Top 20 Solo Games of 2023
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ค. 2024
- Mike ranks his favorite solo (and solo-focused) games covered on the channel this year.
- - - - - -
Patreon - / onestop
Podcast - / onestopcoopshop
Discord - / discord
- - - - - -
0:00 - Introduction
0:36 - #20
1:19 - #19
2:04 - #18
2:57 - #17
3:45 - #16
4:20 - #15
5:04 - #14
5:44 - #13
6:23 - #12
7:10 - #11
7:58 - #10
8:53 - #9
9:27 - #8
10:17 - #7
10:50 - #6
11:32 - #5
12:20 - #4
13:00 - #3
13:59 - #2
15:02 - #1 - เกม
Scroll down for the full list of games:
0:00 - Introduction
0:36 - #20 The Lucky Seven
1:19 - #19 Hegemony
2:04 - #18 Star Wars: the Deckbuilding Game
2:57 - #17 Blitzkrieg!
3:45 - #16 Trailblazers
4:20 - #15 Fliptown
5:04 - #14 Paperback Adventures
5:44 - #13 Steampunk Rally
6:23 - #12 Challengers!
7:10 - #11 Voidfall
7:58 - #10 Expeditions
8:53 - #9 Turing Machine
9:27 - #8 Clank!: Catacombs
10:17 - #7 Distilled
10:50 - #6 Apiary
11:32 - #5 Ashes Reborn: Red Rains
12:20 - #4 Twilight Struggle: Red Sea
13:00 - #3 Witchcraft!
13:59 - #2 Aeon Trespass: Odyssey
15:02 - #1 20 Strong
Where did City of the Great Machine land for you?
It landed on my top co-op list next week. This list is only solo-only or solo focused.
@@OneStopCoopShop Got it!!
Great list! I'm really happy you liked my Leaders variant enough to include Star Wars DBG, thanks for covering it. Enjoyed your vids this year, here's to a great 2024!
Thanks for all your hard work!
Thanks for the kind words! 2023 was such an amazing year for solo games. Happy holidays!
Another great year of content, thanks and happy holidays!
I appreciate lists like this SO much. Quite a few of these went straight onto my Amazon wishlist and I can come back when I’m itching for a new game and watch your reviews. Love these!
Happy to see two of our solo modes in your top 10 👍
Lines (Automa Factory)
Y’all did awesome work this year!
Just the video I needed! Thanks Mike! Love all this content.
Great list, Mike. I got Apiary on a whim when I saw it on super sale for Black Friday and boy! It has quickly sunk its stingers into me. I keep finding myself eager to get it to the table and I've enjoyed it every time I have. The art and theme are so much fun. The crazy stuff you can pull off. It's been a blast. Red Rains and 20 Strong have also made a strong showing on my table, but Apiary was the surprise hit for me.
That’s awesome! I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly as well, such a quick play time for a ton of fun
Hey Mike! Great list. I've enjoyed your videos this year! I hope you have a great 2024. :)
Same to you!
PS - check out the top coop list next week. All the dungeon crawlers are on that one
Thanks Mike! Your top two would be on my list as well, although I would have Victorum as my #1 ahead of your 1 and 2 but those 3 would be at the top. Thanks for all your videos. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
I had Victorum early enough for it to make last year’s list, so it wasn’t eligible this year. Remastered WAS eligible… but I didn’t like the solo enough to make the top 20
That's some great selection! Twilight Struggle: Red Sea and Blitzkrieg - both are beginner-friendly wargames in a small package!
Thanks Mike, another great list, ill give 20 strong a go in 2024. Happy holidays to you and family!
I pre-ordered 20 strong from the CTG website and should be receiving it sometime next month as I missed the gamefound campaign. Glad you like it so much, makes me ever more excited for it!
Hope you enjoy it (and hope your dice look okay, since it seems to be hit or miss for people so far)
Thank you! I actually had a couple opportunities to buy it from backers who decided to sell it but after learning about the dice quality issue I thought i'd wait and see if the regular run was better :P
20 Strong was my first solo game. It really resonated with me. Love the list!
Love you Mike! Thank you! ❤
The Leaders solo variant of Star Wars TDBG is well done and I have been enjoying it. Thanks for the list.
Agreed! Great variant and straightforward to play
@@OneStopCoopShop From where I can get the fan made solo version for Star Wars?
@ionutcaiuteanu5346 here you go:
boardgamegeek.com/filepage/257817/leaders-star-wars-deckbuilding-game-solitaire-vari
Thx for sharing! Have a fantastic 2024!
Same to you!
