Final Girl is absolutely my favorite solo game precisely because of the theme and emergent narrative - all of the actions, events, scenarios, and items, along with the solo mechanics, weave together to create a beautiful and compelling story in your mind as you're playing through it.
I'm a solo only player. 7th Continent and Imperium: Classics/Legends/Horizons are my top 2 by a long shot. The 1-player guild on BGG is currently running it's yearly poll to find the community's top 200 solo games, well worth checking out the results if you're looking for a new solo gem!
I prefer 7th Continent, but you're right that 7th Citadel is still very very good, and worth checking out. They just made a few changes that stop it being quite as good, for me. Although I do acknowledge that a few of the changes are improvements over the original, so I can definitely understand why someone would prefer Citadel.
Final Girl, TMB and Clone Wars are all very fun solo board games. I’ve played Comic Hunters with my son a lot during the summer but I haven’t tried it solo yet.
I love this series and I share your love for Final Girl. I love different types of victory conditions. I Creature Comforts you get a specific title made up of four words, which is funny. I love the Automa in Scythe and Wingspan. Other games I would have on my list are Lost Ruins of Arnak, Gloomhaven series, 7th Citadel, Sleeping Gods series, City of the Great Machine.
Great list, glad to see more solo love from you Sam! In the last 4 years, or so there was a push to get AI solo modes with more solid win/loss conditions vs the typical beat your own score solo modes that were common before that. Personally I am starting to get a bit tired of AI modes that are long winded or unintuitive to run when it would honestly be more fun just to have a beat your own score system. I much prefer 1-2 page solo mode than games that require a whole solo rulebook! Having said that, my favourite solo mode is Viscounts of the west kingdom :) Shem typically does a pretty good job of making an AI that doesn't require a ton of rules or upkeep
Legends of Void is an excellent tableau builder/resource management/engine builder with map movement and 3 big bads you have to take out. i love it. not well known but its up there for me. Union City Alliance is a deck builder and map builder that i really love. small team game that takes up a ton of space but i love it. still love my Spirit Island, Voidfall, burncycle, and such but i try and get the word out on those games when i can.
Final Girl is a blast... definitely a favorite of mine. Robinson Crusoe isn't an exclusively solo game, but I have played it that way the most. Another good solo one is Warp's Edge... if you get it, try to get the plastic chips... they just feel better in the bag. :-) Oh... and Nemo's War is another standard favorite of mine. Personally, I prefer there to be a goal in the game and not just "beat your last score." Beating my last score is more fun when it comes to arcade-style video games. ;-)
Thanks guys. Will pick up Comic Hunter's for sure. My top games would be Mage Knight, FFG LCG's like Marvel Champions and Arkham Horror, TMB- Undertow, Kings of Ruin, Heat, Ark Nova, and Shadow's of brimstone (More of an RPG in a box). I owned Kanban, Feast for Odin, and other's like that, but beat your own score gets boring after a few games. Definitely prefer coop win loss games for solo. Also prefer Adventure exploration games. I know these games are heavy, but I'm not a board game reviewer so remembering the rules on the 10 solo and 10 lite family games I own is not a problem. I don't have the Witcher because I thought to get a good solo version of that game you need to back the Kickstarter and get the Wild Hunt expansion, which I did not do.
Great list. Is Kings of Ruin better solo than multi-player? You don't need more in witcher OW for a solid solo mode but there are a lot of excellent expansions. Thanks, JT
Onirim is my favorite game to play solo, it has 100% replaced classic Solitaire for me. I'm a huge fan of the "Oniverse" game series in general, with Nautilion being my second favorite. Some other games I love solo include Castle Panic, the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Too Many Bones, Aeon's End, and For Northwood.
Too Many Bones is also my #1 solo game. I've got a spreadsheet of every tyrant and gearloc combination, trying to beat every tyrant with every gearloc solo. I'm about 30 games in so far. Only gearloc I'm missing currently is Riffle.
Thanks always for these amazing lists. Even after all these years of playing it since it first came out, Mage Knight is still my favorite solo board game. I own four of the games on your list and Final Girl will be played for the first time very soon. I'm curious about Nemo though and where it would be on yours or the board game community's list. Take care!
