My Top 20 Solo Games from 2021!

um [Music] [Music] hello everyone welcome back to rolling solo my name is adam smith and i'm really excited today to do my top 20 solo games from 2021 it's worth mentioning that every game you're about to hear through this list is a base game except for one i did make one exception to the rule here and i'll mention that when i get to it it's also worth mentioning that about a week ago i put together a video that compiled my communities voting across multiple different communities than i have for rolling solo whether it be on youtube itself inside my facebook group the discord server or on my patreon there's a number of different areas there there was voting going on for the top 20 games of the year and that video has released already if you haven't checked that out yet and you've you're coming here first i would highly recommend you go check out that video first to get an idea as to where the community collectively has put the top 20 games of the year and in what order it might be interesting to see that and then come back here and see my own personal list now it's worth mentioning at the very end of this video once i get through my 20 games i am going to put both lists on screen so you can actually take a look at both lists and compare them and you know make your own deductions out of what has changed positions on the list things that have gone up in terms of maybe games that have moved up the list moved down the list been pulled completely off of it added to it that's kind of part of the fun of these lists is that they're very well they're essentially they're a list so they are biased they're you know subjected to a number of different uh things that might push you one way or the other whether you're interested in a particular theme or ip or a game mechanism or something along those lines can draw you towards one experience versus another and that can cause differences in lists so one of the other things i wanted to ask was if you guys are willing to place your own top 20 top 15 10 5 whatever amount of games you've actually played through this year down in the comments below it would be a great time to share with the community a whole bunch of solo games that might not have landed on my prior videos list or this one that's coming up in a few moments and that will just help to shed some light on some games that are great but just didn't make these lists and we all know no list is perfect and that includes mine it includes the rolling solo communities list or anybody else's these are all really just used as a guiding light to drive you towards a game that might interest you or potentially have you running in the other direction but either way really hope you enjoy the list and without further ado let's go ahead and start in the 20th position in the 20th position on my personal list of solo games from 2021 we begin with zombicide second edition now zombicide the original base game that had come out years ago as we know zombies had seen many many iterations rule changes have been basically tweaked throughout the iterations different themes have been added expansions have added in different game mechanisms along the line we know with the second edition there's a bunch of expansions that add a bunch of interesting mechanics around things like uh you know uh dark room darker areas as well as a clock in game and stuff like that tracking by at the hour there's all these little things that they seem to throw into these zombicide games just to kind of make each of them unique but at the core these games are relatively carbon copy minus the major rule tweaks that they might make based on house rules that the community has to put into place to deal with some of the more annoying things that are in place was homicide from way back in the day but a lot of those things have been cleaned up in this second edition and the reason it landed on my list is really nostalgic just from the standpoint of like this zombicide in general for me along with mage knight and lord of the rings the lcg are three games that actually drove me to start the channel in the first place and without all three of them i don't think i would have even pulled the trigger maybe i would have but i played those three so much that it really drove me to actually spending some time to build the channel and then so for that reason i seem to still gravitate towards coming back and wanting to experience zombicide uh when new iterations come out even if i kind of know that going into them there's not gonna be that much of a change but there are enough changes to potentially justify revisiting it so long as you enjoy the gameplay one thing i will mention is that i'm really hoping in the future for zombicide that we're going to see an actual full-on revision of the game itself in terms of really pushing the envelope and what it could potentially do i think there's more that they could pull out of zombicide beyond just a theming and a reprint of you know a handful of rule changes and things like that or some extra expansions to spice it up like i think they can actually change the game from the core uh and actually enhance it to be maybe potentially a little bit more heavyweight of a game and a little bit more substance overall and there was also talk about the digital platform that coleman or not was exploring around uh you know using with their board games in order to enhance them whether it have like you know battery operated dice or sound effects when you move around to different rooms and stuff like that i don't know where that project currently stands but if that ever was to release and zombicide was part of that mix i can imagine that that would certainly bump it up a bit but what you'll likely notice looking through my list in the past is that zombicide has begun to slip further and further and further down the list and at some point you probably won't even see it anymore so really this is just a nod to its existence the fact that i have very good memories from it in the past and still enjoy pulling out every now and then and playing it in the 19th position we have wildlands the ancients this is the exception to the rule this was an expansion it was not a core game if you pick this up you're not going to be able to even play the game you need to have the original base game of wildlands to enjoy the ancients but the ancients the reason i allowed this exception is that it adds solo play where there wasn't originally i had bought wildlands the first time through played it multiplayer enjoyed it wish there was some solo thing going on there and there was nothing and then in 2021 the ancients came out i grabbed it enjoyed it and wanted to show you guys how it played so i put through a full playthrough of that on the channel which you can find if you're looking to find out if this game's a fit for you but for me personally i really like what wildlands does as a multiplayer game and they did a really good job of not only making a solo playable version of the game but also making it not easy it's relatively tough to win the game and there's different ways to play a different ai or enemies to go up against and of course we all know with wildlands the terrain changes on every