Cephalofair turned the long-form roleplaying campaign into a board game with no game master, and its Kickstarter successes, culminating in Frosthaven's record-setting campaign, defined the crowdfunded 'big box' era of tabletop gaming.
History
Cephalofair Games is the company Isaac Childres founded in 2014 to publish his own designs. Childres had completed a PhD intending to be a physicist, then decided, in his company's words, that designing and publishing board games would be more fun. His first game, Forge War, launched the company, which by his account he runs from Lafayette, Indiana, with a growing team handling design, development, writing, art direction, publishing and fulfillment.
His second design was far more ambitious. Childres, a fan of heavy Euro-style games who also had a soft spot for dungeon crawlers, wanted a board game that felt like a long roleplaying campaign. He named Dungeons & Dragons as the chief inspiration, with Final Fantasy, Diablo, Willow and Labyrinth. The result, Gloomhaven, went to Kickstarter in September 2015 and raised $386,104 from 4,904 backers. The game in the box was enormous: 95 scenarios in a branching campaign, 17 character classes (most sealed in boxes to be unlocked), modular hex-map tiles, and sealed envelopes and stickers that permanently changed the world. Combat used no dice. Each turn a player chose two cards from a shrinking hand and used the top half of one and the bottom half of the other, and simple card-driven AI ran the monsters so that everyone could play the heroes and no one had to be the Game Master.
Strong reviews of the first printing drove a second campaign in April 2017 that raised about $4 million from more than 40,000 backers, and a retail release at a suggested $140. Gloomhaven won six Golden Geek awards for 2017, including best overall game, and the Origins Award for Game of the Year. It reached No. 1 on BoardGameGeek's user rankings in 2017 and stayed there until February 2023; about 120,000 copies had sold by August 2018.
Cephalofair built a franchise around it. Forgotten Circles (2019) added a class and scenarios. Jaws of the Lion (2020), a cheaper standalone with a five-scenario tutorial, launched as a Target exclusive to reach casual players. A video game adaptation by Flaming Fowl Studios, published by Asmodee Digital, entered early access in 2019 and was fully released in 2021. The standalone sequel Frosthaven, set in a northern outpost, raised almost $13 million from more than 83,000 backers on Kickstarter in 2020, the most for any game there until Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere RPG passed it in August 2024; Childres also revised aspects of its setting to address cultural bias. A tiny solo edition, Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs, was announced in July 2023, and Gloomhaven: Second Edition, with revised scenarios and classes, followed in May 2025.
Notable work
Forge War, Gloomhaven, Forgotten Circles, Jaws of the Lion, Frosthaven, Buttons & Bugs and Gloomhaven: Second Edition.
Legacy
Cephalofair is proof that a single designer with a clear vision and a crowdfunding page could, in the 2010s, reach the top of the hobby. Gloomhaven carried the Dungeon-Crawler Board Games from HeroQuest's family evenings and Descent's overlord battles to something close to a tabletop RPG campaign in cardboard, and its success set the scale, and the price, of the premium campaign games that followed (see Crowdfunding & the Kickstarter Era).
Marginalia
- Childres completed a physics PhD before deciding that designing and publishing board games would be more fun.
- He founded Cephalofair in 2014 to self-publish his first game, Forge War.
- Gloomhaven's first Kickstarter, launched in September 2015, raised $386,104 from 4,904 backers.
- A second Gloomhaven campaign in April 2017 raised about $4 million from more than 40,000 backers; the retail game listed at $140.
- Gloomhaven held the No. 1 spot on BoardGameGeek from 2017 until February 2023 and won six 2017 Golden Geek awards.
- Frosthaven's 2020 Kickstarter raised almost $13 million from more than 83,000 backers, the most-funded game campaign on the platform until August 2024.
- Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion (2020), a smaller standalone with a tutorial campaign, launched as a Target exclusive.
Quick answers
- What is Cephalofair Games?
- Isaac Childres's Indiana publisher whose crowdfunded Gloomhaven, a colossal box of cooperative campaign dungeon crawling, spent more than five years as the top-rated game on BoardGameGeek.
- When was Cephalofair Games founded?
- Cephalofair Games was founded in 2014 and is based in Lafayette, Indiana.
- Who founded Cephalofair Games?
- Isaac Childres.
- What is Cephalofair Games known for?
- Gloomhaven.
- What happened to Cephalofair Games?
- Independent and active; Gloomhaven: Second Edition was released in May 2025.
