Top 10 Solo Only Board Games

Almost all of these games are ones that I’ve featured on the Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. I will put out videos for all of them that I have one so you can find them all here.

10. Snowfall Over Mountains

This one is a nice and peaceful board game. Snowfall Over Mountains is a card laying game, and you will see a lot of these. You create a layout of cards that score for different types of terrain. You score rabbit tracks one way, ponds another, trees another, and so on, and this scoring can change. But you want to get as high as score as you can and that’s it for the game. It is fast, it is easy to shuffle up and play again.

9. Cursed

This one is all about trying to defeat a curse before time runs out. You need to defeat a certain number of monsters before the deck of cards runs out, or the witch gets your soul. The game play is all about pushing your luck and deciding how many cards to use to try and defeat the monsters. I like how all the cards have a few things on them. They might have special rules or treasure, but they can all be used for attacking and they are all monsters.

8. Numbsters

Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine. Yes, that is the basis for this game, and it it works. You want cards to eat each other and you want to end up with as few cards as possible. So you create a line of cards (or you can play it in your hand) and you need to use the rule at the front to eat cards, or just to eat cards that are one higher. It’s a little game, part of the Button Shy Line of games, and it works better than a lot of them for me.

7. Relics of Rajavihara

Maybe you remember the video game Chips Challenge. If you are like me, you loved that game growing up and trying to figure out every puzzle you could. Relics of Rajavihara gives you some of that same feel in a board game. You need to manipulate blocks in ways that let you get to the relic on each level. If you get stuck, you just reset the board and try again. It is one that I owned, played, sold, and now I got it back because I just want to go through them again.

6. Bargain Basement Bathysphere

This is a crazy game when it comes to board games names. But Bargain Basement Bathysphere is a fun campaign roll and write game. It is meant to be solo and it’s campaign only in the loosest terms, less of a campaign than Welcome to the Moon for example. But it’s fun to play and it’s fun to figure out how to manipulate the dice and get down to the bottom of the sea and get back out before your oxygen runs out. There is just a little bit of tension in the game, and that works well.

5. Grove/Orchard

Yes, this is two games at once on the list. But Grove and Orchard are very similar in what they do as board games. I could also add a game like Sprawlopolis to this, but I like what Grove and Orchard do better. In this game you are trying to grown the most fruit that you can. You gain fruit by overlapping cards so that matching fruit symbols cover each other. And that’s the majority of the game right there. Grove adds in some extra scoring challenges which are fun to play with as well.

4. Under Falling Skies

Have you ever wanted to play space invaders with Independence Day? For me, that is what the game Under Falling Skies feels like. At it’s core, it is a dice placement game where you want to get big numbers so you can fight the aliens, drive them back, and research how to stop them. But the higher number you use the faster the smaller alien ships descend. And if too many of them make it into the Earth’s atmosphere, well, that’s game over, man.

3. Final Girl

Final Girl is the one game on the list that I haven’t played yet on Malts and Meeples Youtube. I need to refresh myself on how to play it and then get it to the table. Though that might wait until the fall because Final Girl is all about horror. Every game you play takes you into the setting of your choice and you are the final girl. You need to survive and beat the killer or other things as you play.

And there are really a ton of different options as to what you can do. I love the mix and match nature of the horror setting your are in with the variety of final girls who you can play as. And it is all time management and resource management to try and win the game. Of course, the longer it goes, the scarier it gets. Can you find what you need, rescue others, and defeat the scenario?

2. Kingdom Legacy: Feudal Kingdom

This is the one with the most recent playthrough on Malts and Meeples. And I blame Meet Me At The Table for getting me into this game. This is a legacy game, which is a bit odd to put on the list. But it’s a game all about managing a deck of cards to build up your kingdom and get as many points as you can. I love how streamlined it is and how almost all cards throughout the game can be upgraded as well as be resources that you use to upgrade other cards. So the decision how to use a card is always a challenge.

1. For Northwood

Finally, we have For Northwood a solo only trick taking game. And you might think, like I did, I like trick taking but how is it going to work solo? Well, it is my number one, so I think that it works well solo. In the game you need to win at each grove. When you win at a grove you get access to a leader who can help you in future rounds and you get points. But it is hard because each grove needs an exact number of tricks one.