single board so you have a lot of variability there now just before we move to the next entry on my list it's worth noting the last two entries were not on the rolling solo board game communities list so already there's been some changes and you'll probably notice this as i mentioned in the conclusion section this video when we compare the two lists but at this point we're now moving to the 18th position and that is held by settle watch swords of the coin now settle watch is a game that i've covered on the channel before back when it originally landed on kickstarter and it's worth mentioning that this swords of the coin is not only an expansion to that which you think would break the rule again like i already did earlier but it's also its own standalone game too safe and i can tell you right now if you're looking for a fast playing game with very unique mechanics mention this in the prior video that it's just the major thing i love about it is the idea that you're thematically building a fire in order to see further into the darkness that is the coolest aspect of the game it clicks in your brain really easily and also the the usage of the storage the game itself essentially as a storage unit but also as the game board is just really cool and also also i think that you know final girl which came out this year as well also kind of went down that road of kind of using the game box to its own advantage and stuff like this in terms of storage and things like that right so i think a lot of companies are starting to think about how they could potentially even use their packaging as part of the game player game board itself especially for these smaller games and that's exactly where this set a watch game fits into is if you're looking for something that's a quick playing not as complex game then this is likely going to be up your alley in the 17th position on my list is dungeons of infinity and this comes from well now sky kingdom games going into its second edition which recently was on crowdfunding but the first edition which landed in 2021 was the first time i had exposure to the game and from the cover of the game as well as just what i read about it i wasn't overly interested in it originally but that changed super fast after i got the game out of the box and actually started putting the game on the table and playing it that the actual design behind the gameplay i really really liked it was unique it was different and i hadn't played a game that was similar to it and it also was very crunchy in terms of the numbers in terms of just how combat works and shakes out but also not over complicated either and what i really like about sky kingdom games picking it up and running with a new crowdfunding campaign is that they're basically deluxifying the entire thing they're going to streamline the rulebook they're going to upgrade it with game trays really this game is going to go from a first printing to a second printing and the jump is going to be a huge so for that reason this sits definitely in the 17th position on my list in the 16th position on my personal list is wild ascent from lazy squire games this is another one that kind of surprised me one that i wasn't overly interested in originally but then once i started playing the game i was really surprised by how much i enjoyed it and continued to enjoy it from there and it's worth mentioning that this particular game it kind of has a structure similar to kdm in terms of like a settlement phase as well as your you know overarching combat that's happening in a particular environment against creatures and of course once you kill off the creatures you can then kind of harvest them and use those resources to boost up your encampment and everything else but what i liked about wild ascent in comparison to kdm and again these are two very different games but structurally they're very similar is that while the scent is a very streamlined version of kdm essentially it's really just getting you into the settlement mode getting you out of it as fast as possible so you're in and out you do some upgrades and then you move on to another combat and you're just trying to survive through all of that i really found it to be fun and it was also nice to just be able to pull it out play it and put it away so you could take it kind of as one-off scenarios whenever you felt like it so this is one to keep an eye on and their second reprint that they went through which added even more content to the fray was extremely popular and i'm really looking forward to what it offers or i should say delivers in the near future all right so we've reached the 15th position on the list it belongs to awaken realms it's the great wall and this is a worker placement game and i definitely want to mention that this game is tipping towards the heavier side of the equation it's worth mentioning that there have been some rule book clarifications as some of the stuff going on in the rule book isn't exactly 100 clear but the solo play that it provides in the great wall is worth checking out and it wasn't just kind of baked in and you know thrown in there on the side it was well done and i really enjoyed it and it's going to be a game that actually sticks around in my collection as it's something that awaken realms really hasn't dabbled much in around the worker placement stuff i mean typically we've seen games like tainted grail and nemesis ether fields and stuff like that so a worker placement from them that nails the solo play for me is a reason to keep this one around and one that definitely deserves a spot on this list moving right along to the 14th position on my personal list is cartographers heroes this comes from thunderworks games and is an addition to cartographers that came out back in 2019 adding a whole bunch more content to enjoy as you're trying to gain all kinds of reputation stars by the end of seasons all four seasons in fact in order to win the game and as a solo game it really is a great one i do enjoy it quite a bit and it definitely deserved a position on this list it might be overshadowed by games like role player or role player adventures but i highly recommend you take a look further into cartographers now just as a recap for those of you that are following along and again at the end of this video in the conclusion you'll see the differences between the rolling solo list and my list but as of right now five games additionally have been added to the list to this point already that weren't on the rolling solar board game communities list this next one was on their list and it's euthea in the 13th position torment of resurrection this comes from diet games this is one that also surprised me this year another one that i looked at and went i'm not 100 sure this is going to do anything different than i haven't seen before but the design of the game and the way it was developed was so well done plus the solo play inside of it is really interesting and you'll realize quite quickly after a game or two that this game really starts to open up there's a lot going on inside of euthea and you only really scratch the surface of the game in the first handful of plays but as you become more familiar with the game the game really does open up and