[5] The campaign develops in a legacy format,[6] with stickers that are placed on the board and cards and sealed envelopes that are opened when certain criteria are met.

As the campaign progresses, characters can increase in power, gaining new abilities and improving the cards in their attack modifier decks.

Gloomhaven was created by Isaac Childres with illustrations provided by Alexandr Elichev, Josh T. McDowell, and Alvaro Nebot.

[5] After strong early reviews, a second Kickstarter campaign was launched on April 4, 2017, and delivered in November 2017 which raised about $4 million from over 40,000 backers.

Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, a smaller, standalone version of the game, which was released in July 2020, initially as a Target exclusive.

[14] Designed to appeal to more casual gaming fans, the story in this version is set before the events of the original Gloomhaven, and has players investigate a series of disappearances in the city.

Asmodee and Flaming Fowl Studios released a digital edition of Gloomhaven for Microsoft Windows, initially on July 17, 2019.

[17] It was offered as an early access model, featuring a subset of the characters, and a single-player Adventure mode that uses procedural generation like a roguelike to create encounters.

[27] Matt Thrower called it one of the best fantasy board games available,[28] while noting that "Gloomhaven was the critical hit of the year.

[32] In a review of Gloomhaven in Black Gate, Jeff Stehman played the game with his wife and said "In short, our campaign so far has been a rich experience punctuated by moments of awesome.