I've played so few games solo, I think the only ones that I've played have been Castles of Burgundy (Anniversary Edition), Lost Ruins of Arnak, Lord of the Rings (2000), Princess Bride Adventure Book Game, and Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game. I've enjoyed them all, but the best was Arnak. I have some that I'm really interested in though, including Soldiers in Postman's Uniforms and Legacy of Yu.
my top 5 solo games would probably be arc nova, sleeping gods, legacy of yu, it's a wonderful world and terraforming mars. imperium could be on top 5 but i only played once so far
@@Oaklestat it is possible, i really like west kingdom trology, but i tried raiders of north sea and didnt liked it at all, so i didnt tried another north sea games
An easy list for me as I usually lack players for games. I did kick some games off of the list that I do enjoy to play solo but are a shadow of the full experience without humans. Nemesis is an easy example here, it's really fun solo trying to escape getting eaten by aliens, but it's way more fun when you're trying to escape getting eaten by aliens whilst being paranoid about everything your friends are doing. 10: Gloomhaven - This was previously a game that I rated very highly but this has been kicked off of my list of games I actively play, I doubt I'll ever play it again. My previous solo experience with the game was incredible, and it was better solo. I guess it's just going to drop off my lists in future, but I felt it deserved a mention here. 9: ISS Vanguard 8: Pandemic Season 0 - This is my placeholder for all Pandemics. I've 4 handed season 0, so I'm comfortable putting this here. 7: War of the Ring : The Card Game - It's a flawed game, but I love it. It got kicked down the list massively because it's much better with humans. 6: V-Sabotage 5: Spirit Island 4: Aeon's End. 3: Hoplomachus Victorum 2: The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth 1: Mage Knight JT's list is so good. I'm happy to see Under Falling Skies get mentioned. It has a nice campaign, I've enjoyed watching someone else play it, but I haven't actually played it myself. Sky Mines is one of the games I excluded from my list because I like how that works with humans, but I love that game. It's in my top 35 games of all time. My Cloudspire did arrive very recently, but it's one of the roughest games to learn, and time consuming to play. Elder Scrolls is due in November, that will make this list, and that's why I haven't got around to Cloudspire yet. Kanban EV is on my "to play" list, but I have to learn that and the AI to play it, so that's another one that I'm going to need some time for. Although at least it won't be as bad as learning the more complicated Chip Theory games. I got Burncycle when I got Cloudspire, so it's probably best I haven't got to that yet either. I basically bought the Chip Theory games with the expectation of playing them solo 95% of the time, so it makes sense that eventually they would dominate a list like this for me.
Awesome list. I agree that games like Nemesis are just that much better with people. Spirit Island and Aeon's end are great picks. I am waiting for Hoplomocus Vistorum to arrive. Definitely waiting for Elder Scrolls to show up. Burn Cycle is Really cool. Thanks, JT
Finally got around to re-doing my eaten comment. Hope it comes through this time: Solo-games are something a bit weird for me. I tend not to enjoy them and would rather play with people. A lot of the time the effort to set up and play a solo boardgame just doesn't feel worthwhile when I have the option of playing a videogame. I'm also almost the opposite of Sam in that I tend to dislike Automa-style opponents as they tend to be rather fiddly while also not being particularly interesting to play against. I would much rather a Solo-mode be quite different from the Multiplayer version of the game. That said, there are some that surprised me (in both good and bad ways): Good: * City of the Great Machine: I was not expecting a 1vM game to have such a fun solo/co-op mode but was happily proved wrong with this one. There are a lot of options for tuning the difficulty too, which is appreciated. * TITANS: Solo-modes for Area Control games have not generally wowed me. I think it's a genre that is just not a good fit for solo. However, TITANs has one that works surprisingly well. Unlike solo modes for other area control games that I've tried, I would actually play this one again. * Hybris - Disordered Cosmos (Divine Betrayal expansion): Most worker placement games with solo modes that I've played seem to favour the Automa style, which I've already noted I dislike. Hybris is quite different and the solo/co-op mode feels more similar to playing a game like Eldritch Horror in a sense. You face off against Chronos who uses his three workers to try and free himself. The player(s) has to fend off his bullies while repairing the chains he breaks. It's very different from facing off against an Automa or Score/Snooze Attack and overall a very fun, challenging experience. * L5R LCG: Of all the games I was expecting to have a good solo/co-op mode the Legend of the Five Rings LCG with its last expansion, Under Fu Leng's Shadow, was least expected. 