kia ora koutou and welcome to my top 33 solo games of all time
why 33 you ask well i play a lot of solo
games so i thought i'd show you a lot of
my favorites now
i've played about 300 on solo games so
this represents
the top 10 of all the solo games i've
played now there are some caveats on
this this must represent games that i
actually set up and play solo on the
table it cannot represent app plays
or other form of online play so this is
the games that i've
actually set up and played physically
which disqualifies two of my favorite
solo games
sentinels of the multiverse and
terraforming mars because the vast
majority of my plays of those games are
via the app and not playing it
physically on the tabletop so as much as
i love the solo modes on sentinels
and terraforming mars they just can't
make the list because i don't play them
physically very often
spirit island gloomhaven and scythe
these are three great games but i
vastly prefer them as either co-op or
competitive games
rather than solo and finally the
elephant in the room
mage knight a game that lots of people
like but i don't really like that much
it's not that i hate mage knight
it ended up about 60th on this list but
i know there's a lot of people out there
who absolutely think it should be number
one
on every solo board gaming list and i
don't hate it i just don't like it as
much as everyone else seems to so with
that out of the way
let's move on to the list and remember
these are entirely
my opinions based on my personal play
experience
your experience may vary first up we
have architects of the west kingdom
which is a worker placement game where
the solo mode is playing against an ai
opponent your opponent will take actions
and occupy spaces and genuinely feels
like you're playing against
an opponent and i think this is one of
the cleverest solo modes on the market
the reason architects doesn't appear
higher
is that it's a game that's much stronger
at higher player counts with more
interaction i almost feel like you'd
need three ai opponents to make this
really hum
and that's a lot of busy work still an
excellent option if you're looking for a
worker placement game with a really
solid
ai opponent to play against
suburbia collectors edition
is an interesting one because it's a
city building game where you're in a
race against time to make the most
points so it's a beat your score
challenge type game
but there's a huge amount of space
within the engine to build these
fascinating different cities and if i
did this video two years ago suburbia
would be right towards the top
the problem is the collector's edition
has actually impeded me playing it as a
solo game
it's just too much stuff this one will
definitely appeal to you
if you're the kind of person who loves
combo building if you like
a certain amount of time to do something
and to try to build the absolute best
combos you can
suburbia would be a good one but i
really don't recommend sinking your
money on the collector's edition
unless you're a super fan of the game
police precinct is what i call a
firefighting co-op
and that's a co-op game where there's a
whole bunch of incidents and accidents
happening all over the board and you
have limited time and resources to deal
with them so you have to prioritize what
you take on
and what you let slide for a little bit
and hope that things don't get
entirely out of hand the three main
things you do in police precinct
are deal with gangs respond to call outs
and attempt to solve the murder
and you have to balance these three
activities because if you let one get
out of hand
it can spell doom for everything else
and now
police precinct is copaganda and it
does present the police in the absolute
perfect fantasy light
but i still enjoy it for the absolute
busyness and
hecticness of playing a game of police
precinct it's kind of fugly though
the networks is a quirky drafting and
set collection game
based on the idea of running a
television network with absolutely
terrible shows
this one has an ai opponent as well as
you flip over cards and your opponent
drafts things and takes them out of the
game
so you still have to act with urgency to
get the things you really need
and it creates that atmosphere of
playing against a live opponent
the networks are still a beat your score
game and if you're not into those you
probably won't like this
but it does feel like you are playing
against a legitimate opponent
and i just have a soft spot for the
quirky concept and the art and silliness
of this game
first martians adventures on the red
planet there'll be a few people shocked
to see first martians on this list
because i have been quite critical of it
in the past
many people consider this an inferior
game to robinson crusoe
and that's probably true and the
rulebook's quite cumbersome and it is a
lot to take in and to digest when you
first start playing it
but i persevered with first martians i
really invested my time in learning the
game and getting familiar with it
and what it is is a big crisis
management simulation you start the game
where the base it
is working and yeah you've got some
assignments and stuff to do but the core
problems you deal with are about the
gremlins that start creeping into your
systems
things breaking down and it's this
balancing act of
