Board Games Like Gloomhaven

The best board game like Gloomhaven for most people is HeroQuest, because it gives you the same dungeon-crawl evening in fourteen self-contained quests instead of a ninety-session campaign. If you want more Gloomhaven rather than less, Frosthaven is the direct sequel from the same designer, with a 138-scenario campaign. The five games below are ranked by one question, and it is not which is best: it is what you are left holding if your group stops halfway.

How this list is ranked

Almost nobody complains that Gloomhaven’s combat is bad. What they complain about is the box on the shelf at scenario twelve, with a campaign sheet nobody can remember, waiting for a night four people can all make. Cephalofair advertises “over 90 sessions” in that box, and the honest reading of that number is that most groups will not see the end of it.

So the useful question when you go shopping for the next one is not how good the combat is. It is what a stopped campaign costs you. A game with no state to carry between sessions costs you nothing — you played a good evening and you are done. A branching legacy campaign costs you everything you invested in it, because the value was always in the ending.

Two of these publishers sell directly against each other on exactly that axis. Modiphius describes Skyrim on its own product page as “a resettable legacy experience.” Cephalofair sells Frosthaven on the opposite promise: a 138-scenario campaign with seasonal events and a village that changes as you build it. Both are honest pitches; they are aimed at different people. The list runs from the least you can lose to the most.

Every player count, running time and age below was checked against the publisher or its current distributor on 9 September 2026. Where a publisher no longer has a reachable product page, the article says so rather than printing a number it cannot back.

1. HeroQuest — the one that costs you nothing to stop

Publisher: Avalon Hill (Hasbro)     Players: 2–5     Time: 90 minutes     Ages: 14+

HeroQuest is the “Gloomhaven lite” recommendation, and the reason it works is structural rather than a matter of taste. The game ships as fourteen quests and 65+ miniatures, and each quest is a complete evening. There is no campaign sheet, no branching narrative to lose your place in, and nothing that spoils if you do not play again until spring. Put it away after quest three and you have lost precisely nothing.

One player takes the role of Zargon and runs the dungeon; the rest pick one of four heroes with different abilities and fighting styles. Each quest has a fixed board layout the Zargon player builds and reveals room by room as the heroes explore, turning up monsters, traps and treasure. Between quests the heroes spend the gold they found on equipment for the next one, so there is real progression — it just is not progression you can strand.

The trade is that it is much lighter than Gloomhaven, and that it needs someone willing to sit on the other side of the table. If your group is four people who all want to play heroes, this is the wrong pick and Mice and Mystics or Skyrim is the right one.

Sourcing note: Avalon Hill has no reachable product pages. Every path on avalonhill.com now resolves to a “where to buy” page rather than a product listing, checked 9 September 2026, so the specifications above come from the publisher-authored retail listing rather than from a first-party spec block. We also have a fuller HeroQuest review on the site.

2. Nemesis — one night, no campaign, all of the tension

Designed by Awaken Realms, published by Rebel     Players: 1–5     Time: 90 minutes     Ages: 14+

Nemesis takes the part of Gloomhaven that is about a tense, tactical crawl through hostile rooms and throws away the part that requires a calendar. There is no campaign at all. One session is the whole game, and Asmodee’s own store puts the average at 90 minutes.

It is semi-cooperative. Every player is a crew member who wakes from hibernation on a crippled ship with a private objective as well as a shared one, and those objectives conflict often enough that a game can turn into a knife fight over whether the engines get repaired or destroyed. Moving around the ship generates noise, and noise attracts the intruders, so the interesting decisions are almost all about how much you are willing to risk to get somewhere quietly. Fans of the Alien films will recognise the pacing immediately.

This is the pick for the group that loved a single Gloomhaven session and does not want a project. It is also the only game on this list where the reason to stop playing is that you finished.

Availability, checked 9 September 2026: Awaken Realms no longer publishes product pages at all — every path on its domain returns the same short application shell — so the current source of record is Asmodee’s store, which lists the original Nemesis core box as sold out at a $159.99 list price. That is a stock condition rather than a retirement, but it is worth knowing that the line’s current in-print core box is Nemesis: Retaliation (1–5 players, ages 14+, about two hours), which is a separate game rather than a reprint. Read our full Nemesis review before you commit either way.

3. Mice and Mystics — the one you can play with a seven-year-old

Publisher: Z-Man Games     Players: 1–4     Time: 90 minutes     Ages: 7+

Mice and Mystics is a light-hearted dungeon crawler that takes the shape of Gloomhaven and aims it at a table that includes children. Players are humans who have been turned into mice, each with their own role and abilities, working through eleven chapters read aloud from a storybook that doubles as the game board. The book sets the scene, tells you how to lay out the tiles and enemies, and states the objective, which removes almost all of the setup friction that makes a heavy crawler hard to start.

The reason it ranks here rather than lower is that the chapters can be played individually or strung into a campaign where characters keep their items and upgrades. Stopping after chapter four is a legitimate way to own this game, not a failure to finish it.