1v1 duelling card games are not generally know for this kind of thing. The solo mode turns this game into a wave defence survival mode where the player(s) simply has to survive the crushing onslaught of Demons from the Shadowlands. It's a really fun experience and very tense. The only problem is that FFG discontinued L5R LCG and Under Fu Leng's Shadow being the last expansion made it very tricky to get. Honourable mentions: * Uprising- Curse of the Last Emperor: A solo/co-op onyl 4X game with two enemy AIs that fight both the players sounds like a dream come true and if you enjoy punishing difficulty then it is. This is an amazing game but has heavy RNG, so not for everyone. That said, there are a lot of difficulty tuning options and the heavy RNG feels very thematic as the AI opponents are meant to seem unsurmountable. * Bullet: A bit like multi-player Tetris but on your table-top. Score attack is dull but the Boss Battle mode is a lot of fun and quite difficult. * Conan: Another 1vM game that has a surprisingly fun solo/co-op mode which is very fast and smooth to run while providing a fun experience. * Excavation Earth: A euro-style game with an Automa opponent that I actually enjoyed playing against. * Genotype: Another worker placement game with an Automa opponent that was pretty fun to play against. * Anachrony: ANOTHER worker placement game with an Automa opponent that is fun to play against. Maybe my gripe with Automa isn't real? * Total Domination: A 1v1 or 2v2 World War 2 themed game with an interesting approach to the map. I was quite surprised at how enjoyable the solo mode is. Bad: * Voidfall: Okay, so I'm an outlier in that I didn't really like Voidfall. Sure, the systems around building and economy are a lot of fun but overall it just feel flat for me, maybe because I expect a 4X to actually be, well, you know...4X game, which Voidfall isn't. It's just too restrictive and limiting to really feel like a good solid 4X experience IMO. But what really blows my mind is that people seem to love the solo/co-op mode more than the competitive, which I find very strange. The solo/co-op mode for this game basically boils down to: Draw a random card, pay the costs before the end of the round or suffer the penalty. Or just defer it to the next round(s) and potentially suffer an even worse penalty if you can't handle it. It's extremely dry and just not very interesting. Voidfall makes a lot of noise about its setting and you'd think the solo/co-op would be the best place for this to come through but it just doesn't. The events don't have any kind of narrative element and the Voidborn and how the solo/co-mode interacts with them just isn't that interesting. It's nice that so many people love this game tho, because it made getting rid of it without losing money easy ;-)
Holy cow. Who ate your first comment 😅? So much great information. Thank you for the indepth take. This is the second time someone has recommended Hybris to me in the past month. I need to check it out. Thanks, JT
I saw Sam play this game on this channel a while ago and I thought to myself "self if Sam loves this game I will love this game as Sam hates solo games." Times have changed I see. Have you guys done two player games yet. Back in the day you did Gateway two player games and advance. Can you do beginner, intermediate and advance as there are so many two player games. Most people play two player games I think. It deserves to be broken up into three categories.
Mage Knight ! ! ! .... I am going to imply you have not played this game solo, because if you have, I wouldn't understand how this wouldn't have made the list, even as an honorary mention at least
@@OaklestatI understand what you say about being too far behind, we do get way too many games that come out every year, but the reality of things is that, even though there is always the next big game everyone is loosing their minds over, at least when it comes to solo gameplay, Mage Knight is gonna be VERY hard to beat! they need to put Bruno Cathala, Dany Garcia, they guy behind Stonemaier Automa factory, and vital lacerda, all of them locked uo in a cabin for 2 years, and maybe then yhey could surpass Mage Knight lol
Same. I actually got a comment up within an hour of a video going live for once and it disappeared. I guess TH-cam just eats some of them, so if I ever notice a comment missing, I should just repost it. Now I have to figure out if TH-cam didn't like a description of a game or something.
I think my 3rd attempt went through. TH-cam did not like a description, I guess we're not at the stage where they're able to judge context to tell if I'm talking about something in a game or in real life, which is pretty brutal when almost every game I mention has mortal combat.