do i push forward to complete the
mission goals or do i
deal with the problem of the lighting
starting to fritz out that makes first
martians
quite compelling when you get into it
this is not one i would recommend to
everyone because there
is the significant time investment to
get familiar with all the systems
but if you want to play a game that
makes you feel like you're a commander
in a control room
watching buttons flash up that say
emergency emergency and getting on the
microphone and saying
bob go fix evaporators or else we're
gonna die
this could be a game that works for you
and it does work for me
and because i don't think it did
particularly well it's probably
pretty easy to pick up now one of my
patrons said to me
i noticed there's not a lot of small box
games on this list or short playtime
ones that you seem to like
longer more involved games and that is
entirely true but assembly
is one of the shorter games that i
really dig you're on a space station
and everything's going to hell and you
need to rotate and align
all of these tokens to fit to their
relevant rooms so you can escape and
survive
and why it works for me is it's easy to
set up easy to play
and engaging it feels like you're
picking a lock
every time you get a marker in the right
place to lock a room it's like you've
turned a combination
whilst picking a lock and everything
just slowly clicks into place
as time runs out and for short game
that's intensely satisfying
so definitely one to pick up if you like
solving puzzles
and also being a small box game it's not
particularly pricey as well
now this is a game that had the weirdest
little marketing campaign it was put out
by played hat games as like a mystery
selective box and that game is raxon
a lot of people pre-ordered this blind
and were quite disappointed with what
they got because raxxon is a kind of
tile-based
cooperative puzzle game but it's one of
those puzzle games that works
absolutely best as a solo game at its
core you're trying to flip over
and rescue uninfected citizens from a
zombie apocalypse
the face down tiles on the board
represent a crowd and you're trying to
do that
without revealing too many aggro and
infected
crowd members who will spread the
disease and make the game harder
it's really tough it's a really finely
tuned
tough puzzle game i'm not sure how
available raxxon is because i don't
think it did particularly well the weird
thing is
this is one of those games that i got as
a co-op but i've almost
exclusively played solo because
fundamentally it just feels like a solo
puzzle
more than a co-op game where there'd be
back and forth discussions going on
definitely one for people who like
patterns
and probability and there's a very clear
outcome either you rescue enough people
or you don't now i'm not particularly
suited to talk about the theme and
content of this game
as i don't have any real connection to
slavery in the us
and that game is freedom the underground
railroad from an
outsider's perspective the theme seems
to be executed quite well
it's treated with respect and gravity as
a game however
it is an incredibly tight and tense
cooperative game you are trying to move
slaves from slave plantations in the
south to the north to freedom and you
have incredibly limited actions to do
this
and while you're doing that the slave
hunters are also moving
so there's this big element of risk
taking and calculating
whether you can get people across the
border in time a truly tense solo
experience
and a complicated and powerful theme
combined to create a
genuinely thought-provoking game well
slight spoiler alert but this game is
going to get a three-minute recap at
some point
it's a wonderful world now this game
takes the best elements of seven wonders
and terraforming mars
and blends them together with a kind of
weird and wacky pseudo-futuristic theme
the solo mode is a beat your score
challenge but it has a bunch of
different scenarios and different things
you can try out
and it also goes for eight rounds
instead of four like the regular game
so you get to build bigger gnarlier
engines
i really like this one because i like
drafting and i like engine building
and this is definitely a game for people
who like those two things as well
if you want to maximize the potential of
a limited amount of cards and resources
across eight turns in about 20 to 30
minutes this is an
excellent selection for a solo game
there are no pandemics on this list
asides from pandemic the cure most of
the pandemics are pretty good as solo
games
the nature of firefighting co-ops with
perfect information
just lends himself well to solo games as
long as you don't mind playing two
three or four characters and for
pandemic for cure i almost always play
three or four characters
why i like pandemic the cure more is
that the characters have way more
variety
and the dice create this decision space
where you really have to think
what does this character do what are my
probabilities and there's this evil
push your luck element in the dice
rolling as well because you can re-roll
as many times as you want
noting that one side of the dice is
always bad
it's not a terribly fair game and some
games you can lose
almost immediately but the overall play
time is pretty short so when i set it up