you see so many options out there to go and interact with and it really does fee it does a great job of making you feel like you're part of a larger world especially with those hex tiles so definitely recommend you check that one out we now move to the 12th position on my personal list that belongs to chronicles of crime from lucky duck games that is 1400 2400 as i did with the rolling slow communities list these have all been combined together and the reason this land on the list is because for me personally i'm a huge fan of these games from the original chronicles of crime that landed the thing i loved that it did was it did such a good job of a 50 50 split with the app as well as what's going on the table plus the fact that you could condense an actual detective work down to around an hour or so of play so you can actually finish that game in a reasonable amount of time there's many different detective based games out there whether they be like sherlock holmes or detective from portal games but some of those will take you hours to solve or a lot of paying attention and digging very deep in order to get down to the end of each of those particular crimes to try to figure out who actually did what whereas chronicles crime kind of aimed to streamline all of that and it did it so well without dumbing it down to a spot where it felt easy and i really enjoy what it does and hope that more of it comes out in the future we are getting dangerously close to the top 10 of this list and in the 11th position we have merchants cove another game which was not on the rolling solo board game community list this one for me was a winner i really really enjoyed this cover this on the channel but i recommend and almost require you if you're going to pick up merchants cove to grab the secret stash expansion as it fully bolsters out the solo experience if you just grab the core game it's going to be good but in order to make it great you're going to need the secret stash it's really going to add a lot to the replayability of the game plus for every other role that you pick up and there's expansions for additional roles beyond the ones that are included inside the box you're going to have variability in terms of the different mini games that you're playing because you're ascension this game it's a very it's definitely a euro game and you're going to be going ahead and having a bunch of individuals show up on the shoreline you're working in a town whether it be the alchemist the innkeeper an oracle whatever it is each of them has their own mini game and how they create wares and goods that they're trying to sell for money to these people that have showed up at the port and the coolest part is that if you just switch who you control in terms of each and every game you play solo you'll feel like you're playing a different mini game within the same core set of rules every time you play it's just a really cool game that way because most games well once you've played them once if you change characters yeah there's some variation but the differences are quite minor whereas in this one you will feel the differences not only in the components but also in the game mechanisms in terms of how the goods are actually produced and what you need to do in order to make that happen it's just it's very very cool highly recommend you check it out got videos for it on the channel if you want to see more merchants cove we are now inside the top 10 for 2021 on my personal list this belongs to whole or nothing productions this is veil wraith i am very very happy with this card game this is a card game that does not take a long time to set up it doesn't take a long time to play it is not a heavy heavy card game but it is not an easy one it's also worth mentioning that the base game it comes with a handful of vignettes but not a ton so i highly recommend you pick up the expansion for this one as well as it will bolster it up to i believe 20 vignettes which is much more of an enjoyable experience overall as you have to try to rip through all 20 of those with a certain number of lives now the thing about this game that i've mentioned in the past that's really interesting is that the gameplay has been built so smoothly that you'll play a game and want to just keep playing keep playing and keep playing it will hook you very quickly and you'll like it from the standpoint that most of your turns will move smoothly until you hit a turn within a vignette where you're gonna have to make a really tough call and you're gonna have to decide one way or the other and it's going to have ripple effects positive or negative as you continue to play through you'll see whether that pans out the way you hoped it did and uh there's just so many moments in this game that kind of keep you on the edge of the seat as to am i going to be able to pull this out or am i going down the tubes here and this is just one that just blew me away i just was really impressed by it especially when you're talking about the color palette being black and white and you're going well there's no color to this one so the gameplay better be good and that's where a lot of people their heads went but they also have to realize and i mentioned this in a previous uh top 20 video that with this game the color palette was specifically chosen based on the story behind the game itself again also inside this kill forth universe so it's worth mentioning that it was done on purpose and uh but the thing is the gameplay is where this game really shines and i really recommend that if you're looking for a solo game that will keep you hooked and challenge you veil wraith is what you want to grab in the ninth position on my personal list it belongs to destinies from lucky duck games this is a game i've tabled very very recently solo and with friends and family still playing this game still enjoying it and wanted to make mention the fact it is app driven so you'll have you know half your time you'll be dealing with the app the other half you'll be dealing with things on the tabletop so that might interest you or may not it's also worth mentioning this originally had ties to joan of arc and that ip that had to be disconnected i don't know if there will be much more for destinies in the future or not that's really a question i don't have an answer to but i could see the system for destinies being used with something else in the future and who knows what that might be but i really hope they bring it back in a different capacity or even in the same capacity if that if that works but regardless i'm enjoying my time with it if you're playing solo you have explorer mode on one side and you have uh challenger mode on the other explorer gives you unlimited time you can do whatever you want and usually in general you could pretty much explore the majority of the scenario in one run maybe two runs fully to check off everything or three maybe to do everything if you're going that route or if you go to challenger route you're trying to min max yourself in order to win because you are timed at that point so you're going to have to replay the scenario a number of times before you get to a point where you're familiar with it enough to know exactly where you need to move and