The Top 33 solo games of all time

kia ora koutou and welcome to my top 33 solo games of all time why 33 you ask well i play a lot of solo games so i thought i'd show you a lot of my favorites now i've played about 300 on solo games so this represents the top 10 of all the solo games i've played now there are some caveats on this this must represent games that i actually set up and play solo on the table it cannot represent app plays or other form of online play so this is the games that i've actually set up and played physically which disqualifies two of my favorite solo games sentinels of the multiverse and terraforming mars because the vast majority of my plays of those games are via the app and not playing it physically on the tabletop so as much as i love the solo modes on sentinels and terraforming mars they just can't make the list because i don't play them physically very often spirit island gloomhaven and scythe these are three great games but i vastly prefer them as either co-op or competitive games rather than solo and finally the elephant in the room mage knight a game that lots of people like but i don't really like that much it's not that i hate mage knight it ended up about 60th on this list but i know there's a lot of people out there who absolutely think it should be number one on every solo board gaming list and i don't hate it i just don't like it as much as everyone else seems to so with that out of the way let's move on to the list and remember these are entirely my opinions based on my personal play experience your experience may vary first up we have architects of the west kingdom which is a worker placement game where the solo mode is playing against an ai opponent your opponent will take actions and occupy spaces and genuinely feels like you're playing against an opponent and i think this is one of the cleverest solo modes on the market the reason architects doesn't appear higher is that it's a game that's much stronger at higher player counts with more interaction i almost feel like you'd need three ai opponents to make this really hum and that's a lot of busy work still an excellent option if you're looking for a worker placement game with a really solid ai opponent to play against suburbia collectors edition is an interesting one because it's a city building game where you're in a race against time to make the most points so it's a beat your score challenge type game but there's a huge amount of space within the engine to build these fascinating different cities and if i did this video two years ago suburbia would be right towards the top the problem is the collector's edition has actually impeded me playing it as a solo game it's just too much stuff this one will definitely appeal to you if you're the kind of person who loves combo building if you like a certain amount of time to do something and to try to build the absolute best combos you can suburbia would be a good one but i really don't recommend sinking your money on the collector's edition unless you're a super fan of the game police precinct is what i call a firefighting co-op and that's a co-op game where there's a whole bunch of incidents and accidents happening all over the board and you have limited time and resources to deal with them so you have to prioritize what you take on and what you let slide for a little bit and hope that things don't get entirely out of hand the three main things you do in police precinct are deal with gangs respond to call outs and attempt to solve the murder and you have to balance these three activities because if you let one get out of hand it can spell doom for everything else and now police precinct is copaganda and it does present the police in the absolute perfect fantasy light but i still enjoy it for the absolute busyness and hecticness of playing a game of police precinct it's kind of fugly though the networks is a quirky drafting and set collection game based on the idea of running a television network with absolutely terrible shows this one has an ai opponent as well as you flip over cards and your opponent drafts things and takes them out of the game so you still have to act with urgency to get the things you really need and it creates that atmosphere of playing against a live opponent the networks are still a beat your score game and if you're not into those you probably won't like this but it does feel like you are playing against a legitimate opponent and i just have a soft spot for the quirky concept and the art and silliness of this game first martians adventures on the red planet there'll be a few people shocked to see first martians on this list because i have been quite critical of it in the past many people consider this an inferior game to robinson crusoe and that's probably true and the rulebook's quite cumbersome and it is a lot to take in and to digest when you first start playing it but i persevered with first martians i really invested my time in learning the game and getting familiar with it and what it is is a big crisis management simulation you start the game where the base it is working and yeah you've got some assignments and stuff to do but the core problems you deal with are about the gremlins that start creeping into your systems things breaking down and it's this balancing act of do i push forward to complete the mission goals or do i deal with the problem of the lighting starting to fritz out that makes first martians quite compelling when you get into it this is not one i would recommend to everyone because there is the significant time investment to get familiar with all the systems but if you want to play a game that makes you feel like you're a commander in a control room watching buttons flash up that say emergency emergency and getting on the microphone and saying bob go fix evaporators or else we're gonna die this could be a game that works for you and it does work for me and because i don't think it did particularly well it's probably pretty easy to pick up now one of my patrons said to me i