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I'm still holding out for a few upcoming Kickstarter campaigns, but as usual, there are campaigns of interest for solo gamers that are currently active. 1. Nemesis Nemesis has a sci-fi theme and involves surviving in a hostile, alien-infested ship. If you like survival horror games that conjure a persistent sense of dread, this might be a good one for you. One of the more interesting aspects of the game, to me, is that it's more about survival than about killing waves of aliens—and there is a noise mechanic to encourage stealth. Stealth in board games is a particular area of interest for me, so I'll be keeping an eye on this one. If you want to see the game in action, there is an extensive preview from Ant Lab Games: 2. Tiny Epic Zombies Survival horror seems to be a common theme right now, given that another hot Kickstarter of the moment is Tiny Epic Zombies from Gamelyn Games. I've never felt the call of the "Tiny Epic" games, but if they are your thing, Tiny Epic Zombies looks pretty good. This entry into the series will see the continuation of ITEMeeples, as well as vehicles that meeples can ride. It also includes five different playstyles, including cooperative, competitive, solo, and cooperative/competitive with a zombie player. If nothing else, that's a lot of stuff in a tiny box, and for a pretty good price ($25 for the deluxe version). That said, I still have TRULY mixed feelings about ITEMeeples: 
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My fellow solo gamer, Giles Pound, recently invited me to write a guest post for his blog, Both Sides of My Table. I chose to write about some of my early experiences traveling alone, and how they ultimately contributed to my current love of solo gaming. You can check out the post here. Also, here's a photo from my first solo trip abroad. I went to Berlin, Germany in 2007 and it changed my life for the better! Here, I am posing with a bust of Heinrich Schliemann, a methodologically questionable archaeologist who discovered what we now believe to be the site of Troy. Ah, to be that young again...   What is this game about? Sentinels of the Multiverse is a cooperative card game from Greater Than Games in which each player chooses a superhero (or one player chooses multiple heroes!). Then, you all throw down against an evil supervillian and his or her deck of minions. On top of that, you deal with an environment deck that presents new challenges every turn. Sentinels is not a deck building game, nor it is a deck construction game. Each hero and villain comes with a pre-made deck for players to become familiar with—and each deck works a little bit differently, giving plenty of variability as you experiment with different combinations of heroes, villains, and environments. Not only does the base game include plenty of gameplay, but there are several expansions, all of which come together to form an overarching storyline. The characters in Sentinels of the Multiverse are more than just faces on playing cards. There is an entire comic series devoted to their exploits, and it's awesome. So much thought has gone into the world of this game, and it's something that really shows when you play it. How does it play solo? Technically speaking, Sentinels of the Multiverse is supposed to be played with 3–5 heroes. That means that in solo play, a single person needs to track the cards, health, and damage bonuses of at least three different characters, as well as run the enemy and environment decks. And I will be real with you--Sentinels can definitely be fiddly, given that several cards offer damage bonuses or decreases. There are also several different types of damage to which various characters might have vulnerabilities or immunities. That said, I LOVE to play Sentinels of the Multiverse solo. I don't really mind the bookkeeping, and finding interesting combinations of heroes is a ton of fun. You really do feel like a team of superheroes going after a bad guy, and win or lose, it's a total blast. I wish that Marvel and DC superhero games could be this good.  This box contains decks from expansions as well as from the main game, but LOOK AT ALL THOSE CHOICES! Overall Thoughts Other than the fact that it's fiddly, Sentinels of the Multiverse is a fantastic game. The turn order and rules are super clear and simple, and after setup, you're good to go with just the reference on the back of the rulebook and the text on the cards. The gameplay is solid and so much fun. You can choose to play simpler characters who do straightforward damage, or you can go for more complicated characters who offer you new and interesting ways to fight. If you want to try Sentinels of the Multiverse but don't want to deal with the full amount of bookkeeping, you actually have two options. First, there is a truly excellent app for Sentinels, so gameplay is a breeze anywhere, anytime. Second, there is a companion app (Sentinels Sidekick) that helps you track damage for multiple heroes and minions while playing the tabletop version of the game. I personally love the companion app, and using it has made me feel a lot more open to app integration in tabletop games.  You can even acquire a very helpful playmat for this game. Harley always wants to take the environment's turn... Do I recommend it?