i tend to play two three or four games
at a time
definitely one for people who love dice
and don't mind the game occasionally
just
being completely and utterly unfair well
i mentioned earlier that there were some
games that i
much prefer playing multiplayer than
solo this one's an exception and that's
dinosaur island i don't dislike dinosaur
island as a multiplayer game but i
actually really enjoy its solo mode you
have a limited number of turns
to complete set challenges and each turn
one of those challenges goes away
if you don't manage to achieve one and
this leads to a great decision space
where you've got
all these objectives that you have to
hit throughout the game and you have to
choose when to go for each one
mechanically it works a lot like the
networks
where there is an ai taking away options
from you while you play
and while it's a bit of a table hog and
does take a while to set up
the challenge of the objective cards
makes this really engaging for me and
more engaging than when i play it
multiplayer against other people
in fact the solo mode's the main reason
i'm still holding on to the game
this is another game where i really
can't comment on
the historical accuracy or how well the
game has been designed and developed
from a cultural viewpoint and that's
comancheria
the rise and fall of the comanche empire
this is
a very complex game and if you're not a
war gamer there'll be a lot of systems
you're not familiar with like
chit pulling comancheria tells the story of
the comanche empire which i
knew nothing about before i purchased
the game and gameplay moves through four
distinct chapters
starting off with the initial expansion
period through to dealing with the
oncoming american invasion
and the reservation act that sent the
comanche onto reservations
it's an intense compelling game that
takes you through the rise
and fall of an entire nation and i found
the experience of playing this
incredibly fascinating
it is a deep deep game but it's also
really complex
and there's a lot of stuff that if you
haven't played a lot of war games will
really
be confusing and different and weird to
you but if you want a challenging deep
involved game about the american west
this could be a really good one for you
to pick up i've set this on a fair few
videos but
i don't like the legendary system at all
except for legendary encounters
an alien deck building game for some
reason despite me not liking the marvel
one the x-files one
or any of the other versions i've looked
at or played aliens
just works it works with multiple
players and it works solo
as long as you're willing to play two
hands it kind of falls down if you're
only playing
one hand but there's something about how
the vent system works
and the hidden cards and having to scan
them to reveal them that just feels
insanely thematic for aliens i also like
the objective structure that each game
you have clear goals on
what you need to do to win and those
goals are super thematic
while sticking to the same core
architecture and structure each time
it just feels like legendary encounters
was built for the alien theme
and was built as an upgrade to the
original legendary system
and everything else has been kind of
tacked on afterwards
this is definitely game to pick up if
you like deck building and if you like
the aliens theme if you do like the
alien theme you'll probably love the
hell out of this game like i do
you may have noticed that not a lot of
these games are actually pure solo games
that were designed
as solo games many of them are co-op
games or engine builders that have
an automata opponent nemo's war is very
much a solo game
and sure it's marketed as being for
wonderful players but that is a joke
it is a one player game what's
compelling about this is its mix of
narrative
probability wrangling dice manipulation
and variable paths to victory so at the
start of the game nemo selects a
motivation
and this determines what things score
what victory points and that completely
changes the style of play
and what you prioritize doing if you're
about exploration you care a lot less
about sinking ships
and that's what keeps bringing me back
to nemo's war the variation in powers
the rich narrative and the different
play styles and the fact that it's a
proper
design solo game that feels like it was
made to be played by itself
i definitely skipped this one over
someone who hates dice and bad roles
though there is a
bunch of dice mitigation in this but if
you constantly complain about dice
hating you
you'll hate this one xcom is a four
player real time game where a whole
bunch of actions happen on an app
and you have to respond to them real
time on the board i like playing this as
a group game
but i also really like playing at solo
as well taking on
all four roles at the same time it's the
closest experience in board gaming
to being the captain on a bridge in a
sci-fi movie where everything is going
to
shit you have to respond quickly make
instant decisions
and generally it's a terrifyingly
stressful experience
but that's why i like playing it solo
nothing
challenges me mentally more than having
to think on my feet and make decision
after decision
after decision in a really short space
of time if you have any form of analysis
paralysis
this game will be impossible for you as