what you need to interact to do now for me personally i would normally say i want the narrative side sometimes and other times i want the challenger side depending on my mood but i would actually recommend if you want replayability out of destinies and this is definitely how i recommend it you go the challenger root first and play the scenario two three times whatever amount you need in order to beat the challenger mode and once you've beaten it then go over to the explorer mode and play through it once in order to fill in all the gaps the story that you weren't able to cover in the challenger mode and at that point after you've played three to four times you've probably seen everything inside of a given scenario but you've also gotten the most use out of one scenario i think if you just got at it from an explorer only perspective you'll probably be done in about a play or two and you may not come back that scenario after that unless you want to play far into the future when you forget what happened and what the story is but long story short i really do enjoy destinies there's enough expansion content that you can pick up for the game as well in order to enjoy it even further into the future and really hope they do more with it down the line in the eighth position on my personal list for 2021 is assassin's creed brotherhood of venice this comes from trite noir it came from a kickstarter campaign which has since delivered and i have no idea if there's a reprint coming i'd imagine there is because it was extremely popular it's been very well received for me personally when it landed it was i was excited for it because i wanted to see what they were going to do with the ip and bring it over to the table top and sometimes these things don't work and other times they do this is an example another good one of when they do they did a great job implementing assassin's creed the table top here on top of that they also implemented one of the best learn to plays inside of one of these larger campaign games i have seen to date and i still love it literally taking you through memories which are divided up into sequences as you are familiar with from the video game and as you move through these it's literally opening up envelopes and also opening up mechanisms within the game and explain them to you as you go along so you do not have to sit there and read the entire rule book to get the game the table and have fun with it you can simply just start playing and the game will guide you to where you need to read the rule book for additional information and then it will introduce additional mechanisms within the game as you play through these different sequences until you get to a point where you've basically covered everything but the way in which they did that was so smooth and seamless it surprised me i was expecting to have to read a gigantic book and keep a whole bunch of rules in my head in order to just table the thing and enjoy it you'll be really really surprised that is not the case so if this comes back for a reprint or it's available used somewhere or they happen to get it back on their store definitely recommend you check this one out it is an absolute winner all right so in the seventh position on the list we have descent legends of the dark this is an app driven game from fantasy flight games this is one that cost it quite a bit when it landed it has been seen discounted here and there every once in a while but it's still a relatively expensive game still but you're getting a lot inside the box and i definitely recommend solo players take a look at this if you kind of excused it as an app game or a game that might not be up your alley it actually has quite a few surprises in store for you now one of the things i really enjoyed while playing through it was the fact that each and every scenario as you actually play through it makes really great use and creative use of the components and the game design so as you play through each of the scenarios in the game you're not just doing you know a typical dungeon crawler explorer type thing where you go from a to z oh look i found the big chest on to the next room where we do the exact same thing this game is going to throw differences at you between the scenarios and how they're set up how they're laid out how they work how they function it's really going to make you go huh interesting and every single time you play one of those scenarios you're going to want to play the next one to see what they put together in this next scenario there's a lot of things to like about the app design as well in comparison to many of the other apps they've put out in the past this one has to be up there as either the best if not the second best app they've ever put out it handles all your campaign management in between your game states perfectly i absolutely love it you can do all your crafting and stuff inside of there you can goof around with it on the side when you're not even playing the game and then on on top of it during the gameplay itself it handles the one section of most dungeon crawlers struggle with which is streamlining combat to a point where you're not spending an obscene amount of time crunching numbers and just trying to get past the enemies that are in front of you as we all know most dungeon crawlers have enemies checks or something obstacles that we have to get past but you know having an app there that can kind of push you through that at a quicker pace it's a huge advantage and it helps to keep the excitement of what comes next which is the surprise factor that everyone loves in dungeon crawlers you know at the forefront instead of you know behind a whole bunch of time-consuming combat so long story short i like what they did i like the design of it and i'm really intrigued to see what else is coming down the line for this all right and this is where we get into the part of the list where i start making some shocking changes from what the rolling solo community had pegged as their top games when they got into their top ten so in the sixth position on my list is sleeping gods from red raven games a fantastic exploration adventure game that gives you all kinds of options the ability to literally control a crew and a ship to manage what's going on in that crew and that ship keeping them all happy safe healthy and on top of it maintaining the ship itself is you set sail on an adventure that's gonna take you all over the place and uh to be completely honest it is a fantastic adventure game for me personally though it wasn't the top of the list now in the prior list that i put out the rolling slow community had it as number one and it wasn't even number one by like a small margin it was actually number one by a large margin but for me personally it wasn't the first game out of these 20 games that i would grab off the shelf if i had to choose between there's a handful of other ones that i would grab ahead of this one however as i mentioned before these lists could change week on week there could be a week where i'm so into my sleeping god's experience that it actually would sit in the third second or first position on this list so again this is all point in time snapshot talk in terms of this list but sleeping gods