noticed there's not a lot of small box games on this list or short playtime ones that you seem to like longer more involved games and that is entirely true but assembly is one of the shorter games that i really dig you're on a space station and everything's going to hell and you need to rotate and align all of these tokens to fit to their relevant rooms so you can escape and survive and why it works for me is it's easy to set up easy to play and engaging it feels like you're picking a lock every time you get a marker in the right place to lock a room it's like you've turned a combination whilst picking a lock and everything just slowly clicks into place as time runs out and for short game that's intensely satisfying so definitely one to pick up if you like solving puzzles and also being a small box game it's not particularly pricey as well now this is a game that had the weirdest little marketing campaign it was put out by played hat games as like a mystery selective box and that game is raxon a lot of people pre-ordered this blind and were quite disappointed with what they got because raxxon is a kind of tile-based cooperative puzzle game but it's one of those puzzle games that works absolutely best as a solo game at its core you're trying to flip over and rescue uninfected citizens from a zombie apocalypse the face down tiles on the board represent a crowd and you're trying to do that without revealing too many aggro and infected crowd members who will spread the disease and make the game harder it's really tough it's a really finely tuned tough puzzle game i'm not sure how available raxxon is because i don't think it did particularly well the weird thing is this is one of those games that i got as a co-op but i've almost exclusively played solo because fundamentally it just feels like a solo puzzle more than a co-op game where there'd be back and forth discussions going on definitely one for people who like patterns and probability and there's a very clear outcome either you rescue enough people or you don't now i'm not particularly suited to talk about the theme and content of this game as i don't have any real connection to slavery in the us and that game is freedom the underground railroad from an outsider's perspective the theme seems to be executed quite well it's treated with respect and gravity as a game however it is an incredibly tight and tense cooperative game you are trying to move slaves from slave plantations in the south to the north to freedom and you have incredibly limited actions to do this and while you're doing that the slave hunters are also moving so there's this big element of risk taking and calculating whether you can get people across the border in time a truly tense solo experience and a complicated and powerful theme combined to create a genuinely thought-provoking game well slight spoiler alert but this game is going to get a three-minute recap at some point it's a wonderful world now this game takes the best elements of seven wonders and terraforming mars and blends them together with a kind of weird and wacky pseudo-futuristic theme the solo mode is a beat your score challenge but it has a bunch of different scenarios and different things you can try out and it also goes for eight rounds instead of four like the regular game so you get to build bigger gnarlier engines i really like this one because i like drafting and i like engine building and this is definitely a game for people who like those two things as well if you want to maximize the potential of a limited amount of cards and resources across eight turns in about 20 to 30 minutes this is an excellent selection for a solo game there are no pandemics on this list asides from pandemic the cure most of the pandemics are pretty good as solo games the nature of firefighting co-ops with perfect information just lends himself well to solo games as long as you don't mind playing two three or four characters and for pandemic for cure i almost always play three or four characters why i like pandemic the cure more is that the characters have way more variety and the dice create this decision space where you really have to think what does this character do what are my probabilities and there's this evil push your luck element in the dice rolling as well because you can re-roll as many times as you want noting that one side of the dice is always bad it's not a terribly fair game and some games you can lose almost immediately but the overall play time is pretty short so when i set it up i tend to play two three or four games at a time definitely one for people who love dice and don't mind the game occasionally just being completely and utterly unfair well i mentioned earlier that there were some games that i much prefer playing multiplayer than solo this one's an exception and that's dinosaur island i don't dislike dinosaur island as a multiplayer game but i actually really enjoy its solo mode you have a limited number of turns to complete set challenges and each turn one of those challenges goes away if you don't manage to achieve one and this leads to a great decision space where you've got all these objectives that you have to hit throughout the game and you have to choose when to go for each one mechanically it works a lot like the networks where there is an ai taking away options from you while you play and while it's a bit of a table hog and does take a while to set up the challenge of the objective cards makes this really engaging for me and more engaging than when i play it multiplayer against other people in fact the solo mode's the main reason i'm still holding on to the game this is another game where i really can't comment on the historical accuracy or how well the game has been designed and developed from a cultural viewpoint and that's comancheria the rise and fall of the comanche empire this is a very complex game and if you're not a war gamer there'll be a lot of systems you're not familiar with like chit pulling comancheria tells the story of the comanche empire