you literally have
10 seconds sometimes to make a call on a
card
i also like kitchen rush and rush md for
the exact same reason but i think xcom
is the best of these three
as a pure solo game at some point when i
get the right camera set up
i'll probably record a game of me
playing x-com solo
because i know there's a few people out
there who don't think this is possible
and overall seeing me stress and freak
out could be worth a laugh
the manhattan project energy empire is
an engine building game with a beat your
own score challenge mode
now for me those aren't the most
engaging solo game win conditions
but i really like the engine building
that goes on within energy empire there
are some restrictions in the solo mode
so some actions cost more to take and
there's less buildings available and
while it doesn't feel like you're
playing against an ai opponent
the core engine building in energy
empire is really engaging so this is
very much one for
people who like that pure can i get the
best out of the limited time and limited
resources i have
sort of gained and why it works for me
is just because the options in energy
empire
are really great there's really neat
stuff you can do and
different styles and different
approaches to the game so it has quite
high replayability
this one probably could do an automated
opponent to make it a little bit better
but still really enjoyable solo game
pavlov's house was my solo game of the
year last year and the reason for that
is it's an excellent high level
abstraction
of the battle of stalingrad across three
separate battlefield domains
something i've never seen done well in a
game before
pavlov's house zooms right into the
house where you're dealing with
individual soldiers
in individual spaces with their
individual kit then there's an
operational level where you can see
where the germans are advancing from
and a strategic level where you're
trying to manage your resources
and i thought this kind of game would be
stupidly complex
but pavlov's house does these three
domains seamlessly
simply it's not an overwhelmingly
difficult game
and while the battle of stalingrad
certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea in
terms of a theme
if you are looking for a solo war game
that feels both
epic and personal at the same time you
can do a hell of a lot worse than
pavlov's house
paladins of the west
kingdom is an action selection
engine building game and it has one of
the best ai opponents in gaming
the ai replicates a human opponent
really well and it has its own
side of the board and separate
subsystems for doing
its own moves now i really like paladins
it is a
deep rich complex engine building game
with a heck of a lot of decisions to
make from the start of your turn to the
end of your turn and how you can just
keep getting actions and keep maximizing
your returns
each and every turn building to a
crescendo at the end
now this one's got a bit of setup time
but it's not a short solo game and
you'll end up playing it for quite a
while each time you set it up and it is
quite high complexity so not one
i'd recommend to everyone but if you
want a meaty
engine building heavy decision game
against an opponent
that makes moves that will annoy you
definitely check out paladins of the
west kingdom you might be picking up on
a theme here that i like
engine building especially in solo games
and here's la
have this is almost a pure engine
builder you have a limited number of
turns
to collect resources and convert them
into points using various buildings
and other artifaces lahav is all about
maximizing your actions for each
and every turn and it is a beat your
score challenge type game in a limited
time frame and while there isn't an
ai opponent what appeals to me about
lahar solo
is it's almost entirely a math based
challenge it's a solo game where i'm
constantly crunching numbers
constantly thinking of what's the best
selection here
what's the best outcome how can i
maximize my return here
it's also one you can definitely take
your time with thinking through your
moves
and planning out two three four five
turns in advance
definitely another one for the engine
building fans out there
and now for something completely
different defenders of the last stand is
an
absolute mess of a game and i love it
have you ever thought
what a pandemic instead of viruses was
biker gangs
and instead of just moving around the
board and clearing out things
how about we could go on wacky
post-apocalyptic adventures
and what if each virus instead had a
gang leader that was super tough to take
on
and like a complete end game sub game of
its own
defenders of the last stand is just a
mess it's just got systems all over the
place
there's too much happening it's not
balanced and yet
and yet it is one of my favorite solo
games just because it's so absolutely
batshit
some days i want to play a slick engine
builder where i'm crunching the numbers
each and every turn other times i just
want to fight radioactive monsters
and if you do like firefighting co-op
games that have way too much chrome
and too many systems this could be one
to pick up it's
it's really quite difficult to get these
days though because the company's gone
out of business
but there is a less gonzo version of the
game called defenders of the realm