Excellent list! Makes me glad I nabbed one of the last copies of 20 Strong at my FLGS. An impulse buy that I don’t think I’ll regret :)
Thanks for all your work and videos through ‘23. Happy holidays and looking forward to more in ‘24!
Thanks for sharing your list Mike! Im excited for 20 Strong, Which I'll be ordering next year. I was hoping Chip Theory would have it by pax unplugged but that wasnt the case.
I’m assuming it’s because they are trying to fix the dice for the next print? Not sure
20 strong has been super fun. Although I am trying to think of some house rules to make it a bit more challenging for solar sent (the only one I have played so far) like a banish dice clock, so the more time you take to get to the boss the more dice you are losing from your pool.
Why not use the official difficulty rules? Those are enough to ramp it up to impossible levels if you want
Interesting list! It gave me some new games to take a look at. I was a bit surprised 20 Strong was so high- I got it and absolutely hated the punishing randomness of it. At least it plays quickly, but that didn't make it any more enjoyable for me :) Looking forward to checking out your co-op list.
Usually I would only lose in a way that felt random in the first few rounds. Otherwise I was able to go the distance and maybe lose to the boss.
But honestly my top co-op games are super strong this year, better than the solo list overall
Cool list! I'm LOVING Expeditions. Apiary seems cool, too. I'd love to give that a try at some point. My top ten solo games for 2023 would look like:
10. Micro Cosmos
9. Amritsar
8. Darwin's Journey
7. Barcelona
6. Expeditions
5. 3 Ring Circus
4. Scholars of the South Tigris
3. The White Castle
2. Nucleum
1. Voidfall
Great list! just got Scholars. It looks good so far. And we will have a play of Nucleum next week (from Peter; I haven’t played it yet).
White Castle would have made my list if they balanced the solo better, but there are already lots of variants on BGG to fix that,
@@OneStopCoopShop I think you'll like both Scholars and Nucleum. Steep learning curves but actually pretty smooth gameplay. I saw the variants on BGG for The White Castle and I was prepared to use them if I found the solo too difficult but I honestly didn't. I've won four out of five on easy and one out of two on medium. So, I think it's a good difficulty level for me, personally. I think it would have been better if the AI interacted more with the board state and its scoring scaled accordingly (instead of depending solely on the order of card pulls). But I still enjoy the rules as written immensely for the solo.
Huge recommend on Challengers Beach cup! The new Ced’s are so fun (idk about solo) but it’s great.
I was supposed to get a review copy. Thanks for reminding me to follow up 😅
Voidfall is my number 1 game this year, but yeah make sure you have the space and time to make it work because it’s a beast.
That is an excellent list and I got my order of The Luck Seven. Where did you obtain these new solo variant rules as I do not see them on their site? I was not aware there was a viable solo for Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game hence thank you and I will take a look as I had not considered the game as there was no solo capability. I had backed ATO yet after the reviews and especially No Pun Included (much less the overwhelming size) I sold my pledge. Ashes Reborn and Clank! Catacombs are on my list to acquire shortly. Merry Christmas to you and yours. And keep up the informative reviews and game play as they are most helpful.
Well shoot… now I can’t for the life of me find the Lucky Seven variant anywhere. What the heck!?
And I often don’t agree with no pun included’s takes on games, but for ATO I was very far from their opinion. But either way probably good that you saved yourself the space and money!
I must recommend Frostpunk. While it can be played with up to 4 players, the game was definitely well designed for 1 player only.
I think that was on my best of 2022 list, which is why it isn’t here :)
@@OneStopCoopShop Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the reply. :)
Going back and forth with late pledging ATO cycle 1-3. But it seems a considerable time and play space commitment. Still going through Oathsworn (which seams more streamlined) and waiting for Tanres. Likely would take over 1 year to get to it, and I am starting to have my game cue sink😂. Meanwhile, games like Star Realms and gold and Silver get played daily with my son (waiting for him to grow and get to campaigns 😊).
One question how do you feel between minis and standess in Dragon eclipse? I went with Standee for Oathsworn and I appreciate now the space saving,
The mini prototypes then sent me were lovely… and not at all necessary. I’m a big fan of standees too :)
Oathsworn is amazing. On Chapter 10 now and I feel like it just gets better and better. I don’t want it to end
Wow, number 1 and 2 couldn't be any more different! AT:O is my number one, but I didn't back 20 Strong (don't like TMB so thought I should err on the side of caution), but will pick it up at retail or 2nd hand someday, I'm sure!
It’s certainly a lot cheaper than ato ;)
Hey Mike, for The Lucky Seven, where did you find the bunker official material? I couldn’t find it on the Coincidence or BGG page anywhere! Would be really interested. Thanks for the great content as always!!!