which i knew nothing about before i purchased the game and gameplay moves through four distinct chapters starting off with the initial expansion period through to dealing with the oncoming american invasion and the reservation act that sent the comanche onto reservations it's an intense compelling game that takes you through the rise and fall of an entire nation and i found the experience of playing this incredibly fascinating it is a deep deep game but it's also really complex and there's a lot of stuff that if you haven't played a lot of war games will really be confusing and different and weird to you but if you want a challenging deep involved game about the american west this could be a really good one for you to pick up i've set this on a fair few videos but i don't like the legendary system at all except for legendary encounters an alien deck building game for some reason despite me not liking the marvel one the x-files one or any of the other versions i've looked at or played aliens just works it works with multiple players and it works solo as long as you're willing to play two hands it kind of falls down if you're only playing one hand but there's something about how the vent system works and the hidden cards and having to scan them to reveal them that just feels insanely thematic for aliens i also like the objective structure that each game you have clear goals on what you need to do to win and those goals are super thematic while sticking to the same core architecture and structure each time it just feels like legendary encounters was built for the alien theme and was built as an upgrade to the original legendary system and everything else has been kind of tacked on afterwards this is definitely game to pick up if you like deck building and if you like the aliens theme if you do like the alien theme you'll probably love the hell out of this game like i do you may have noticed that not a lot of these games are actually pure solo games that were designed as solo games many of them are co-op games or engine builders that have an automata opponent nemo's war is very much a solo game and sure it's marketed as being for wonderful players but that is a joke it is a one player game what's compelling about this is its mix of narrative probability wrangling dice manipulation and variable paths to victory so at the start of the game nemo selects a motivation and this determines what things score what victory points and that completely changes the style of play and what you prioritize doing if you're about exploration you care a lot less about sinking ships and that's what keeps bringing me back to nemo's war the variation in powers the rich narrative and the different play styles and the fact that it's a proper design solo game that feels like it was made to be played by itself i definitely skipped this one over someone who hates dice and bad roles though there is a bunch of dice mitigation in this but if you constantly complain about dice hating you you'll hate this one xcom is a four player real time game where a whole bunch of actions happen on an app and you have to respond to them real time on the board i like playing this as a group game but i also really like playing at solo as well taking on all four roles at the same time it's the closest experience in board gaming to being the captain on a bridge in a sci-fi movie where everything is going to shit you have to respond quickly make instant decisions and generally it's a terrifyingly stressful experience but that's why i like playing it solo nothing challenges me mentally more than having to think on my feet and make decision after decision after decision in a really short space of time if you have any form of analysis paralysis this game will be impossible for you as you literally have 10 seconds sometimes to make a call on a card i also like kitchen rush and rush md for the exact same reason but i think xcom is the best of these three as a pure solo game at some point when i get the right camera set up i'll probably record a game of me playing x-com solo because i know there's a few people out there who don't think this is possible and overall seeing me stress and freak out could be worth a laugh the manhattan project energy empire is an engine building game with a beat your own score challenge mode now for me those aren't the most engaging solo game win conditions but i really like the engine building that goes on within energy empire there are some restrictions in the solo mode so some actions cost more to take and there's less buildings available and while it doesn't feel like you're playing against an ai opponent the core engine building in energy empire is really engaging so this is very much one for people who like that pure can i get the best out of the limited time and limited resources i have sort of gained and why it works for me is just because the options in energy empire are really great there's really neat stuff you can do and different styles and different approaches to the game so it has quite high replayability this one probably could do an automated opponent to make it a little bit better but still really enjoyable solo game pavlov's house was my solo game of the year last year and the reason for that is it's an excellent high level abstraction of the battle of stalingrad across three separate battlefield domains something i've never seen done well in a game before pavlov's house zooms right into the house where you're dealing with individual soldiers in individual spaces with their individual kit then there's an operational level where you can see where the germans are advancing from and a strategic level where you're trying to manage your resources and i thought this kind of game would be stupidly complex but pavlov's house does these three domains seamlessly simply it's not an overwhelmingly difficult game and while the battle of stalingrad certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea in terms of a theme if you are looking for a solo war game that feels both epic