that is still available i believe and
this is not me flexing that i own some
weird out-of-print game
i think they went out of business
because the game isn't actually very
good
i just happen to like it it's the board
game equivalent of a terrible cult movie
that's somehow quite engaging i'd love
to see it get picked up
streamlined a little and republished
because as
gonzo as it is and as wacky as it is
there's an experience here i think
could be presented in a slightly better
way to a much wider audience and do
incredibly well
so if you're listening richard let's
make defenders of the last stand
second edition of thing
and from the
gonzo and ridiculous
to the slick and sublime we have
anachrony
anachrony has probably the best ai
opponent in all of board gaming
the chronobot is just a really
terrifyingly annoying opponent it's one
of the first times i played a solo game
that i felt like the ai
was playing like a real player and the
kind of real player i wanted to punch in
the mouth the chronobot has this
aggressive relentless play style
and you just want them to slow down so
you can do your damn stuff in time
and anachrony itself is a worker
placement game it's one of my favorite
worker placement games
it has a lot of chrome and a lot of
extra systems it's not a simple game by
any means
but i love the combinations of mechanics
in this game the reason it's not
higher on this list is because the setup
time is a pain in the ass and i don't
bring it to the table remotely as much
as i feel i should
but if you are looking for a worker
placement game with an
ai opponent that's really challenging
and the victory conditions
are to beat the chronobot who is scoring
points really really quickly so if you
want a solo game that's a heavy worker
placement game
and you want to feel the time pressure
of playing against a good opponent
anachrony could be a really good pickup
nemesis is another game where i
absolutely love the solo mode but the
setup time means i don't play it
remotely as much as i'd like to now
there's multiple ways to play the solo
you can
legitimately play a solo character
roaming around the ship or you can play
multi-handed solo playing multiple
characters and nemesis handles this
extremely well
making a public goal for each player in
the group
so if you have four players you have
four goals and you have to complete
all of them so there's a scaling
difficulty with the more players you add
and that's a really nice
simple way to make a multi-handed solo
more difficult without adding wacky
mechanics on top i love the theme of
nemesis i love pretty much everything
about nemesis
as you might have picked up from the
aliens legendary thing i am a huge fan
of the alien franchise
and nemesis is probably the best aliens
game out there
despite not technically being an aliens
game
and while the solo mode doesn't have the
portrayal elements of the classic
nemesis game
i'm not the biggest fan of the betrayal
elements of nemesis
and i think they're one of the more
misunderstood things about the game
so being able to play the game just for
the exploration the discovery
and running away from monsters by
yourself makes nemesis
a really good pickup as a solo game if
you like dice chucking
if you like exploration and if you're in
love with the theme
when some games get a second edition
it's a step forward or a step backwards
when mansions of madness got a second
edition
it was an absolute revolution the first
manchester madness was a game i really
enjoyed
but it was a giant pain in the ass to
set up and it requires someone to
essentially play
a dungeon master type role second
edition bind all that and replace it
with an
app and what that means is you can kind
of just set up the game with a couple of
rooms
hit the app and pretty much start
playing immediately and it hits all of
the classic
haunted house lovecraftian notes as well
you're exploring a place trying to
figure out what supernatural things
going on
eventually leading to a major showdown
we have to dismiss the monster or defeat
it or somehow escape from it
this one won't be for you if you don't
like dice and random events
and i found it really comes alive with
the expansions because the core game
only shipped with four scenarios
and one of those is far too long to be
fun i also think it's a game you can't
take too seriously
it's a haunted house exploration but
definitely one i'd recommend to people
who have the budget for it because
it's not cheap especially not of all the
adults and you really have to be in love
with the exploration
and dice based system of mansions of
badness to really get a kick out of it
but the main reason i love it is it
feels like a game where you get to
genuinely explore things the map isn't
revealed at the start of the game it's
not in a book
it's it's given to you slowly as you
explore the building
and few games have that genuine sense of
exploration
at least the first time you play the
scenario
if i'd done this list six months ago
this game would be around about number
20 or 30 but it's
jumped up to number 10 and that's
hostage negotiator and the reason it's
made that jump is because
of the career mode that they put out
recently now i enjoy hostage negotiator
i know a lot of people have some issues
with it