YES. Enthusiastically. Sentinels of the Multiverse is great solo, with friends, or even with kids if they are comfortable reading. (And it's cooperative, so you can help them out if they need it.) Unless you either hate superheroes or truly loathe tracking damage for multiple characters, this is a game you ought to try. It will never leave my collection. Overall Rating: 5 stars Rating Scale: 5 stars — I love it! 4 stars — I really like it. 3 stars — I like it. 2 stars — It's okay. 1 star — Meh.  What is this game about? Sylvion is an Oniverse game designed by Shadi Torbey, which means it's set in the same universe as Onirim, Castellion, and Nautilion. Mechanically, however, Sylvion is its own game. In Sylvion, you command an army of forest creatures fighting to protect their home from a raging fire. As you mount your defense, several different cards come in to help you. Various animals will preform actions on your behalf. For example, whales allow you to reposition the fire elementals approaching your tree line, while elephants can spray water with their trunks and destroy oncoming blazes. Fountains act as your front line of defense, attempting to cool and hopefully even eliminate the flames. Trees don't do much during the fire itself, but you need them to pay for action cards—one of the game's most interesting mechanics is that you pay card costs by discarding other cards from your hand—and eventually to renew your home when there is nothing left but smoke and ashes. Your "forest" is represented by cards that create the boundaries of your play area and that act as your HP throughout the game. Every time a fire breaches your defenses and hits your treeline, you flip one over to signify that your forest has lost some health. Lose it all, and your forest will be nothing but a charred ruin. Sylvion also has good variability, in part because you don't always play with the exact same army of flora, fauna, and fountains. Before each battle with the fire elementals, you will draft your deck—and some of the more cowardly animals will desert you prior to your epic battle.  As with all Oniverse games, the art is a little weird, but great. How does it play solo?
Sylvion is explicitly designed for solo play, and it does its job well. There are some co-op rules tacked on to make room for a second player, but this game is meant to be played solo and it's best that way. Overall Thoughts I love tower defense games, and I very much enjoy Sylvion. It's not quite as compact as Onirim—expect to spend longer playing Sylvion (30-40 minutes) and for it to take up more table space. But Sylvion is still a quick, portable, and delightful solo card game. This game also has plenty of replay value. There is an introductory scenario for your first game or two, as well as a more advanced game. For added challenges, you can add different win conditions, and there are three expansions included in the base box. If you're looking for a challenging but still relatively mellow solo game, Sylvion might be an excellent choice for you. Do I recommend it? Yes. If you like tower defense games and are interested in a purely solo experience, Sylvion is an excellent choice. Overall Rating: 4 stars Rating Scale: 5 stars — I love it! 4 stars — I really like it. 3 stars — I like it. 2 stars — It's okay. 1 star — Meh.  I've been on the road for the past week, but that hasn't stopped me from occasionally checking Kickstarter to look for upcoming solo-playable games. I haven't committed to backing anything at the moment—last year was financially draining and I'm feeling picky—but the new year has definitely brought some intriguing options: 1. Corsair Leader Another game in the Air Leader series, Corsair Leader will take players to WWII, You'll be able to choose to campaign as the Navy or as the Marines, and you will pilot different aircraft (and encounter different enemies) based on the year you are playing in. The combination of thrilling air combat with well-researched history will make this game a winner for a lot of solo gamers, especially those who are fans of the Air Leader series already. As for me, Thunderbolt: Apache Leader is on my shelf waiting to be played this year, so I'll wait on this one until I've had a chance to play the one I've already got. 2. Neanderthal and Greenland This Kickstarter campaign is for a reprint of two games by Phil Eklund that have been a bit difficult to find. Both are meant to simulate survival in difficult situations. I'm on the fence about these—some solo gamers, most notably Ricky Royal, love Phil Eklund games. But others have indicated that the games are clever and impressive but ultimately not that fun to play. Eklund is clearly a brilliant designer but perhaps also an acquired taste, so I'll be thinking about this one.  3. Everdell
This campaign is ending soon (January 25) and has raised quite a bit of money. Everdell is a worker placement/tableau building game set in a beautiful world of woodland creatures, one that reminds me of the Redwall books by Brian Jacques. The art definitely attracts me, and I am also a huge sucker for stories about adorable critters. Redwall and Watership Down were key childhood reads, and I was delighted to discover Mouse Guard. Everdell looks like a worker placement implementation of that sort of world. That said, it's worker placement. Will the theme and the mechanics work in ways that are satisfying, or is this a dry game with amazing art and a great theme? I guess we'll find out!  I've been to board game stores that serve food and drinks, but I've never before been to a full-on board game café. Given that Canada is full of them, I couldn't visit here and not go to one—even if I'm technically working. Right now, I'm co-teaching a French-Canadian culture class, and we're in Canada with the kiddos. They are supposed to be practicing their French as much as possible. And last night, I had the perfect solution: Take a couple of them with me to a board game café! Most of the students were too cool to go with me, but I took some kids to La Revanche last night, and we had a BLAST. The game library is huge. There are game teachers there to help you select and learn games in both English and French. And you can play games that really stretch your language skills—we went with Tales of the Arabian Nights, which meant that we were all doing a lot of reading in French. My brain got a workout, too! (I passed my reading requirement for my Ph.D. back in the day, but it's been a while.)  Options! During the game, we had an adventure in which my students were imprisoned several times, one kid went crazy from listening to an overly-long speech, hearts were broken, and a magical relic turned one of us into an animal. I managed to repeatedly earn the "sagesse" skill, so the students now sarcastically call me "wise one." It was hilarious, and most importantly, it was all in French.