belongs on the list it absolutely belongs in the top 10 of 2021. for me it sits at six and without further ado we've reached the top five of my list for 2021 really excited to go through these five games the fifth position belongs to chronicles of drunker age of darkness from creative games studios a dungeon crawler that for me definitely nailed it they did a whole bunch of things differently the cube management in terms of the usage of the cubes related to the color on the character boards that was really cool because it kind of you know basically makes you strategize as to how you should take actions and what you should do on your turn you don't have kind of open-ended actions you can just take attacks whenever you want them you're rolling a die on a d20 which is very very fun because you can have all these things go very very well or very very poorly and also just the the game presence on the table itself was so much fun it looks like fun like when you pull the game out of the box and you set it up people are going to go i want to play that not only does it look cool it has elevation going on in the game there's the surprise factor busting through a door not knowing what's on the other side there is a choose your own adventure mentality to it where you have different choices that will change the outcome of your current scenario or potentially a future scenario the doors as i mentioned kind of like open up and they kind of reveal what's going on behind them you're sometimes going to be pulled into an interactions book where you might find a statue and there's like eight different things you can do with the statue but you're only limited to do a couple actions and you have to choose like there's all these things going on that just keep drawing you back in the experience and making the game fun and it's just constant and then on top of all that you're managing darkness which is spreading everywhere and causing you all kinds of grief long story short if you have not looked into chronicles drunk or the videos i put up over this year for it including the new campaign that's already out there funded and funded like crazy um and i know there's a number of you probably that are waiting for the original game from that campaign you're going to have a lot of fun when that thing arrives in the number four position on my personal list is final girl from van rider games a game that is going to put you in a horror setting where you are dealing with a killer or some type of spiritual entity or something horrific that wants to take you out and as the final girl you're gonna need to use your wits your dice your cards in order to manage and make through the scenario alive hopefully if you can pull it off now the packaging for this game very unique very interesting i've heard comments around some people loving it some people hating it but i've also heard that with the brand new campaign coming in january very early january in 2022 that there's going to be more content coming and also a potential solution storage wise for the game as it grows even further and i think van rider games has a winner here in the solo community with final girl it's getting a lot of attention and it's rightly deserved i had a blast covering the prototype when i did so if you want to see gameplay i do have that which will help you and i'm also looking to put out some gameplay in 2022 as well around final girl and i think that's going to be a lot of fun we've now reached my top three for the year and in the third position i've placed bloodborne the board game from cool mini or not an absolute winner in my books and another fantastic example of how you should translate a video game to a table top and do it in style the game looks fantastic on the table it's unique and the one thing i loved about the design was that they didn't take the easy way out and just use dice and a bunch of other things in order to make this game happen they took it the extra mile to make it feel like bloodborne when you're actually playing the game when you're trying to take down all these miniatures as most of us know cool mirror not packs a ton of miniatures into their games every single enemy in the game feels unique there's two sides to their cards you can kind of switch them up in terms of what they can do to you and of course you're going to have to change how you actually take down these enemies based on the cards and that you have in your hand and how you play them is going to be a huge factor in whether or not you win or not so it doesn't come down to random chance as to whether you take out an enemy you have to strategically dodge you have to strategically try and stun enemies or you know attack them at specific times and there's other times just like the video game where attacking isn't the best option the best options to run away and it literally can be and i just love that they put all of that care and love from the video game into the tabletop experience so that for those that understand it and know it can really appreciate it and it was beyond fan service in my opinion it was uh everything i could have hoped it would have been and definitely believe that it should be an in the top top tier of this year uh it's one that's going to be passed over by people as you know it's uh it's there are some of these games and cthulhu death may die is a great example it took quite a bit for people to kind of get on board with it they were like yeah it's probably good i don't know i might try it and then one day they tried it and they went oh my gosh this game is a blast to play that's it's bloodborne is also a lot of fun to play and for me personally it sits at the number three position and isn't slumping anywhere down the list from there number two on my personal list belongs to role player adventures from thunder works games one that came to me very close to the tail end of the year and one of the most recent showcases i did on the channel and was one of the games that shook me the most in terms of excitement and happiness level as i played through that game i everything about the design of this game is pretty much everything i wanted to see i i got exactly what i was hoping to see from the actual campaign when it launched the gameplay is awesome i mentioned this in the the other list video that i put out role player adventures essentially revives role player in a way by allowing you to bring your original characters from the original role player game into uh this new adventures campaign and that's just really exciting because it kind of revives the game that was always very it was already very good and now kind of makes it almost even more exciting to play that first and then translate that character over to role player adventures and continue on from there and i just like everything about it i'm going to consume and am continuing to consume everything in role player adventures i'll probably have the entire game completely beaten before they even have a chance to announce that any new future content is coming down the pipes i'm just i'm really really happy with this one and i can't say that enough i think if i was going to recommend uh a a game out of this list that i think would work for anybody in terms of a general