Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8114705/gloomhaven-buttons-and-bugs

Designers: Joe Klipfel, Nikki Valens
Publisher: Cephalofair Games
Artist: Yanis Cardin, Mofei Wang

As someone who has never played Gloomhaven and has only played Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion once, I was a little apprehensive to dive into this one, but with its small box, its reasonable price point, and solo only gaming experience, I decided to give it a try.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with this game! As the “learn to play” book suggests, I started by playing the campaign of scenarios with Bruiser. I think my favorite aspect of this game, is that there is so much content in a little box (AKA there is a super high replayability factor). Even after twenty plus games (I lost quite a few scenarios along the way and tried replaying them at least once), I only finished (and technically I didn’t finish considering scenario 19 remains unbeaten for me) one campaign play through with one character. There are multiple characters to play as, each with their own strengths and attack cards, and some parts of the story branch slightly depending on your character. Basically, despite many hours of play, I am still really looking forward to playing again with a different hero to have new experiences.

If you know how to play either of the other Gloomhaven games, you can skip this next bit, but for those that haven’t: this game is a monster battler. In Buttons & Bugs, you get shrunk down to the size of buttons and bugs and you have to fight your way through a series of trials and enemies in order to be restored to your original size. Each game you start with six cards that allow for movement, attacking, and some other abilities (potentially) that you play to try to defeat the monsters. Most scenarios have the win condition of defeat all monsters but a few also have an additional goal or rules.

While monster/boss battlers aren’t my favorite, I enjoyed this one. Like I said, I look forward to playing it again as a different character. The learn to play book was very well laid out and was a great introduction to the Gloomhaven world. For space purposes, I understand why they didn’t put an actual rule book in the box, but as someone who isn’t very familiar with Gloomhaven, I wish there were better explanations for symbols and rules. They do have a QR code that links to an online library of rule resources, but I’d rather have the ability to reference a rule book. The player aid they included is fabulous, however!

Besides the rule book issue (it’s honestly not a big deal, I’m just a baby 😂), I highly recommend this game! Even if I were to only have played through the one campaign, I think the fun of the game, the large amount of quality content, and the well-made components would make the purchase worthwhile. If you’re a solo gamer, I’d definitely suggest looking into this one! It’s a perfect little boss-battler!