Someone else asked that, and I CANNOT FIND IT. Did I imagine it's existence or something? I need to message the designer and see if they can clear this up... I'll come back and post if I hear back!
@@OneStopCoopShop Thank you; was just curious! Maybe if it doesn't exist, you can give him the idea lol!
@@arthureames9715 got a reply back! Apparently it IS a real thing, but it's not finished yet and it will be part of the upcoming reprint of the game.
Zach, the designer, said people can email him if they want to help test it out :)
So yeah, no idea where I saw this, but at least I wasn't hallucinating the whole thing!
Thanks for sharing. Been hearing similar comments about Voidfall. If it's too complex and too huge for you (to play correctly consistently), it is definitely so for me.
I dunno, I have about 20 games waiting to be reviewed, so EVERYTHING is tough for me to get to the table. Maybe you would have more luck :)
I don't feel like the game is too complex at the end but there's just too many rules even if each rule by itself is very simple. It's a fun puzzle but im not sure it matches the effort you'll have to put into it. The theme is also more abstract than I expected
I'm surprised there is no Halls of Hegra. What are your thoughts? I watched your prototype and impressions video but that was some time ago.
Someone already asked, but I never got a final copy of the game, so it wasn’t eligible for the list. I remember it being fun though!
I'm guessing you never got a non-prototype copy of Halls of Hegra? It's really high on a lot of lists and thought it would make yours as well.
Correct! I never got the final game. It might have cracked the top 20, though definitely not the top 10. I liked it fine but didn’t love it, personally
Great list! Curious about why you found Too Many Bones your least favorite 20 Strong mode - I haven't played the Victorum one yet, but I also found myself preferring Solar Sentinels and can't put my finger on why yet. Maybe the Too Many Bones deck just makes me wish I was playing Too Many Bones? :)
For me, too many bones feels a bit too reliant on flipping your character early for success. And it strikes a middle ground between solar sentinel’s speed and victorum’s epic-ness, but not creating either feeling as well, I guess?
Don’t get me wrong… I still play it! It’s just like a 7 instead of a 9 or 10
Yeah I feel myself doing that as well, having the same strategy early game to just hoard Backup plan dice to flip the character. Excited to try Victorum!
Mike, are you preordering any of the upcoming ATO products? What are your thoughts regarding both Seasons 4 and 5 and TSoH. Are you planning on picking any of the seasons up?
I should also add in Kingdom Forlorn.
I will be getting the 4th and 5th seasons, but not sure about TSoH.
I didn’t preview Heracles but Peter did and enjoyed it.
But there is likely no way I will ever even finish acts 2 and 3 with my schedule, so I’m certainly not going for even more 😮💨😅
@@OneStopCoopShop I agree. FOMO hits strong but lack of time to properly play them is an issue. They also seem to be having more balls in the air at once which gives me pause.
No Skies Above Britain? It literally is solo only. Amazing game by GMT Games. If you missed its release this year you should definitely check it out!
Never heard of that one, sorry! But if it’s good I can ask about it next time I talk with GMT.
I just got Fliptown recently and played my first game, and wow do I love it! Which is saying a lot considering that the western theme is not a draw for me.
It’s a fun one! And nice and quick
interesting list. i would have expected more dungeon crawler styles like tamashii. Surprised to see so many euro and vs bot style games.
Those are all on the top co-op list next week!
Ooooh that makes sense. I get it now lol. That’s awesome! Can’t wait
Great list! As you aren't afraid to tackle deep strategy games, I'm wondering if you've checked out Mr. President yet? It made my Top 3, and it seems like something you'd enjoy.
Jason got a copy and did a podcast on it. I've got some other GMT games I'm covering before that one, but maybe some day!
No tales of red dragon inn for solo play? Was interested in tha one for solo gameplay. Now i am doubting😅😊
It’s great for solo play too. But it made my co-op list that came out today instead. But yes, solo and co-op are both great
While I absolutely love aoens trespass the book keeping solo was too much and I’m holding it to play with the group next year.
My 2 favorites this year are
Unsettled (even though it just arrived in December)
Zombicide undead or alive. (Got it last January)
Ohh and
Vampire the masquerade chapters
(Must be played solo)
I have all the new unsettled stuff (pledged for it), but haven’t had time to play yet!
Oof I haven't had my unsettled stuff arrive yet! Still waiting :)
@lumina7022 hopefully soon
@@OneStopCoopShop yesss I am so hyped for it to show up !!!!!!!