Final Girl is absolutely my favorite solo game precisely because of the theme and emergent narrative - all of the actions, events, scenarios, and items, along with the solo mechanics, weave together to create a beautiful and compelling story in your mind as you're playing through it.
The more I watch these videos the more I’m realizing JT and I have the same taste. We’d love playing games together brother!
I'm in!!
Cheers,
JT
Awesome lists. Thank you for sharing.
I'm a solo only player. 7th Continent and Imperium: Classics/Legends/Horizons are my top 2 by a long shot.
The 1-player guild on BGG is currently running it's yearly poll to find the community's top 200 solo games, well worth checking out the results if you're looking for a new solo gem!
Nice. I have been waiting to find a cheap copy of Imperium to try it. I'll check out the poll.
JT
Not a fan of 7th Continent, but surprised you didn't mention 7th Citadel instead. Heard that's better solo.
I prefer 7th Continent, but you're right that 7th Citadel is still very very good, and worth checking out. They just made a few changes that stop it being quite as good, for me.
Although I do acknowledge that a few of the changes are improvements over the original, so I can definitely understand why someone would prefer Citadel.
I like Hadrian’s Wall because it’s almost a solo game by itself. Setup and tear down takes seconds. solo campaign is also fun!
Final Girl, TMB and Clone Wars are all very fun solo board games. I’ve played Comic Hunters with my son a lot during the summer but I haven’t tried it solo yet.
Nice. Time to give it a try 🙂
Thanks, JT
I love this series and I share your love for Final Girl. I love different types of victory conditions. I Creature Comforts you get a specific title made up of four words, which is funny. I love the Automa in Scythe and Wingspan. Other games I would have on my list are Lost Ruins of Arnak, Gloomhaven series, 7th Citadel, Sleeping Gods series, City of the Great Machine.
Nice list. I only play wingspan app anymore.
Cheers, JT
Great list, glad to see more solo love from you Sam! In the last 4 years, or so there was a push to get AI solo modes with more solid win/loss conditions vs the typical beat your own score solo modes that were common before that. Personally I am starting to get a bit tired of AI modes that are long winded or unintuitive to run when it would honestly be more fun just to have a beat your own score system. I much prefer 1-2 page solo mode than games that require a whole solo rulebook!
Having said that, my favourite solo mode is Viscounts of the west kingdom :) Shem typically does a pretty good job of making an AI that doesn't require a ton of rules or upkeep
Yup, viscounts is the best Solo mode in the West Kingdom.
Thanks,
JT
Marvel Champions is my # 1 solo game. Unmatched Adventures is my #2 and Super Skill Pinball is my # 3.
Marvel Champions is great but i prefer with 2.
Thanks, JT
Legends of Void is an excellent tableau builder/resource management/engine builder with map movement and 3 big bads you have to take out. i love it. not well known but its up there for me.
Union City Alliance is a deck builder and map builder that i really love. small team game that takes up a ton of space but i love it.
still love my Spirit Island, Voidfall, burncycle, and such but i try and get the word out on those games when i can.
@@Mike_James Thanks for sharing!!
Resist!, Warp's edge, Heat, Alien Fate of the Nostromo and Space marine adventures Labyrint of the Necrons are games I regularly play solo and love.
Very nice!
Love Cloudspire TMB and Witcher Old world solo mode. Bounced off Final Girl Hard its very random.
It can definitely be swingy..
Final Girl is a blast... definitely a favorite of mine. Robinson Crusoe isn't an exclusively solo game, but I have played it that way the most. Another good solo one is Warp's Edge... if you get it, try to get the plastic chips... they just feel better in the bag. :-) Oh... and Nemo's War is another standard favorite of mine. Personally, I prefer there to be a goal in the game and not just "beat your last score." Beating my last score is more fun when it comes to arcade-style video games. ;-)
Warps Edge looks interesting. I have never tried Robinson Crusoe solo....hmmmm
Thanks,
JT
Thanks guys. Will pick up Comic Hunter's for sure. My top games would be Mage Knight, FFG LCG's like Marvel Champions and Arkham Horror, TMB- Undertow, Kings of Ruin, Heat, Ark Nova, and Shadow's of brimstone (More of an RPG in a box). I owned Kanban, Feast for Odin, and other's like that, but beat your own score gets boring after a few games. Definitely prefer coop win loss games for solo. Also prefer Adventure exploration games. I know these games are heavy, but I'm not a board game reviewer so remembering the rules on the 10 solo and 10 lite family games I own is not a problem. I don't have the Witcher because I thought to get a good solo version of that game you need to back the Kickstarter and get the Wild Hunt expansion, which I did not do.