because it is a high luck high variance
game the theme is
you're negotiating against a hostage
taker and each of these hostage takers
has different personality different
mechanics and has different plans
and takes different actions and a common
complaint is that it's too random to
which i say
it's not really you can each turn spend
cards to get conversation points
and stockpile them later sure you can
with one roll and that can
end your game but it's a short game
short games can be a bit random and
crazy but what career mode added was a
narrative to it a connecting story
between all these negotiations as your
character matures and grows
and goes through life changes and it
took all of the best parts of legacy
games
and none of the terrible parts so each
time you play through you get a new
story you get new hooks and new things
happen
but you're not shredding cards and the
board isn't ruined at the end of the
play
i definitely recommend starting with a
small hostage negotiator box first
to see if the core mechanics work for
you though but if you do like those core
mechanics
and the dice throwing and dice
manipulation doesn't drive you up the
wall
then career mode is a really good step
to take
another thing that's appeared on this
list a fair bit are firefighting co-ops
and the captain is dead is one of my
favorites of these to play solo and the
reason for that is it's a quick setup
time
the game's always tight and there's a
whole bunch of wacky character
combinations you can try this is one
where you really have to play
multi-handed solo and on occasion i have
played it with
seven different characters but why it's
so high on the list is because
the game's fast it's quickly paced
there's a lot of decisions and you just
play it boom boom boom
constantly going through actions so it's
what i like to put on the table when
i've got
an extra 20 or 30 minutes spare i can
set the game up quickly
and i can just blitz through a play of
it definitely one for sci-fi fans who
fall in love with the theme but also for
people who just enjoy those fire
fighting co-ops
number eight is one of the most unique
games in my collection and that is
leaving earth leaving earth is a
simulation of running a space agency and
it is one of the most
math-heavy games you can play
calculating exactly what it takes to
send rockets
via venus to slingshot around jupiter
all the way out to neptune
requires some paper and pencil and a lot
of time and thinking which is why it
works quite well as a solo game as a
multiplayer game
you can end up with some periods where
someone's just doing math for 15 minutes
and that can bring the game down to a
crawl i don't mind that that much
but one of the advantages of solo is
when you're doing the complex math
you're not noticing because you're doing
the complex math it also has a great
push your luck mechanic in it and while
the solo mode is just a race to score as
many points as you can before the end of
the game
the different missions you get and the
different conditions on each planet
because at this point we don't know if
venus is uninhabitable or not we only
know that once we've explored it
means it's not a solved game as soon as
you sit down to plan
this is definitely a game for patient
people who want a solo game where you
can sit
reflect plan and think it's a slow
burning solo game
not a quick rush of adrenaline well when
i mentioned first martians and said it
wasn't as good as robertson crusoe
it should have been pretty obvious that
robinson crusoe was going to appear on
this list
and here it is robinson crusoe is one of
the most involved solo games you can
play
you land shipwrecked with very few
resources
on a tropical island a cursed tropical
island
and you have to struggle to build
shelter find supplies
and deal with an ongoing story problem
and there's a lot of different scenarios
ranging from relatively easy to stupidly
impossible
and like first martians it's a game
about risk mitigation there's too many
things you need to do
and you don't have enough resources what
elevates it above first martians for me
though
is the genuine sense of achievement you
get when you finish a game
of robinson crusoe you've gone from
landing on the beach with absolutely
nothing
to having a working shelter and a big
fire built for a ship to see
you're also armed with homemade weapons
and have probably killed a bear
but it's also a brutally merciless game
and you will lose
and lose and lose which makes those
victories
even more sweet it's a very complex game
with a lot of moving parts as well so
what i recommend to people who have a
lot of time to
learn the rules and get invested with it
this is not a game you can just pick up
put down and start playing it's a time
commitment
but when you win a game of robinson
crusoe there are very few things
in solo board gaming more satisfying
now everyone knows i've got a pretty
good relationship with garphill games
they live just up the road from me
and i tend to review all their games and
i tend to like most of their games but
something that will probably surprise
people
is that my number six is circadian's
first light i think circadians
is the best solo mode garphil games has
done the ai opponent
has the same thing as anachrony it
plays fast and you want to punch it in
the face