As a big fan and heavy player of the Star Wars Deck Building game, I would not say it's a deck bloater game. I often have had games where I've purged my entire starting deck cards - or at least the 7 resource gathering cards. There are occasional games where luck just doesn't find you and it's hard to purge, but that's just part of the randomness and demand for adaptability.
I will say I think the game is a hair unbalanced, but an expansion has been announced for 2024 so here's hoping some parity comes with!
I haven’t played in a while, but aren’t there like… 5 cards in the entire market deck that purge cards? 😅
@@OneStopCoopShop Definitely more!
Each side has 4 opposing cards they can bounty hunt in the galaxy row for 1 exile (2 snow speeders and 2 duros spies on 1 side, 2 TIE Bombers and 2 Scout Troopers on the other), plus 2 cards that are worth 2 exiles ( AT-ST and B-Wing), plus several other cards that can exile other cards or at least self-exile (Kel-dor Mystics, Quarrian Mercenaries, Jawa Scavengers, Y-Wings, all the Outer Rim Pilots, HWK-290s, IG-88, Jabba offers endless exiles, Tarkin's ability, the Hammerhead Corvette...) Plus, each side has the base that can instantly exile 3 cards when played.
There are definitely a good handful of exile options to keep your deck manageable!
Hmm, that is, hmmm, some list you got there.😏
I wish you a Merry Christmas! 😻
How would it compare to yours for the year? 😅
@@OneStopCoopShop Like this:
1) Voidfall
2) Kinfire Chronicles: Night's Fall
3) Fallen Land 2nd Edition
4) Fractal
5) Tales from the red Dragon Inn
6) Dark Venture - Battle for the Ancients
7) Solar 175
8) Halls of Hegra
9) The Isofarian Guard
10) Uprising
Then there is ICE which would probably slide somewhere in there too, but I haven't played yet enough to form a clear final opinion. So Uprising would leave the list, probably.
@biodelic great list. I have fractal and battle for the ancients but haven’t played either one yet. Kinfire chronicles made me so angry with the initiative system in cooperative play, but I bet it’s great in solo where one character never going doesn’t really matter 😅
@@OneStopCoopShop Well, in Kinfire, you can boost the other players turns, therefore burn through your deck faster and so charge your lantern quickly. When it's your turn eventually, you smack extra hard. I never felt left out or to wait when I played co-op.
And turns are rather quick anyway.
@@OneStopCoopShop Didn't you do videos on Fractal? I could swear you did.🤷🏻♂️
Surprised to see Expeditions this low.
It’s still great, but I think apiary was so good for me that it made expeditions SEEM not as good, if that makes any sense 😅
@@OneStopCoopShop I wonder if the game suffers from the same lack of variability as Scythe.
@@lostinsim hm, I would argue (from fewer plays of Expeditions than Scythe) that the highly varied card combos in Expeditions would prevent some of the sameness you find in Scythe's solo mode.
Expeditions board game
Surprised to not see Tales from the Red Dragon Inn on the list
It MIGHT be in the top cooperative list coming next week. I put games on one or the other 😜
tried really hard to get a copy of hedgemony...denied
I trust The White Castle did not make the list due to its bone crushingly difficult automa?
Haha, yup, you got it! But I’m happy to see the community on BGG has been making some nice new variants to fix that issue
I've your top 3 games :)
Ashes Reborn!!!!! :D
Over🎁 🧡🙏🏼
I assume you didn't get the chance to play Earthborne Rangers?
I did! It might be on my cooperative list next week instead of this list 🤫
Annoying that no timestamps of games like other channels
Sorry, I fixed them on the coop video. I’ll fix them here too once I’m home from vacation
@@OneStopCoopShop cool, Will follow then, thanks!
@@TobrookPhotography alright, try them now :)
PS - if you want the names of games with the timestamps, check the pinned comment
There are not enough Lords of Ragnarok, there is a cool solo there, especially with two bots
I found that solo mode (and the game in general) a bit flawed for my tastes, but glad you are enjoying it!
Disagree, I think that solo mode was awful
Thanks for making this list towards the tail end of the year! I really get annoyed when content creators come out with these lists in November. Really illogical.
Shoot, several of my favorite games came out in December
@@OneStopCoopShop either way, it's an amazing list, as well as your co-op list. Quite a few games I need to check out!
Gosh those look quite the cheap board games.
Cheap as in bad components, or cheap as in affordable?
If you mean the former, can't say I agree except for maybe one or two of them.
If you mean the latter, yeah, several of them are smaller games, though Aeon Trespass Odyssey is like $400 😅
Where would Genshin Tarot fit on the list?
It’s on my coop list next week, but for pure solo it might have made the top 10