recommendation i think role player adventures is the highest or easiest game to recommend across any of the games in this list for this year so if anyone came to me and said hey what's a great solo game from 2021 it's role player adventures at this point i'm really excited because we have now made it to the first position on the list the most important which game was my top game of 2021 it was solomon kane from mythic games this is a game that i truly think is not only going to be a very popular solo game but also going to change the way in which games are designed going forward in terms of adventure games and dungeon crawlers and i will describe to you what i mean by that and i think this is part of the reason why i gravitated so heavily towards this game during this year is how it approached its design for me going into the board game i had very little familiarity with the ip and actually became more familiar with it through the board game i had seen the movie that came out years ago but that was about it that's all i did and i don't even think i remembered most of it uh when the board game arrived but as i played through the board game it actually sucked me in very very quickly essentially you have solomon kane who is part of a scenario and there's npcs and there's a bunch of other characters involved in this scenario and stuff like this there's talking interactions happening checks happening between the characters but you are controlling a virtue now if you're playing solo you can control four virtues all at once if you wish to do that and all four futures have virtues have a strength that's kind of a sign to them or you can say i don't want to manage four separate virtues that's a lot let's just you know go grab providence which is the virtue to rule them all and just control one of those virtues now what is a virtue it is literally a character a miniature that exists on the game board but in the spirit realm so when you think about solomon kane on the table top you're thinking about a number of individuals that are literally part of a scene i want to call it as you're playing out the scene and interfering and kind of influencing the scene and that involves solomon kane those other npcs but then you're going to have virtues that are sitting behind the veil in the spiritual realm that are also sitting in miniature form on that board plus you're going to have darkness entities that are going to show up on the game board and also be placed on the board so what's happening there well solomon kane cannot turn around and slice up one of those entities in the darkness in the spirit realm can't touch it can't do anything to it but what can happen is the darkness can actually influence solomon kane negatively whereas the virtues can influence solomon kane positively and as a person playing the game you get with your character board so for instance if you're using providence you're able to move providence around to having to you know to have influence on the game board and to help solomon kane or to potentially ward away the darkness in the spirit realm or you can actually move solomon kane around the board this basically creates a two-dimensional approach to a dungeon crawler or adventure game that is from what i can understand non-existent to date i have never seen this happen before and i mean maybe it has in some other game and somebody can let me know but i've never seen it where you actually have to worry about two different realms per se within the same instance on the table and i think that's really cool those things are connected in certain ways there's there's thing they're basically modifying checks uh the spirit realm you know darkness for the negative side of things virtues for the positive side of things modifying checks that are happening inside of that scene but you have control of not only things that solomon cain is doing and influencing what he does and where he moves but also moving the virtues around and it's it makes the game so so awesome like i can't even get over how great that design is because it takes the boring aspects of a dungeon crawler and adventure game the downtime aspects of those games where you typically would say oh it's my turn i'm gonna in solomon kane you roll dice and you slot them into cards on your on your virtue board that allow you to do something so let's say you know you've rolled your dice you've slotted the dice in you go i'm gonna move this time and then i'm gonna you know interact or attack or fight or whatever so let's say you're moving and fighting that's the typical thing to do in dungeon crawlers in most places or adventure games so your movement in most games is just kind of like it's almost like the the the thing you have to do like to get in place to do the attack so it's not really like that exciting so in other words half your turn is boring it's kind of like well you know i want to do a slash attack against this individual in the corner so i kind of need to move towards him to get beside him to hit him so i obviously need to use my movement to move towards him it's almost like the game's it's there's no joy in that because the game you need to do it it's a requirement to get to the attack the attack is the fun part the movement's boring in most these cases but in solomon kane the movement's actually interesting and strategic because if you want to move solomon kane closer to somebody to interact with them or to fight with them or to do whatever with them in a certain check you are also thinking about how the virtues are going to impact those checks how the darkness is going to impact those checks negatively and then deciding whether that position on the game board is a smart move or not it's like literally playing a little bit of chess in there because you're kind of going well i can move there right now and yeah there's a penalty but my virtue kind of offsets it so it's not so bad and like it makes movement strategic it makes movement fun i guess it's a better way maybe not strategies not the best word but fun and not pointless um and i find in too many of these dungeon crawler and adventure games movement is just something you kind of are forced to do because you need to be in a certain range from the enemy to hit them or you need to be beside them to interact but in solomon kane it's like yeah those things are present you still need that to do that but you need to also think about the after effect of like how is the darkness going to mess with you if you move to that position how is how is your virtue going to protect you if you move to that position oh maybe you shouldn't go there maybe you should go over somewhere else and it like it throws a whole other element of strategy which is why i want to call it two-dimensional makes the game two-dimensional because you're not just thinking about the characters that are present in the scene you're thinking about the spirit realm that's going on in the scene totally awesome i love it and the greatest thing about it is they implemented it with a game that already has such a massive massive uh importance level around the spiritual aspect of the game that it just ties in perfect it's it's like the it's the game design is literally the epitome of