Great list. Is Kings of Ruin better solo than multi-player? You don't need more in witcher OW for a solid solo mode but there are a lot of excellent expansions.
Thanks,
JT
@@Oaklestat Thanks JT. For Kings of Ruin, I play 2 handed not true solo.
Onirim is my favorite game to play solo, it has 100% replaced classic Solitaire for me. I'm a huge fan of the "Oniverse" game series in general, with Nautilion being my second favorite. Some other games I love solo include Castle Panic, the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Too Many Bones, Aeon's End, and For Northwood.
Great list! Thanks for being here!
Spirit island, TMB and Aeons Trespass Odyssey are by far my favorite games to play solo!
Too Many Bones is also my #1 solo game. I've got a spreadsheet of every tyrant and gearloc combination, trying to beat every tyrant with every gearloc solo. I'm about 30 games in so far. Only gearloc I'm missing currently is Riffle.
That's awesome. Riffle will be back for sure. Good luck on you TMB solo quest.
JT
Path of Civilization solo is, as we say from the 90’s, “Da Bomb!”
I've only played it once in a group. Thanks,
JT
Thanks always for these amazing lists. Even after all these years of playing it since it first came out, Mage Knight is still my favorite solo board game. I own four of the games on your list and Final Girl will be played for the first time very soon. I'm curious about Nemo though and where it would be on yours or the board game community's list. Take care!
I'm not familiar with Nemo.
I've played so few games solo, I think the only ones that I've played have been Castles of Burgundy (Anniversary Edition), Lost Ruins of Arnak, Lord of the Rings (2000), Princess Bride Adventure Book Game, and Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game. I've enjoyed them all, but the best was Arnak. I have some that I'm really interested in though, including Soldiers in Postman's Uniforms and Legacy of Yu.
Soldiers in Postman's Uniforms sounds interesting...gonna look into that one! Thanks for being here!
Castles of Burgundy *Special Edition* is really where it's at with the superb automa.
The high back chair makes you look like a giant hump back 😅
@@ZackTillotson Not the first time I’ve got that…lol! At this point, it’s kind of a tradition.
Love Final Girl but I have to be in the mood for it. Thankfully, its October! Need to grab my copy and throw on some slashers >:)
I'm the same. i do have to be in the mood for many of my solo games. I go through phases.
Thanks, JT
my top 5 solo games would probably be arc nova, sleeping gods, legacy of yu, it's a wonderful world and terraforming mars. imperium could be on top 5 but i only played once so far
Sounds like Shipwrights of the north sea: Redux would be right up your alley.
JT
@@Oaklestat it is possible, i really like west kingdom trology, but i tried raiders of north sea and didnt liked it at all, so i didnt tried another north sea games
@@benediktczit is the new 2024 version. It is like "It's a wonderful world" with a Shem Phillips Euro twist. Pure enjoyment.
@@Oaklestat will try it, ty
An easy list for me as I usually lack players for games. I did kick some games off of the list that I do enjoy to play solo but are a shadow of the full experience without humans. Nemesis is an easy example here, it's really fun solo trying to escape getting eaten by aliens, but it's way more fun when you're trying to escape getting eaten by aliens whilst being paranoid about everything your friends are doing.
10: Gloomhaven - This was previously a game that I rated very highly but this has been kicked off of my list of games I actively play, I doubt I'll ever play it again. My previous solo experience with the game was incredible, and it was better solo. I guess it's just going to drop off my lists in future, but I felt it deserved a mention here.
9: ISS Vanguard
8: Pandemic Season 0 - This is my placeholder for all Pandemics. I've 4 handed season 0, so I'm comfortable putting this here.
7: War of the Ring : The Card Game - It's a flawed game, but I love it. It got kicked down the list massively because it's much better with humans.
