going to be a Gloomhaven game, my expectations were high. The game, while having some interesting concepts, just doesn't work well. Trying to chain into other peoples supply lines was interesting in theory but in practice it was clunky and unfun. Having played The Great Zimbabwe after this, it checked all the same boxes, but played much smoother. - 8/22/21