I love how the game gives you powers and abilities that you can use. Though, you are only allowed to use them once per hand of cards. So if you need to spend it early, well that might be rough if things start to go sideways. But it just works and the challenges work well as well for once you have conquered the base game.

Final Thoughts

Now I know I have a lot more solo only games that I’ve played. There are a ton of Button Shy Games like that and only one of them made the list. Why is that? I think it is because a lot of them feel similar and they are all very small games. That isn’t a bad thing because for the most part I enjoy them a lot. And I know that I have a lot more to play from littler games like Friday and Palm Island to bigger solo only games like Mr President, Hallas of Hegra, and Hoplomachus: Victorum.

Is there one of the solo only games that you want to see me highlight on the channel? Let me know that down in the comment section or over on the Nerdologists Facebook page or on the YouTube channel.

Five Solo Board Games to Play on Malts and Meeples

But what are my Top 5 solo only games that I want to get played? Well, let’s do one last final list really quickly and in no particular order.

1. 20 Strong – This looks like a fun game and it’s from Chip Theory Games, but it’s small. And you decide what setting you want to play, so it can be their new one for the game or it can be one of their existing ones.
2. Mr President – This one would be a huge undertaking and that is why I haven’t played it yet. Have you ever wanted to be the President of the United States? I honestly can say that I don’t think I have, but in this board game, you can play as them and make decisions but you need to balance everything.
3. Forage – This is going to be the easiest to get to the table. It’s in the same line as Grove and Orchard, so I should just stream this one.
4. The Ratcatcher – This is the Pied Pipers story, in some ways, in a board game. It is one where you want to catch all the rats before they get too much cheese. I’ve heard the rulebook is tough but I still want to give it a got because of the theme.
5. Hoplomachus: Victorum – The second Chip Theory Games game on the list. This one is not small and it’s a campaign. But it is a short campaign. Can I build up my troops and combat prowess to get through the whole thing?

Which one of these should I play?

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What Is A Solo Game?

A solo board game is a board game that you can play by yourself. There are a number of these, so what I’m doing with Aeon’s End Legacy, though that game doesn’t have to be played solo, it can be. Other games like Gloomhaven or Sword & Sorcery from the Campaign Game post can also be played solo.

There are a few different types of solo games, I tend to think of them as being in three categories. Firstly, there are the small solo games, these are things like A Gentle Rain or Onirim, games that can easily travel, play quickly, and are kind of filler. The next is the big solo games, a lot of these are going to be board games that can be played with more, but intentionally have a solo mode as well. These can be played with controlling a character but sometimes by controlling multiple characters.

Finally, we have some games that are just solo only and bigger games. These can be campaign style or just a one off game. It is becoming more of a common now as solo gaming is a growing part of the board game hobby. But it’s most often that other games have solo modes added to them than just being a purely solo game.

What Do I Look For In A Solo Game?

So, with campaign games yesterday, they are all pretty much the same. But as you can see from my description of solo games there is more variety in this type of game. Picking out a solo game for that reason is trickier. But let’s take a look at the two main types, the big box solo games and the filler.

Big Box

1. Theme/Story
2. Ease to Table
3. Information To Track

Theme

This one I think an go without saying on a lot of my lists. I like my games to have a theme that makes sense, though you’ll see with filler it matters less. But if the game is in a bigger box, I am going to want it to have a theme that I can enjoy. And a lot of campaign games will have a solo, so in that case a story that I can enjoy. It seems obvious that you’d want to enjoy the theme, but I think no theme for a bigger game often gets it to the table less, and it’s not like I strongly dislike games not having a theme.

Ease To Table

This one is right up there, actually, all three are very important. This one is just how much set-up is there for this game. If I have to get out 200 tokens, set-up two characters or create a deck for the game to play as, that’s way less fun. I want to be able to get it to the table pretty quickly. Something like Aeon’s End Legacy takes a little bit but because they have dividers for everything it makes it way easier to get to the table. Something like Sword & Sorcery where I had close to 2 dozen baggies of tokens, that wasn’t nearly as fast.

