What Makes A Good Board Game Solo Mode?

welcome back to specifically solo this is a YouTube channel about solo board gaming and solo modes for board games new solo games that are coming out my name is Jared Boomer and today we're going to talk about what makes a good solo mode you know lots of games have solo modes nowadays sometimes they are little additions to a game sometimes they are massive Behemoth with a totally separate rule book and separate components and lots of things that you have to get ready to play as a solo player so I wanted to count out from 5 to one what I think makes a good solo mode I thought about some of my favorite games to play solo and the solo mode specifically in those games and what makes them work so well so today counting it down from five to one number five is that the solo mode is easy to operate you know sometimes you get a game and the solo mode will be usually just a couple of pages at the back of the rule book but sometimes it's entirely different rule book and that's fine if the game is big and if you've got a lot of things going on maybe it's a complex game it needs a lot of additional information to be able to play solo and sometimes I do like when they put those solo rules in the separate rule book however a lot of the times what you get is read the regular rules first and then come here to learn how to play solo so it's really like you've got to learn two separate games before you can break it out solo but is it easy to operate is it a simple flipping of a card is it do I move this worker over here Tak an action you know I think of some of my my favorite games to play solo games like heat pedal to the metal where you're racing against a bunch of different opponents you can put five other cars on that board if you're playing by yourself but the solo is so easy you flip a card over it tells you how many spaces the cars move you move them all and then it's back to your turn that's very easy to understand or something like lost ruins of arnac where it's literally a tile that you flip and you see where the worker is going to go that makes a lot of sense and is very easy or even something like Cascadia where you you don't even really have a solo mode that you have to operate it's just you're taking some tiles and then once you get your tiles you slide them down you clear a few you put new ones out again those are all very easy things I don't want the solo Mode's turn to take longer than my turn I want to be focused on what I'm doing in the game and so if it's easy to operate that's going to get it to the table more that's going to make me want to play it more if it's not difficult so my number four thing that makes a great solo mode is that it's easy to understand now I talked about the rulebook issue and that's fine if you've got separate rules or if you've got a separate rulebook but does that make sense do I go through that rule book and do I understand what is happening and how to execute the solo Mode's actions I feel like a lot of times when I play a game with a solo mode sometimes I will be scratching my head and that's normal the first couple of games you know your first one two three games you're going to have to refer back to the rules probably to understand what's going on but if I'm still doing that after seven games nine games 10 games then something is not clicking with the solo mode and it's not making sense with what the rest of the game is doing it could be that the solo mode has really difficult iconography or it's got things that are specific to the solo mode that you don't use in any other part of the game or it could be the way that the solo mode operates maybe you've got to do something specific for that that you don't have to do if you're playing with other players or you don't even do on your turn it's just something that the solo mode does specifically like they've added maybe a rule or two just for something that the automa or the solo player uh does against the mode so that's my number four is it easy to understand so my number three thing that makes a good solo mode is it doesn't change the way you play and what I mean by that is maybe you have a strategy that you use against the solo mode and it works really well and you win every so often and the scores are close things like that and then you go and and play that strategy against a group of friends or maybe you play the game at a convention or something and that strategy doesn't work at all well that's not really what you want if you had to play the game an entirely different way against the solo mode versus how you would play it if you were playing against uh you know real people that were sitting there in front of you so you know I want the solo mode to not have to change the way that I play if I'm if I'm playing with with other people I want to operate the same way as you know another player would and that kind of leads me into my number two which is that exact thing does it behave like a normal player you know sometimes you've got a solo mode that will do things that a normal player would not do maybe it takes a card when it doesn't when it has 40 cards and it doesn't need any more cards or maybe it goes to an action space on the board that nobody really wanted to go to but it it goes there anyway and it blocks that spot and you think to yourself well in a normal game if I was playing with other opponents that were you know real people this person would not do that but some of the best solo modes are ones that do really behave like a real player and really make it difficult on you as a solo player and and it feels like you're playing against a real opponent and not just a deck of cards or not just some cubes or meats or whatever the components the solo mode uses so those are some of my favorite solo modes I think of the solo mode for Dune Imperium which works really well you play against two UTA in that game and that is a very back and forth game when you're playing with with with two UTA and yourself and the automa are doing things that a real person would do and you know you might go ahead for a couple turns then they might do a move that makes them go ahead for a couple of turns they're Gathering the right resources they're going to the right spots on the board that kind of thing I just wanted to really make sense and to flow really well and to make it feel like I'm playing against a a real player and then my number one thing that makes a good solo mode is is it fun are you having fun while you're playing the game is the solo mode not you know making it difficult for you yourself to play the game is it enjoyable does it flow well are you having a lot of fun once you get done with the game you think to yourself wow that was an awesome game I really enjoyed that and you know what the solo mode did not get in my way it was not super difficult to understand easy to operate uh behaved like a normal player so kind of all of those other things that I said five through two you know the number one reason is you want it to be fun and that's why you play board games in the first place is to have fun and to have that enjoyment and so you don't want to come away from a solo gaming session being like well that sucked and that automa was really difficult to run and I had to keep looking back at the rulebook 40 times to understand what I was trying to do and then I couldn't even focus on my own turn because I was so caught up in what the solo mode was doing so if you're having fun at the end of the day that's my number one and that's my top five things that make a great solo mode so just to recap number five it's easy to operate number four it's easy to understand number three it doesn't change the way you play two it behaves like a normal player and number one it is fun well thanks so much for watching this video be sure to like And subscribe if you like this video and check out other videos that we have on the channel I did my top five games on my shelf of Shame for 2020 4 you could play all of those games solo these are things that I want to get played this year you can go check out that video and be sure to comment below too if you've got a game that has a great solo mode maybe a solo mode that you really really enjoy this has been Jared for specifically solo thanks so much for watching

Channel: Specifically Solo

Views: 92

Keywords: board games, solo board gaming, solo mode, games, automa, one player

Id: t2VRA9DQozk

Length: 7min 46sec (466 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 22 2024