and personal at the same time you can do a hell of a lot worse than pavlov's house paladins of the west kingdom is an action selection engine building game and it has one of the best ai opponents in gaming the ai replicates a human opponent really well and it has its own side of the board and separate subsystems for doing its own moves now i really like paladins it is a deep rich complex engine building game with a heck of a lot of decisions to make from the start of your turn to the end of your turn and how you can just keep getting actions and keep maximizing your returns each and every turn building to a crescendo at the end now this one's got a bit of setup time but it's not a short solo game and you'll end up playing it for quite a while each time you set it up and it is quite high complexity so not one i'd recommend to everyone but if you want a meaty engine building heavy decision game against an opponent that makes moves that will annoy you definitely check out paladins of the west kingdom you might be picking up on a theme here that i like engine building especially in solo games and here's la have this is almost a pure engine builder you have a limited number of turns to collect resources and convert them into points using various buildings and other artifaces lahav is all about maximizing your actions for each and every turn and it is a beat your score challenge type game in a limited time frame and while there isn't an ai opponent what appeals to me about lahar solo is it's almost entirely a math based challenge it's a solo game where i'm constantly crunching numbers constantly thinking of what's the best selection here what's the best outcome how can i maximize my return here it's also one you can definitely take your time with thinking through your moves and planning out two three four five turns in advance definitely another one for the engine building fans out there and now for something completely different defenders of the last stand is an absolute mess of a game and i love it have you ever thought what a pandemic instead of viruses was biker gangs and instead of just moving around the board and clearing out things how about we could go on wacky post-apocalyptic adventures and what if each virus instead had a gang leader that was super tough to take on and like a complete end game sub game of its own defenders of the last stand is just a mess it's just got systems all over the place there's too much happening it's not balanced and yet and yet it is one of my favorite solo games just because it's so absolutely batshit some days i want to play a slick engine builder where i'm crunching the numbers each and every turn other times i just want to fight radioactive monsters and if you do like firefighting co-op games that have way too much chrome and too many systems this could be one to pick up it's it's really quite difficult to get these days though because the company's gone out of business but there is a less gonzo version of the game called defenders of the realm that is still available i believe and this is not me flexing that i own some weird out-of-print game i think they went out of business because the game isn't actually very good i just happen to like it it's the board game equivalent of a terrible cult movie that's somehow quite engaging i'd love to see it get picked up streamlined a little and republished because as gonzo as it is and as wacky as it is there's an experience here i think could be presented in a slightly better way to a much wider audience and do incredibly well so if you're listening richard let's make defenders of the last stand second edition of thing and from the gonzo and ridiculous to the slick and sublime we have anachrony anachrony has probably the best ai opponent in all of board gaming the chronobot is just a really terrifyingly annoying opponent it's one of the first times i played a solo game that i felt like the ai was playing like a real player and the kind of real player i wanted to punch in the mouth the chronobot has this aggressive relentless play style and you just want them to slow down so you can do your damn stuff in time and anachrony itself is a worker placement game it's one of my favorite worker placement games it has a lot of chrome and a lot of extra systems it's not a simple game by any means but i love the combinations of mechanics in this game the reason it's not higher on this list is because the setup time is a pain in the ass and i don't bring it to the table remotely as much as i feel i should but if you are looking for a worker placement game with an ai opponent that's really challenging and the victory conditions are to beat the chronobot who is scoring points really really quickly so if you want a solo game that's a heavy worker placement game and you want to feel the time pressure of playing against a good opponent anachrony could be a really good pickup nemesis is another game where i absolutely love the solo mode but the setup time means i don't play it remotely as much as i'd like to now there's multiple ways to play the solo you can legitimately play a solo character roaming around the ship or you can play multi-handed solo playing multiple characters and nemesis handles this extremely well making a public goal for each player in the group so if you have four players you have four goals and you have to complete all of them so there's a scaling difficulty with the more players you add and that's a really nice simple way to make a multi-handed solo more difficult without adding wacky mechanics on top i love the theme of nemesis i love pretty much everything about nemesis as you might have picked up from the aliens legendary thing i am a huge fan of the alien franchise and nemesis is probably the best aliens game out there despite not technically being an aliens game and while the solo mode doesn't have the portrayal elements of the classic nemesis game i'm not the biggest fan of the betrayal elements of nemesis and i think they're one of the more misunderstood things about