designing for the ip and for the story and the feel of the game so the game to me drips with theme when i play it it literally feels like i'm playing solomon kane and there's no other design of that game that i could ever see or any you know i couldn't see anyone else doing a better job of designing that game it just it can't happen it's perfect it's flawless now of course there are some quirks in terms of the wording i think there's an errata pack that's actually coming with wave 2 to kind of work on some of the things that were maybe not explained as well and things like that right that happens with most kickstarter games there's a couple spots here and there where it's like well that wasn't so great but they are fixing that stuff and i really really hope that mythic games is going to come back with a reprint because this is a gem like and this is a gem that i think is going to get passed over by people going well yeah it's probably just like everything else you know like it's another one of those ones where there's some narrative and you move through and you hack and slash everybody and do some checks it's probably not that great it really is a lot of fun and it's great at all player counts it's awesome with other people too but as a solo player what's amazing and what i loved is that they didn't just sit there and say well you know what the solo player has to control all four virtues because typically if you're playing multiplayer each person would have a virtue they didn't just say well forget that we'll just give the solo player all four of them and they just have to handle that in every situation they actually made a solo player specific virtue that's like the all-powerful virtue so you can just control one if you want it's just really powerful but the only downside of it strategically is now the aura that it protects is only in one spit spot on the game board you now don't have four of them in different spots modifying four different stats essentially it's just really cool it's just it's so cool it's so well designed it's a lot of fun highly recommended and that's why it landed as my number one and when the wave 2 delivery arrives it will be a very very exciting day for me so in conclusion i want to just talk at a high level between the two lists you're seeing on screen here the differences between the two major sections of each of these lists and that's really the bottom half of the top half and the bottom half is positions 11 through 20 which there was quite a bit of differences between the communities list and mine you can see those on screen right now again a majority of that was mainly because i had to strip away a number of games that i wasn't able to actually obtain or get access to during 2021 but are certainly on my list to try and obtain in 2022 they just won't make this list unfortunately because either sold out because they are that good which i'm not sure they are yet have to play them uh or some of them are just hard to find in canada in general just due to shipping issues and everything else going on in the world but the top 10 of these lists these two lists is where things are really interesting because this is where you know if i was to say to you you know put together a top 10 list and please share it which i did at the beginning of the video and i really hope you guys will go ahead and put together a list and share it down below because that's really really fun to go through those and find gems that were not mentioned because there's a whole bunch of other ones out there that are great that might not have been listed here in either these two lists but these top tens typically have more overlap than normal usually because this is usually where you can find kind of the game of the year material in these top 10 games in most people's lists and the more overlap you see across these top tens across people's list is where you see the more popular games rising up so for the rolling solo communities list more people on average had sleeping gods way up higher on the chart whereas for me personally i saw it i had it set at the sixth position which is not low it's actually quite high and you know on any given day that might change and go higher but today it's a six but to everybody else overall on average it was a one it was the top game and that's kind of where those differences can come from but it's really cool to see how you know different people you know latch on to different uh experiences that they're trying to go after right and for me personally solomon kane was the experience i wanted in 2021 whereas for some other people the experience in uh sleeping gods was exactly what they wanted or for somebody else maybe it was dissent or for somebody else it was assassin's creed or and that's kind of the joy with these lists so i would love to see your list down below in the comments so we can peruse all through a bunch of solo games just see what people are into at the moment but that is really going to wrap up 2021 in terms of lists at this point the only video that i plan to release going into january if time permits but it will certainly happen sometime between january and february is a follow-up to my test of time video which i did last year which is where i covered uh games that released notable games that released a decade ago and the reason i like doing this is it's really fun to look back at the games that really shaped the future in terms of design in terms of popularity in terms of hidden gems all that kind of stuff and every single year that games come out there are gems in there in terms of design and impact that have ripple effects for many years to come down the line there are games in these lists that you're seeing right now that are going to change the way board games are designed or the focus of designers going forward in the future and that's just the way it goes um you know there's inspiration that comes from games that land in higher tiers on these lists because people look at them and go well what's special about them what is unique about them what can i do to make that game even better what what what mechanic or mechanism in a game can i really push the envelope on in order to make it truly special and shine in my next iteration of a game and it's those kind of things that are really fun to kind of look back on so that's what my video series does is kind of looks back 10 years and just kind of highlights the games that were special back then it really had an impact and they had longevity and are still hopefully being played today that's going to pretty much wrap it up i am exhausted it is getting late into the night it is getting close to the end of 2021 in terms of when i'm filming this when this video releases it'll be 2022 so happy new years to everybody again thank you guys so much for your support if you like what i do here at rolling solo and you want to support me going into 2022 please join my patreon we'd love to have you there got a whole bunch of behind the scenes stuff that i'm going to be offering going into 2022 and i'm changing up the way in which i'm doing that thank you guys so much for watching and as always keep on rolling solo [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Rolling Solo