Not only did the kids have a great time—meaning that more kids will want to come in the future—but my colleagues were intrigued by the fact that the students had to work through so much French. (English is their first language, so they lean on it whenever possible.) If we do this trip again next year, we might specifically try to arrange a trip to a board game café so the kids can try to learn game rules in French and have a more immersive language experience. This is one of those awesome situations where my professional and personal interests combine in a satisfying way. Not only have I passed the board game disease to a new generation, but I managed to help my students work on their French, even though I don't really speak it myself. I'm going to call that a win.  To watch an overview of this game and see a few sample turns, click here. What is this game about? For those of you who have played Shadowrun: Crossfire, Dragonfire is a reskin of that game with a D&D theme and some rule tweaks. For those of you who haven't, Dragonfire is a cooperative deck building game in which 2–6 players work together to complete adventures, level up their characters, and play a longer campaign over time. In Dragonfire, you complete adventures by choosing an adventure card and playing through a number of "scenes," during which you face challenges and eliminate encounter cards. Within your party, four different class types must be represented: Martial, Arcane, Devotion, and Deception. If you are playing with two characters, each will represent two classes for the purposes of the game. The classes more or less match up with the traditional D&D classes of fighter, wizard, cleric, and rogue. They have different symbols and colors, which also correspond to different damage types when fighting monsters or dealing with location cards. You need to defeat each encounter by dealing specific types of damage in a specific order, according to what is listed on the cards. You will begin each adventure with an "equipment pack" (i.e. deck of cards) that is tailored to your character. You use the same equipment pack each time you play a new adventure, no matter how far along you are in the game. Using these starting cards, you defeat monsters, collect gold after eliminating them, and use that gold to purchase better cards from the market. You don't draw new encounters until you handle the ones from the "scene" you are currently playing, but don't waste too much time—every round, you draw a "dragonfire" card that makes the game progressively harder as the dragonfire discard deck grows.  Characters! Dragonfire is truly cooperative. Encounters are placed in front of each character in the game, but you do not have to deal damage only to the encounter in front of your character. In fact, it is crucial that you attack the monsters confronting your companions, especially your wizard if you are playing with one. It also differs from a traditional deck building game, in that you are only able to draw two cards at a time, and the cards you purchase from the market are placed directly into your hand--not your discard pile. In fact, it is unlikely that you will cycle through your deck more than two or three times during a game. How does it play solo? To play Dragonfire, you need to control a minimum of two characters. You may, however, want to play with more—the game seems to be slightly easier with three or four. This is especially true for the quick start scenario, which is nearly impossible to beat with only two characters in play.  Both of these encounters are "Level 1" monster cards from the most basic dungeon crawl adventure. Note the massive difference in difficulty. Overall Thoughts
There is a lot to like about Dragonfire. There is definitely something about it that keeps me playing. I should warn you, however, that sometimes you are going to lose—badly—and there is nothing you can do about it. If you draw difficult-to-beat encounters right away, it can take several turns to defeat them, and in the meantime you'll have progressively fewer cards to work with (because you only draw two at a time) and no gold with which to draw new ones. Meanwhile, the dragonfire cards will pile up to make future encounters even more difficult. If you end up in this sort of situation, your party is probably doomed. There is no doubt that this game has a very swingy difficulty level, which can lead to a lot of frustration. That said, I enjoy the puzzle that Dragonfire presents. Also, you can still give your characters at least some experience for failed adventures if you are playing a campaign. Over time, experience allows you to purchase upgrade stickers which you place on your character card. The early upgrades aren't all that great, but they definitely start to get better in the higher experience ranges—and the core set of Dragonfire only covers you up to level five. There may be more interesting buffs in the future as the level cap increases. When you complete adventures, you also get a chance to acquire magical items for your deck. Some of these items are pretty cool, and there are even exclusive ones that you can pick up after successfully completing a Dragonfire adventure in your friendly local game store. I love that Catalyst seems to have big plans for the future of Dragonfire, and I want to see where this game is going to go. Do I recommend this game? Yes, if you know what you're getting into. Dragonfire can be very frustrating, and criticisms of its difficulty spikes and slow leveling system are legitimate. However, I can't help really liking this game. I know that I will keep coming back to it for some time, because I am enjoying it despite its flaws. I may add a revision to this review in the future, after Dragonfire has had some more time to expand and develop. Overall Rating: 3.5 Rating Scale: 5 stars — I love it! 4 stars— I really like it. 3 stars — I like it. 2 stars — It's okay. 1 star — Meh. |
AuthorMy name is Liz Davidson, and I play solo board games. A lot of solo board games... Archives
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