the game so being able to play the game just for the exploration the discovery and running away from monsters by yourself makes nemesis a really good pickup as a solo game if you like dice chucking if you like exploration and if you're in love with the theme when some games get a second edition it's a step forward or a step backwards when mansions of madness got a second edition it was an absolute revolution the first manchester madness was a game i really enjoyed but it was a giant pain in the ass to set up and it requires someone to essentially play a dungeon master type role second edition bind all that and replace it with an app and what that means is you can kind of just set up the game with a couple of rooms hit the app and pretty much start playing immediately and it hits all of the classic haunted house lovecraftian notes as well you're exploring a place trying to figure out what supernatural things going on eventually leading to a major showdown we have to dismiss the monster or defeat it or somehow escape from it this one won't be for you if you don't like dice and random events and i found it really comes alive with the expansions because the core game only shipped with four scenarios and one of those is far too long to be fun i also think it's a game you can't take too seriously it's a haunted house exploration but definitely one i'd recommend to people who have the budget for it because it's not cheap especially not of all the adults and you really have to be in love with the exploration and dice based system of mansions of badness to really get a kick out of it but the main reason i love it is it feels like a game where you get to genuinely explore things the map isn't revealed at the start of the game it's not in a book it's it's given to you slowly as you explore the building and few games have that genuine sense of exploration at least the first time you play the scenario if i'd done this list six months ago this game would be around about number 20 or 30 but it's jumped up to number 10 and that's hostage negotiator and the reason it's made that jump is because of the career mode that they put out recently now i enjoy hostage negotiator i know a lot of people have some issues with it because it is a high luck high variance game the theme is you're negotiating against a hostage taker and each of these hostage takers has different personality different mechanics and has different plans and takes different actions and a common complaint is that it's too random to which i say it's not really you can each turn spend cards to get conversation points and stockpile them later sure you can with one roll and that can end your game but it's a short game short games can be a bit random and crazy but what career mode added was a narrative to it a connecting story between all these negotiations as your character matures and grows and goes through life changes and it took all of the best parts of legacy games and none of the terrible parts so each time you play through you get a new story you get new hooks and new things happen but you're not shredding cards and the board isn't ruined at the end of the play i definitely recommend starting with a small hostage negotiator box first to see if the core mechanics work for you though but if you do like those core mechanics and the dice throwing and dice manipulation doesn't drive you up the wall then career mode is a really good step to take another thing that's appeared on this list a fair bit are firefighting co-ops and the captain is dead is one of my favorites of these to play solo and the reason for that is it's a quick setup time the game's always tight and there's a whole bunch of wacky character combinations you can try this is one where you really have to play multi-handed solo and on occasion i have played it with seven different characters but why it's so high on the list is because the game's fast it's quickly paced there's a lot of decisions and you just play it boom boom boom constantly going through actions so it's what i like to put on the table when i've got an extra 20 or 30 minutes spare i can set the game up quickly and i can just blitz through a play of it definitely one for sci-fi fans who fall in love with the theme but also for people who just enjoy those fire fighting co-ops number eight is one of the most unique games in my collection and that is leaving earth leaving earth is a simulation of running a space agency and it is one of the most math-heavy games you can play calculating exactly what it takes to send rockets via venus to slingshot around jupiter all the way out to neptune requires some paper and pencil and a lot of time and thinking which is why it works quite well as a solo game as a multiplayer game you can end up with some periods where someone's just doing math for 15 minutes and that can bring the game down to a crawl i don't mind that that much but one of the advantages of solo is when you're doing the complex math you're not noticing because you're doing the complex math it also has a great push your luck mechanic in it and while the solo mode is just a race to score as many points as you can before the end of the game the different missions you get and the different conditions on each planet because at this point we don't know if venus is uninhabitable or not we only know that once we've explored it means it's not a solved game as soon as you sit down to plan this is definitely a game for patient people who want a solo game where you can sit reflect plan and think it's a slow burning solo game not a quick rush of adrenaline well when i mentioned first martians and said it wasn't as good as robertson crusoe it should have been pretty obvious that robinson crusoe was going to appear on this list and here it is robinson crusoe is one of the most involved solo games you can play you land shipwrecked with very few resources on a tropical island a cursed tropical island and you have to struggle to build shelter find supplies and deal with an ongoing story problem and there's