If you watch what I play on Malts and Meeples YouTube, found here, you know that I like solo games. It gives me a chance to play a board game when I want to play a board game. I always say that solo games are nice because I use them as a brain refresher. So maybe it’s an area that you think someone would like to dip their toes into, maybe it’s a type of game that you like to play, but what are some good solo games to get someone for the holidays?

Solo Games

Grove

I thought about all of the games in this small box line, Grove, Orchard, or For Northwood, and one of them is already on the stocking stuffers. So I went with Grove instead because I really like Grove as a game and I think for a solo game, it’s one of those that hits that area of enough thought, but not too long a play time or too big a play area.

In Grove you overlay cards to grow the best grove of citrus trees. As you overlay you go up in points, fruit, on the trees. And your goal can just be, see how high a score you can get with nine cards. That is a fun way to play and it is the same as what Orchard does. So either Grove or Orchard work well there.

But Grove offers more because you can also play with challenges. Challenged add two things into the game. First, they give you objectives to try and complete. So it might be, grow a lime your first card overlay. Or it might be, have an orange at six, or a die at ten. There is solid variety, but the other thing is that the two challenges you get, they have point totals on them. That combined total is now your target, and you aren’t trying to get your best score, you’re trying to beat that target to win the game. I like that a lot.

Relics of Rajavihara

Now we’re onto a game that is a puzzle in a different way than Grove is. Relics of Rajavihara is literally a puzzle of sliding around blocks to complete the objective of getting a gem. The blocks all have certain rules as to how they move, and that changes as you unlock more. But the goal of getting the gem and the setup of the board give you a new puzzle each level to solve.

This is going to be great for that solo player or gamer in your life who likes brain burner puzzles. Whether it’s in a board game or just a spatial puzzle to solve otherwise. Relics of Rajavihara offers a number of different levels to beat, I believe it’s forty or fifty, and a way to create your own levels. So once you beat the puzzles in the game you can continue to play it, if you want. But fifty puzzles gives a lot of playability to the game.

Stars of Akarios

Now we’re moving onto the two really big games. These are for the solo gamer who uses it, like I do, as a way to play big campaign games. This is going to be games that are harder to get to the table because you need a level of commitment from other players. But if you play by yourself, it’s easy to table and one of my favorites is Stars of Akarios.

Stars of Akarios is a grand space adventure split into three parts. One part is planetary exploration as you reveal a planet map and interact with story points. Another is space exploration, though it’s a small part of the game, building out a space map and interacting with locations up there. And finally, the biggest part of the game, tactical space combat. This is about positioning your ships and using the abilities available to you, from dice rolls, to take out the enemy ships.

The game is very big, but it works well solo because the enemy actions are easy to take care of as one player. And managing two ships is pretty easy for the solo play, or two characters. I picked this one because compared to a lot of other big story driven games, this one is easy enough to keep track of everything and run it yourself.

Sleeping Gods

With Sleeping Gods, it offers some of what Stars of Akarios does. Sleeping Gods is a big story driven game. But it is a shorter campaign that you play, which makes it easier to table. Though, for some people, I think it’ll be harder to play solo. I think once you wrap your head around that harder part, it isn’t too bad.

Sleeping Gods is a big adventure game. You and your crew find yourself blown into another world during a storm. There, the gods are sleeping and you’re tasked with finding totems to wake them. Where you go and what totems you find is all up to you. You explore and interact wherever you want. It might give you a new quest, it might let you buy things, it might give you other interactions. The game is really an open sandbox.

So the part that people won’t think works well is that you control nine characters. But, you really don’t. What is tricky is you control nine abilities, which isn’t that hard. The nine characters all act at once, it is the ship you control and the characters are just the crew. So for me, I thought that after a couple of sessions, since a whole campaign is about 15 hours and I’d play 1 hour at a time, I knew what people did. So it is a learning curve, but not a hard one.

Cursed!?

Finally, let’s end on another small game. And this one is available on Game Crafter, a game store that does print on demand, so no worries about Cursed!? being out of print. Cursed!? is the easiest game to wrap your head around and play. You are, you guessed it, Cursed!? and you need to collect eight souls before the deck runs out.

The game is a simple push your luck game. You flip a card, it is a monster. Then you flip more cards and you use their attack values to try and take out that monster. When yo do, you get that soul. But if you go over the monsters health, you still kill them, but you need to spend cards from your deck to the discard. If you stop before, you get rid of cards as well. So it’s when do you stop to not get rid of that extra card.

And sometimes you have other abilities as well that you can use. Or you find treasure. All of that is going to help you along your way. Possibly putting more cards back into the deck so you have longer. Adding damage to attacks, or, if you’re lucky, taking out a monster all together. It’s simple, fast, and one that is a good brain clearing game where you still think a little but doesn’t require a ton of brain power.

Final Thoughts

I could go on, I’m looking at a shelf with solo games in my room. I also see a lot of roll and write games that work that way as well. Only some of the games on this solo list are actually only solo games. Stars of Akarios and Sleeping Gods can all be played with more. But I find that for big games, they work really well as a solo experience for gamers to enjoy.

Do you have a game you like to play solo? Or is there one from this list that you think someone would like? There are a ton of solo games to pick from, so which would you like?

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