Information To Track

This ties into Ease to the table, but how much do I need to track throughout the game. If I need to track two characters, their items, their abilities and their interactions that can be a bit much. Of the automated actions of the game take as long as my turn, that’s probably too much. Unless there is something interesting going on in what the automated actions are, some luck or choice involved it’s a hard sell.

Filler

1. Game Length
2. Ease to Table
3. Space

Game Length

It’s a filler game, I want it to play like a filler. A Gentle Rain and Onirim play in 10 to 15 minutes. I don’t want it to take longer than 20-25 minutes. Why, because this is meant to be a filler game. I talk about, on Malts and Meeples, how solo fillers are a brain palate cleanser. They are going to be something I use to reset my brain, so lighter and faster.

Ease To Table

This one should be obvious for a solo game. I like that with Onirim I can pull out the cards, shuffle and go. A Gentle Rain pull out the tiles and shuffle and go. I don’t want to have much if any set-up for the game. Once you get into having set-up, that might take longer than the game actually takes. Minimal such as pulling out tokens is acceptable but I don’t want more than that. And if there are tokens, there shouldn’t be too many.

Space

Finally, I don’t want it to take up too much room. This again goes to how much stuff there is in the game. A Gentle Rain is pushing it with how much it spreads out, but I can play it on the floor and it works just fine. Onirim is just a deck of cards and a line of cards, which you can always compact the line. So it doesn’t have to be something I can play on an airplane, but I don’t want it to be too big, that’s why roll and writes with a solo work great as well.

Are All Criteria Equally Important

With campaign games, I said that some mattered more than others. Here, I honestly thing that all three are equally as important in each category. With filler, I’d say that space is the least important. I often play A Gentle Rain at my game table while I have a YouTube video on, so space isn’t that big an issue. And you might find that something as small a package as A Gentle Rain works well for you even though it spreads out as you play it. For the bigger games, all are important, though ease of set-up might matter less if you have a spot where you can set-up a game and leave it out.

Let’s Do An Example

We’re actually going to go with Chronicles of Drunagor again because it does have a solo mode to the game. Most cooperative games can really be played solo. This obviously falls into the bigger box category, so let’s get started.

Theme

Well, you can see what I wrote about that in the campaign games last time, so clearly I like the theme. It’s one that is going to be engaging to get to the table and one that I want to come back to the story that it is telling.

Ease To Table

But now we’re going to knock it a lot. This is not going to be a game that is easy to get to the table. Why, because it has a ton of pieces. You need to find tiles, you need to find monsters, you need to get characters out and set-up, get the darkness out, and more. It’s going to take a good amount of time to get it out of the box and to the table every time that you want to play it. If you can leave it set-up it wouldn’t be as bad, because you’d be only changing up the maps, but if you don’t have that space, it’ll be a lot of work.

Information to Track

This one I think actually might be okay. There is some information, such as where you are in a game that you might want to take note of between games. But during the game play itself, I think it’d be okay, much like Aeon’s End Legacy that way. I don’t know if you can play this truly solo with one character, but even with two, since the cubes that you are play match up color wise it’s going to be easier to see. Now it’s a lot of abilities, but picking those abilities will be a lot of fun during play. And combat seems pretty simple, so monster turns shouldn’t be too long.

With two things being positive, or at least neutral you’d think it might be good solo, and I might find that it is for me. But looking at it, the set-up right now is going to hold me back from playing it solo. If I were looking at Chronicles of Drunagor as a solo only game, I might have passed on it for the ease to the table issue.

Will This Work For You?

As compared to the campaign game, I do think that keeping these in the back of your head is probably going to be a good idea. There are a ton of different solo games out there, but unless it’s your focus some games are going to be harder to get to the table.

Filler games, you might be fine with the larger space. Bigger solo games, definitely take note of the ease to the table. And for campaign, take note how many character you need to control. I know that games, even smaller ones like Arkham Horror LCG, because of the deck construction and scenario set-up, it takes longer than Aeon’s End Legacy, a bigger box game to get to the table.

What solo game do you pull off your shelf to play?

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