a lot of different scenarios ranging from relatively easy to stupidly impossible and like first martians it's a game about risk mitigation there's too many things you need to do and you don't have enough resources what elevates it above first martians for me though is the genuine sense of achievement you get when you finish a game of robinson crusoe you've gone from landing on the beach with absolutely nothing to having a working shelter and a big fire built for a ship to see you're also armed with homemade weapons and have probably killed a bear but it's also a brutally merciless game and you will lose and lose and lose which makes those victories even more sweet it's a very complex game with a lot of moving parts as well so what i recommend to people who have a lot of time to learn the rules and get invested with it this is not a game you can just pick up put down and start playing it's a time commitment but when you win a game of robinson crusoe there are very few things in solo board gaming more satisfying now everyone knows i've got a pretty good relationship with garphill games they live just up the road from me and i tend to review all their games and i tend to like most of their games but something that will probably surprise people is that my number six is circadian's first light i think circadians is the best solo mode garphil games has done the ai opponent has the same thing as anachrony it plays fast and you want to punch it in the face circadians is a dice placement game and your ai opponent is going to be placing dice exactly where you don't want them to place them the other thing i really like about circadians is that there are variable player powers and they're all exceptionally strong so each time you pick one of these characters it leads you down a different potential engine building path now i have the expansion that has 12 of these characters so that's 12 distinct play styles and of course you can pull different levers within the game within each of those styles and it combines several things i really enjoy in a solo game it has an excellent ai opponent it has engine building and it has different paths to victory and i think circadians is one of those overlooked gems in solo gaming and it's also one of those dice games where it doesn't really matter what you roll there's enough different options for low rolls and high rolls and enough dice manipulation that you can make things work as and when you need them to and sure you might not be able to do exactly what you want each turn but that's part of the challenge of it so i recommend this one to people who like engine building and who like having to think about what the best decision you can make with the resources to hand are and also to people who want to play against a quality ai opponent dawn of the zeds is a swaggering beast of a solo game and it's a solo game that has kicked my ass far too many times and yet i keep going back to it and i'm not 100% sure why i normally end a game of dawn of the zeds absolutely frustrated and angry with it and then a few days later i'm setting it back up and playing again dawn of the zeds is a defense game where you are defending a town against an oncoming horde of zombies and the zombies don't fight fair it is a game full of traps and traps are things that experienced gamers learn through repeated plays of a game but that screw over new players and initially you think oh i should defend out i should try to hold the zombies as far back as possible this is a way to lose all your people you cannot hold everything in the game you must make sacrifices you must decide when is a good time to retreat you have limited resources and initially you think i'm just going to shoot my gun all the time and then you run out of ammo when you really need it there are very few games where i felt so pressed and so desperate for extra actions and extra resources than dawn of the zeds and the narrative and stories it tells are really compelling you've got this wide selection of heroes each of whom are unique and bring different things to the team and a massive number of events and complications to the game it's an absolute hellscape to learn though as the game comes with five different difficulties each with their own different rules so the time commitment of getting into dawn of the zeds is really high and while you're learning the game you're also going to keep losing and losing over and over so who's this game for masochists probably i'm probably a solo board gaming masochist because i genuinely like dawn of the zeds i just don't think dawn of the zeds likes me now this will shock absolutely no one Arkham Horror second edition is right up towards the top of my list i have played Arkham Horror second edition hundreds of times while i was on the sickness benefit for two years i left the game set up on a table and i would play it just about every day and what i love about second edition is that it's a wacky random event simulator crazy things happen in arkham and there's so many different characters great odd ones encounters mythos events and other world encounters that you will never play the exact same game each time you set it up and this is infinite combinations that really made the game super replayable to me and yeah it's got a massive footprint and a pretty long play time but at the time that was exactly what i needed was a long game i could just leave set up and play over and over again and we still play arkham second edition a fair bit and while this one isn't that easy to pick up anymore many people prefer eldritch horror to arkham horror second edition so if you can't get 2nd edition consider grabbing eldritch horror instead if you are looking for a co-op game that you can play solo where it's all about battling monsters and wacky stuff happening and learning to have a love-hate relationship with your dice this war of mine is one of my all-time favorite games and the main reason for that is the content that it deals with very few games draw me in narratively like