circadians is a dice placement game and
your ai opponent is going to be placing
dice
exactly where you don't want them to
place them the other thing i really like
about circadians
is that there are variable player powers
and they're all exceptionally strong
so each time you pick one of these
characters it leads you down a different
potential engine building path now i
have the expansion that has 12 of these
characters so that's 12 distinct play
styles
and of course you can pull different
levers within the game within each of
those styles
and it combines several things i really
enjoy in a solo game it has an excellent
ai opponent it has
engine building and it has different
paths to victory and i think circadians
is one of those overlooked gems in solo
gaming and it's also one of those dice
games where
it doesn't really matter what you roll
there's enough different options for low
rolls and high rolls and enough dice
manipulation
that you can make things work as and
when you need them to
and sure you might not be able to do
exactly what you want each turn
but that's part of the challenge of it
so i recommend this one to people who
like
engine building and who like having to
think about what the best decision you
can make
with the resources to hand are and also
to people who want to play against a
quality ai opponent
dawn of the zeds is a
swaggering beast of a solo game
and it's a solo game that has kicked my
ass far too many times
and yet i keep going back to it and i'm
not 100%
sure why i normally end a game of dawn
of the zeds
absolutely frustrated and angry with it
and then a few days later
i'm setting it back up and playing again
dawn of the zeds is
a defense game where you are defending a
town against an
oncoming horde of zombies and the
zombies don't fight fair
it is a game full of traps and traps are
things that experienced gamers
learn through repeated plays of a game
but that screw over new players
and initially you think oh i should
defend out i should try to hold the
zombies as far back as possible
this is a way to lose all your people
you cannot hold
everything in the game you must make
sacrifices you must decide
when is a good time to retreat you have
limited resources
and initially you think i'm just going
to shoot my gun all the time and then
you run out of ammo
when you really need it there are very
few games where i felt
so pressed and so desperate for extra
actions and extra resources than dawn of
the zeds
and the narrative and stories it tells
are really compelling you've got this
wide selection of heroes
each of whom are unique and bring
different things to the team
and a massive number of events and
complications to the game
it's an absolute hellscape to learn
though as the game comes with five
different difficulties each with their
own different rules
so the time commitment of getting into
dawn of the zeds is really high
and while you're learning the game
you're also going to keep losing and
losing over and over
so who's this game for masochists
probably i'm probably a solo board
gaming masochist
because i genuinely like dawn of the
zeds i just don't think dawn of the zeds likes me
now this will shock absolutely no one
Arkham Horror second edition
is right up towards the top of my list i
have played Arkham Horror second edition
hundreds of times while i was on the
sickness benefit for two years
i left the game set up on a table and i
would play it just about every day
and what i love about second edition is
that it's a wacky
random event simulator crazy things
happen in arkham and there's so many
different characters
great odd ones encounters mythos events
and other world encounters that you will
never play the exact same game
each time you set it up and this is
infinite combinations that really made
the game
super replayable to me and yeah it's got
a massive footprint
and a pretty long play time but at the
time that was exactly what i needed
was a long game i could just leave set
up
and play over and over again and we
still play arkham second edition a fair
bit
and while this one isn't that easy to
pick up anymore many people prefer
eldritch horror to arkham horror second
edition
so if you can't get 2nd edition consider
grabbing eldritch horror instead
if you are looking for a co-op game that
you can play solo
where it's all about battling monsters
and wacky stuff happening
and learning to have a love-hate
relationship with your dice
this war of mine is one of my all-time
favorite games
and the main reason for that is the
content that it deals with
very few games draw me in narratively
like this war of mine and it has this
sublime ability to tell compelling
interesting stories but it's also a very
tight
nasty game as well you never have enough
resources
you never have enough food there's
always a sense of desperation
and i'm guessing that's the board game
masochist coming out of me again i like
when games present
a serious challenge this war of mine
does have a dramatically long setup
time but the game itself will take you a
long time to play
so the setup time to play time doesn't
feel that bad
unless of course you die in the first
few days which does happen from time to
time but if you're looking for a game
that will draw
you in a game that will tell a story a
game where you will constantly feel