At age 7 it is the youngest recommendation on this list by seven years, and the gap is not close. Everything else here is 14+. If the person you want to play a dungeon crawler with is a kid, this is not merely the best option on the list — it is the only one.

One correction worth making: Mice and Mystics is widely credited to Plaid Hat Games, including on the box, and this page used to credit them too. Plaid Hat states on its own site that Mice and Mystics and its expansions are now published and managed by Z-Man Games, and Asmodee’s store lists Z-Man as the publisher of record. It matters if you are chasing expansions or support. It was in stock at a $89.99 list price on 9 September 2026.

4. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – The Adventure Game — a legacy campaign you are allowed to reset

Publisher: Modiphius Entertainment     Players: 1–4     Time: 90–180 minutes     Ages: 14+

Modiphius describes this on its own product page as “a resettable legacy experience,” and that single phrase is why it sits above Frosthaven here rather than beside it. You play six chapters across two campaigns spanning twenty-five years of Tamriel’s history, building a character, upgrading equipment and making decisions that branch the story — and when it is over, or when you give up on it, the box goes back to the state it started in. A stranded Skyrim campaign is recoverable in a way a stranded legacy game is not.

Mechanically it is the closest thing on this list to the open-world video game it is named after: you choose a race, customise abilities and spells, travel between the Holds, and fight Draugr, Daedra and dragons with 800+ cards driving quests and items. It is co-operative or fully solo. Each player follows their own storyline, but you cross paths constantly and join up for the battle at the end of each chapter.

The honest warning is length. Modiphius prints 90–180 minutes per session, which is longer than every other game on this list, and the branching decisions mean a half-finished campaign feels more wasted than a half-finished set of HeroQuest quests — the reset is a consolation, not a substitute for finishing.

Availability, checked 9 September 2026: the core game is sold out at Modiphius’s own store at a $115.00 list price. That is a stock condition, not a retirement. Note also that Modiphius sells several boxes under the Skyrim name — the core game, a Gamefound edition, and the From the Ashes, Dawnguard and 5–8 player expansions — so the button below runs a search for the base game rather than sending you to a single listing, and none of the expansions is playable without the core box.

5. Frosthaven — more Gloomhaven, and that is the entire point

Publisher: Cephalofair Games     Players: 1–4     Time: 2–3 hours     Ages: 14+

Frosthaven is last here not because it is the worst game but because it is the most expensive answer to the question this page asks. If Gloomhaven’s length was the problem, Frosthaven is not the solution: Cephalofair prints a 138-scenario campaign and 2–3 hours per session, which is longer than the game you are trying to replace.

If Gloomhaven’s length was the point, though, this is the best box on the list by a distance. You are a group of mercenaries keeping a northern outpost alive against monsters and the weather, and Cephalofair has built out everything that happened between fights: mysteries to solve, a seasonal event system, and player control over how the village expands, with each new building opening new ways to progress. It ships with seventeen new characters, three new ancestries, more than twenty new enemies and more than a hundred new items, and characters and items are cross-compatible with Gloomhaven in both directions.

Two things to know before you buy, both stated by the publisher: it currently sells for $200.00 against a $250.00 regular price on Cephalofair’s own store, and the publisher says plainly that “the first printing of Frosthaven has some typos and errata.” The copies in circulation are that first printing. Neither is a reason not to buy it; both are things a reader should hear before spending two hundred dollars.

The five compared

Game	Publisher	Players	Per session	Age	What stopping costs you
HeroQuest	Avalon Hill	2–5	90 min	14+	Nothing. Fourteen self-contained quests.
Nemesis	Rebel	1–5	90 min	14+	Nothing. There is no campaign to stop.
Mice and Mystics	Z-Man Games	1–4	90 min	7+	Little. Eleven chapters play standalone or linked.
Skyrim: The Adventure Game	Modiphius	1–4	90–180 min	14+	Your progress, but the box resets cleanly.
Frosthaven	Cephalofair	1–4	2–3 hrs	14+	Everything. A 138-scenario campaign is the product.

Publisher figures read on 9 September 2026. Prices are not quoted here except where a publisher lists one on its own store, because retail prices move faster than this page does.

Where to go next

If the decision you are actually making is whether to buy Gloomhaven at all, is Gloomhaven worth it in 2026? works that question instead: Cephalofair now sells four boxes in this system, from $21.99 to $200, and the setup time it prints on each product page is what should decide which one you buy.

If what drew you to Gloomhaven was the persistent, self-altering campaign rather than the tactical combat, our guide to the best legacy board games ranks six of them by how likely a real group is to reach the ending — the same axis as this page, applied to a genre where stopping really does cost you the box. The best campaign board games covers the wider category, and the best RPG board games is the right list if what you want from a dungeon crawler is roleplaying rather than tactics.

And if you got here because the group has stopped playing Gloomhaven rather than because you want another one, the best cooperative board games is ranked by the quarterback problem — one player solving everybody else’s turn — which is the other reason heavy co-ops die at the table.

Still narrowing it down? Get our free Top 10 Must-Have Games guide — ten games we keep coming back to, with the reasons why, straight to your inbox.

FAQ: Games Like Gloomhaven