this war of mine and it has this sublime ability to tell compelling interesting stories but it's also a very tight nasty game as well you never have enough resources you never have enough food there's always a sense of desperation and i'm guessing that's the board game masochist coming out of me again i like when games present a serious challenge this war of mine does have a dramatically long setup time but the game itself will take you a long time to play so the setup time to play time doesn't feel that bad unless of course you die in the first few days which does happen from time to time but if you're looking for a game that will draw you in a game that will tell a story a game where you will constantly feel tense about the decisions you have to make you really can't do much better than this war of mine but there's definitely a content warning on this game as when it goes dark it gets exceptionally dark the last two games on this list are my most played solo games over the last three years these are games that i routinely set up and play the first of these is healthy heart hospital which could also be called terrible hospital management simulator in healthy heart hospital you are trying to cure patients that's the goal at least and you do this by drafting cubes out of the bag cubes that match different disease types and it's a bag manipulation game because each time you draw some cubes out of the bag you're given the option of putting some back in and discarding others changing the complexion of the bag so if red cubes represent cardiac disease and you have a lot of sick patients with cardiac disease you're going to be wanting to trim the bag down and keep putting red cubes back in so that when you go to treat those patients you're pulling out more red cubes than you are anything else which helps cure them and this seems like something you can do really easily but it's a genuine challenge and why i love healthy heart hospital is that it's full of micro decisions every time you pull cubes out you're thinking how do i need to change the shape of the bag you're also counting in your head what's out what's in what are my probabilities there's a lot of math to jumble around in your head while you're playing healthy art hospital if you want to get good outcomes and then the game just occasionally is brutally unfair people will die in the waiting room they'll die in the wards they'll die in surgery and that will destroy the reputation of your hospital really quickly but i keep coming back to healthy heart hospital because that core gameplay loop really appeals to me and that's a really different decision point to most games i play now i'm not sure of the availability of the first edition it was a victory point games game and they've kind of gone out of business but i believe there might be a second edition of this coming out next year and so i am super looking forward to that i really want to see what improvements they make on the game and i really want to share this one with a wider audience because i really love it so yeah healthy heart hospital a game that revolves around its bag manipulation mechanic and if that mechanic clicks for you like it did for me you'll really really love it and quickly before we get to the last game these long format videos are made possible thanks to patreon so here's a shout out to my patreon supporters who made my top 33 solo games video possible thanks crew and on to number one it's deeply ironic that i was kind of making fun of pandemic earlier because the number one game on my list is by the designer of pandemic and it's thunderbirds i just love thunderbirds as a solo game it is a firefighting co-op but it's one that revolves around pick up and deliver you need to move the little thunderbird vehicles around the board to get them in the right place in order to conduct rescues the theme is just beautifully executed and i am a thunderbirds fan from from childhood but i think it's a game that even if you don't know the theme the core gameplay and mechanics are just really fun you have to think several turns ahead because you need to think oh we need to get the mole driller from this continent to that continent so you can pop along and fix that and it's the fact that your turns are layers and have to be planned out in advance then make it a really good solo game i play this all the damn time steph will walk around the house going where are you oh you're playing thunderbirds because it spends so much time on my table and i think it's an excellent fire fighting co-op because it represents an evolution of mat lealock's ideas from pandemic but because that franchise is so rooted in its core ideas they won't take the evolutionary steps that thunderbirds did i think if this had a different brand it would have been a massive hit because the core gameplay is just wonderful it's easy to set up it's not that much more complex than pandemic and yet the decision space is far bigger i had no idea about the availability of this one i don't think it was very successful and i appear to be the only super fan of this game on the internet but if you can track down a copy and you do love co-ops and you do love firefighting games and you do love pandemic you are almost certainly going to enjoy thunderbirds you might not like it as much as i do but i'm pretty sure you won't hate it and that brings us to the end of our list as i said earlier there were several hundred solo games i had to leave out and some of the ones just off my list include horrified flashpoint fire rescue raiders of scythia spacecorp the reckoners gaia project zombicide and aeon's end if i was doing a top 40 those games would also be included so in the comments let me know your top five solo games are there any on here that you tried and you liked are there anyone here that you tried and you hated which ones of them are most intriguing to you let me know in the comments and if you enjoyed this video come support us on patreon hit the notification button and subscribe to the channel