tense about the decisions you have to
make you really can't do much better
than this war of mine but there's
definitely a content warning on this
game
as when it goes dark it gets
exceptionally dark
the last two games on this list are my
most played solo games
over the last three years these are
games that i routinely set up and play
the first of these is healthy heart
hospital which could also be called
terrible hospital management simulator
in healthy heart hospital
you are trying to cure patients that's
the goal at least
and you do this by drafting cubes out of
the bag cubes that match different
disease types
and it's a bag manipulation game because
each time you draw some cubes out of the
bag
you're given the option of putting some
back in and discarding others
changing the complexion of the bag so if
red cubes represent cardiac disease
and you have a lot of sick patients with
cardiac disease
you're going to be wanting to trim the
bag down and keep putting red cubes back
in so that when you go to treat those
patients you're pulling out
more red cubes than you are anything
else which helps cure them and this
seems like something you can do really
easily
but it's a genuine challenge and why i
love
healthy heart hospital is that it's full
of micro decisions
every time you pull cubes out you're
thinking how do i need to change the
shape of the bag
you're also counting in your head what's
out
what's in what are my probabilities
there's a lot of math
to jumble around in your head while
you're playing healthy art hospital
if you want to get good outcomes and
then the game just occasionally is
brutally unfair
people will die in the waiting room
they'll die in the wards they'll die in
surgery
and that will destroy the reputation of
your hospital really quickly but i keep
coming back to healthy heart hospital
because that core gameplay loop really
appeals to me and that's a really
different decision point
to most games i play now i'm not sure of
the availability of the first edition
it was a victory point games game and
they've kind of gone out of business
but i believe there might be a second
edition of this coming out next year
and so i am super looking forward to
that i really want to see what
improvements they make on the game and i
really want to share this one with a
wider audience because i really love it
so yeah healthy heart hospital a game
that revolves around its bag
manipulation mechanic
and if that mechanic clicks for you like
it did for me
you'll really really love it and quickly
before we get to the last
game these long format videos are made
possible thanks to patreon
so here's a shout out to my patreon
supporters who made
my top 33 solo games video possible
thanks crew
and on to number one it's deeply ironic
that i was kind of making fun of
pandemic earlier because the number one
game on my list is by the designer of
pandemic and it's thunderbirds i just
love thunderbirds as a solo game it is a
firefighting co-op but it's one that
revolves around pick up and deliver
you need to move the little thunderbird
vehicles around the board to get them in
the right place
in order to conduct rescues the theme is
just beautifully executed
and i am a thunderbirds fan from from
childhood but i think it's a game that
even if you don't know the theme
the core gameplay and mechanics are just
really fun
you have to think several turns ahead
because you need to think oh we need to
get the mole driller
from this continent to that continent so
you can pop along
and fix that and it's the fact that your
turns are layers and have to be planned
out in advance
then make it a really good solo game i
play this all the damn time
steph will walk around the house going
where are you oh you're playing
thunderbirds because it spends so much
time on my table
and i think it's an excellent fire
fighting co-op because it represents an
evolution of mat lealock's ideas from
pandemic but because that franchise is
so
rooted in its core ideas they won't take
the evolutionary steps that thunderbirds
did
i think if this had a different brand it
would have been a massive hit
because the core gameplay is just
wonderful it's easy to set up
it's not that much more complex than
pandemic and yet the decision space
is far bigger i had no idea about the
availability of this one
i don't think it was very successful and
i appear to be the only super fan of
this game
on the internet but if you can track
down a copy
and you do love co-ops and you do love
firefighting games
and you do love pandemic you are almost
certainly going to enjoy thunderbirds
you might not like it as much as i do
but i'm pretty sure you won't hate it
and that brings us to the end of our
list as i said earlier there were
several hundred solo games i had to
leave out
and some of the ones just off my list
include horrified flashpoint fire rescue
raiders of scythia spacecorp the
reckoners gaia project
zombicide and aeon's end if i was doing
a top 40
those games would also be included so in
the comments let me know your top five
solo games
are there any on here that you tried and
you liked are there anyone here that you
tried and you hated
which ones of them are most intriguing
to you let me know in the comments
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