6: V-Sabotage
5: Spirit Island
4: Aeon's End.
3: Hoplomachus Victorum
2: The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth
1: Mage Knight
JT's list is so good. I'm happy to see Under Falling Skies get mentioned. It has a nice campaign, I've enjoyed watching someone else play it, but I haven't actually played it myself. Sky Mines is one of the games I excluded from my list because I like how that works with humans, but I love that game. It's in my top 35 games of all time.
My Cloudspire did arrive very recently, but it's one of the roughest games to learn, and time consuming to play. Elder Scrolls is due in November, that will make this list, and that's why I haven't got around to Cloudspire yet. Kanban EV is on my "to play" list, but I have to learn that and the AI to play it, so that's another one that I'm going to need some time for. Although at least it won't be as bad as learning the more complicated Chip Theory games.
I got Burncycle when I got Cloudspire, so it's probably best I haven't got to that yet either. I basically bought the Chip Theory games with the expectation of playing them solo 95% of the time, so it makes sense that eventually they would dominate a list like this for me.
@@BoardGamecomments some great games on that list of yours! Thanks for being here!
Awesome list. I agree that games like Nemesis are just that much better with people. Spirit Island and Aeon's end are great picks. I am waiting for Hoplomocus Vistorum to arrive. Definitely waiting for Elder Scrolls to show up. Burn Cycle is Really cool.
Thanks,
JT
Finally got around to re-doing my eaten comment. Hope it comes through this time:
Solo-games are something a bit weird for me. I tend not to enjoy them and would rather play with people. A lot of the time the effort to set up and play a solo boardgame just doesn't feel worthwhile when I have the option of playing a videogame. I'm also almost the opposite of Sam in that I tend to dislike Automa-style opponents as they tend to be rather fiddly while also not being particularly interesting to play against. I would much rather a Solo-mode be quite different from the Multiplayer version of the game.
That said, there are some that surprised me (in both good and bad ways):
Good:
* City of the Great Machine: I was not expecting a 1vM game to have such a fun solo/co-op mode but was happily proved wrong with this one. There are a lot of options for tuning the difficulty too, which is appreciated.
* TITANS: Solo-modes for Area Control games have not generally wowed me. I think it's a genre that is just not a good fit for solo. However, TITANs has one that works surprisingly well. Unlike solo modes for other area control games that I've tried, I would actually play this one again.
* Hybris - Disordered Cosmos (Divine Betrayal expansion): Most worker placement games with solo modes that I've played seem to favour the Automa style, which I've already noted I dislike. Hybris is quite different and the solo/co-op mode feels more similar to playing a game like Eldritch Horror in a sense. You face off against Chronos who uses his three workers to try and free himself. The player(s) has to fend off his bullies while repairing the chains he breaks. It's very different from facing off against an Automa or Score/Snooze Attack and overall a very fun, challenging experience.
* L5R LCG: Of all the games I was expecting to have a good solo/co-op mode the Legend of the Five Rings LCG with its last expansion, Under Fu Leng's Shadow, was least expected. 1v1 duelling card games are not generally know for this kind of thing. The solo mode turns this game into a wave defence survival mode where the player(s) simply has to survive the crushing onslaught of Demons from the Shadowlands. It's a really fun experience and very tense. The only problem is that FFG discontinued L5R LCG and Under Fu Leng's Shadow being the last expansion made it very tricky to get.
Honourable mentions:
* Uprising- Curse of the Last Emperor: A solo/co-op onyl 4X game with two enemy AIs that fight both the players sounds like a dream come true and if you enjoy punishing difficulty then it is. This is an amazing game but has heavy RNG, so not for everyone. That said, there are a lot of difficulty tuning options and the heavy RNG feels very thematic as the AI opponents are meant to seem unsurmountable.
* Bullet: A bit like multi-player Tetris but on your table-top. Score attack is dull but the Boss Battle mode is a lot of fun and quite difficult.
* Conan: Another 1vM game that has a surprisingly fun solo/co-op mode which is very fast and smooth to run while providing a fun experience.
* Excavation Earth: A euro-style game with an Automa opponent that I actually enjoyed playing against.
* Genotype: Another worker placement game with an Automa opponent that was pretty fun to play against.