Channel: 3 Minute Board Games

Views: 77,206

Keywords: Thunderbirds, Healthy Heart Hospital, This War of Mine, Arkham Horror, Dawn of the Zeds, Circadians: First Light, Robinson Crusoe, Leaving Earth, The Captain Is Dead, Hostage Negotiator, Mansions of Madness, Nemesis, Anachrony, Le Havre, Paladins of the West Kingdom, Pavlov's House, Nemo's War, Dinosaur Island, It's a Wonderful World, Assembly, First Martians, The Networks, Suburbia, Board games, Board game, Three minute Board Games, 3 Minute Board games, solo, solo board games

Id: FeTAVPnP-_0

Length: 39min 2sec (2342 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/limeybastard]

Disqualified because he plays their digital versions instead: Sentinels of the Multiverse, Terraforming Mars
Disqualified because he likes them better with other people: Spirit Island, Gloomhaven, Scythe
Elephant in the Room: He doesn't like Mage Knight very much

1. Thunderbirds
2. Healthy Heart Hospital
3. This War of Mine
4. Arkham Horror 2e
5. Dawn of the Zeds
6. Circadians: First Light
7. Robinson Crusoe
8. Leaving Earth
9. The Captain is Dead
10. Hostage Negotiator (with Career Mode)
11. Mansions of Madness 2e
12. Nemesis
13. Anachrony
14. Defenders of the Last Stand
15. Le Havre
16. Paladins of the West Kingdom
17. Pavlov's House
18. The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire
19. X-COM
20. Nemo's War
21. Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deckbuilding Game
22. Comancheria
23. Dinosaur Island
24. Pandemic: The Cure
25. It's a Wonderful World
26. Freedom: The Underground Railroad
27. Raxxon
28. Assembly
29. First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet
30. The Networks
31. Police Precinct (acknowledges copaganda)
32. Suburbia
33. Architects of the West Kingdom
    

Having watched the whole thing, I'm actually super intrigued by Pavlov's House. I'm not a wargamer but this seems like a really neat concept.

[u/WithoutAnUmlaut]

I always enjoy his reviews. I'm a little surprised that he didn't put any sort of LCG in there such as Arkham Horror (especially, given he enjoys AH2E) or Lord of the Rings. Also no roll and write. In general he doesn't have many light/quick games, but he does have a lot of AI-driven games. I don't really enjoy solo games that use an AI because it feels like a poor imitation of just playing multiplayer with my friends. If I'm going to play solo I'd rather have a game that's really intended to be a solo rather than one that's found a way to pretend and substitute as one.

But, like I said, I enjoy his videos...and I appreciated this list and got a few leads on games to keep my eyes out for.

[u/N3rdC3ntral]

These reviews are great. Several videos have either convinced us to buy a game or introduced it to us.

Spirit Island is one of my favorite games. I would have never looked at it if it wasnt for him and I always use his reviews to see if someone is interested in playing.

Him and myself like some of the same genre (especially engine building) and his reviews are pretty spot to how the game plays.

[u/[deleted]]

So many overlaps with me here for favorite games... AH 2nd! Nemesis! Leaving earth!

[u/Notfaye]

If circadian's had shem art and a historical theme, it would be a top 1000 game. It's hands down the best AI they've ever produced, heavier then their lighter raiders/architects and way more dynamic. Shame it doesn't get the love it deserves.

[u/NoTimeForGamesYT]

Very interesting list. Haven't even heard of Thunderbirds (the game) before, will be checking it out

[u/DeadEyeDenton]

I’ll be your friend.

[u/ditchbankflowers]

Love the video! Wide variety of games and many new to me.

[u/Nerdfatha]

Whoa, there are a few of these I have never even heard of. Can’t wait to watch the video later today.