Views: 29,054

Keywords: best solo board games, best board games 2021, best solo board games 2021, top 10 board games, sleeping gods, roll player adventures, final girl, descent legends of the dark, bloodborne, chronicles of drunagor, solomon kane, destinies, cartographers heroes, euthia torment of resurrection, set a watch, chronicles of crime, veilwraith, assassins creed brotherhood of venice, zombicide second edition, wildlands, dungeons of infinity, wild assent, merchants cove, the great wall

Id: Vmk2vzf12Rc

Length: 48min 31sec (2911 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 03 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/NeinDu21thCentury]

Thanks for the top 20 list.

Set a Watch has been mentioned alot, might look into it. The Great Wall is also on my watch list but awakened Realm stuff is hard to come by :/.

[u/Brodogmillionaire1]

Thanks for posting. Quite an unusual list. Some of these popcorn games I would not consider ideal for solo play: no one to share the action movie narrative with, big setup for relatively small decision space, sometimes solo mechanics that are a lot to run. I haven't found much enjoyment in that sort of solitaire experience.

[u/unequalled]

Join me for My Top 20 Solo Board Games from 2021!! Hope you find something of interest and let us know your top picks from 2021 in the comments.

At the end of the video I show the Rolling Solo Community Top 20 side by side with my list for you to compare. Enjoy my friends and I wish you all the best in 2022! 🥳🎉

[u/binbrain0]

This list is fantastic! Subscribed

[u/johnlondon125]

Great list. The sad state of solo friendly games is that of the 20 on your list I think you can probably only buy zombicide.

It's really frustrating that everything is a Kickstarter, and if you didn't pledge years ago, you're out of luck.