* Anachrony: ANOTHER worker placement game with an Automa opponent that is fun to play against. Maybe my gripe with Automa isn't real?
* Total Domination: A 1v1 or 2v2 World War 2 themed game with an interesting approach to the map. I was quite surprised at how enjoyable the solo mode is.
Bad:
* Voidfall: Okay, so I'm an outlier in that I didn't really like Voidfall. Sure, the systems around building and economy are a lot of fun but overall it just feel flat for me, maybe because I expect a 4X to actually be, well, you know...4X game, which Voidfall isn't. It's just too restrictive and limiting to really feel like a good solid 4X experience IMO. But what really blows my mind is that people seem to love the solo/co-op mode more than the competitive, which I find very strange. The solo/co-op mode for this game basically boils down to: Draw a random card, pay the costs before the end of the round or suffer the penalty. Or just defer it to the next round(s) and potentially suffer an even worse penalty if you can't handle it. It's extremely dry and just not very interesting. Voidfall makes a lot of noise about its setting and you'd think the solo/co-op would be the best place for this to come through but it just doesn't. The events don't have any kind of narrative element and the Voidborn and how the solo/co-mode interacts with them just isn't that interesting. It's nice that so many people love this game tho, because it made getting rid of it without losing money easy ;-)
Holy cow. Who ate your first comment 😅? So much great information. Thank you for the indepth take. This is the second time someone has recommended Hybris to me in the past month. I need to check it out.
Thanks, JT
@@Oaklestat It might have been me, on another Sam & JT video ;-)
I saw Sam play this game on this channel a while ago and I thought to myself "self if Sam loves this game I will love this game as Sam hates solo games." Times have changed I see. Have you guys done two player games yet. Back in the day you did Gateway two player games and advance. Can you do beginner, intermediate and advance as there are so many two player games. Most people play two player games I think. It deserves to be broken up into three categories.
That's a lot of 2 players games my friend. the majority of games I play are with two. Tons of great options.
Thanks, JT
I wish Dutrait would just release an art book. 😊
@@saveversus RIGHT!?!?!?!
@@SamHealey6 it would save me from buying games I don't like, that take up space, just for the art. 😅
@@saveversus I usually also like the games his art adorns…at least enough to justify keeping them.
Some nice picks but spirit island lost ruins of arnak, xia and dune imperium uprising deserve a mention
@@cecilworthington4624 I’ve never played any of those in their solo modes. Thanks for chiming in, though!
Spirit Island and Dune Imperium are both really good solo!
Thanks, JT
Mage Knight ! ! ! .... I am going to imply you have not played this game solo, because if you have, I wouldn't understand how this wouldn't have made the list, even as an honorary mention at least
You are correct. I have not played MageKnight solo...it's also been a VERY long time since I've played it at all. Thanks for being here!
True. I have not ever played Mage Knight. I should but I feel like I am too far behind.
JT
@@OaklestatI understand what you say about being too far behind, we do get way too many games that come out every year, but the reality of things is that, even though there is always the next big game everyone is loosing their minds over, at least when it comes to solo gameplay, Mage Knight is gonna be VERY hard to beat! they need to put Bruno Cathala, Dany Garcia, they guy behind Stonemaier Automa factory, and vital lacerda, all of them locked uo in a cabin for 2 years, and maybe then yhey could surpass Mage Knight lol
@@Kojimalosophyok, I'm putting it on the list. Thank you
Monitor your audio levels, guys.
Man, I wrote a nice long comment and TH-cam ate it 😞
@@AdamJorgensen I’ll give you an “A” for effort! Thanks for being here!
@@SamHealey6 I'll redo it later :-)
Same. I actually got a comment up within an hour of a video going live for once and it disappeared. I guess TH-cam just eats some of them, so if I ever notice a comment missing, I should just repost it. Now I have to figure out if TH-cam didn't like a description of a game or something.
I think my 3rd attempt went through. TH-cam did not like a description, I guess we're not at the stage where they're able to judge context to tell if I'm talking about something in a game or in real life, which is pretty brutal when almost every game I mention has mortal combat.
Thanks for preservering!!
JT
Ares Expedition? Puke worthy 🤮🤮🤮
@@realdealastrology9 Lol! I guess different strokes for different folks holds true here…