My solo play adventure
I have to admit that I’ve never been a solo player. I was brought into the hobby through social gaming and enjoying the experience together. My wife and I have specifically bought games that we can play together at 2 at the smallest player count. With two young children, it is inevitably difficult to find time to play a game alone, when I could be creating content or playing with my wife or gaming group. However, I hear a lot of chatter about solo gaming and I’m curious about the world in which you would play some of the larger big name games using the Automa/solo rules for example.
Things that potentially put me off solo gaming:
⁃ set up and tear down just to play a game by myself
⁃ am I disciplined enough to not cheat or to stay interested in the game for the entire game length when I play alone
⁃ will I get as much enjoyment as a shared experience with others?
⁃ game play at one
I’m sure there are other considerations but I’d like to take you on the journey with me. It’s a social experiment or maybe it should be re-termed antisocial experiment of discovery.
Let’s see what happens.
First of all, I made a list of potential games that could be played solo in my collection.
◦ Rolling Realms
◦ Libertarlia
◦ Wingspan
◦ Next station: London
◦ Planet Unknown
◦ Tiny Towns
◦ Everdell
◦ Welcome to the moon
◦ Chai
◦ Viticulture◦ Cascadia
◦ Dice Miner
◦ Stop Thief
◦ Parks
I wanted to start of easy with games I am confident at playing at 2 players: ones with easy set up and tear down etc
3 words to describe this solo experience: puzzle, challenge, improvement
First solo play: Rolling Realms
First of all, this is super quick to set up and doesn’t require a lot of time. I was able to play this whilst also entertaining the children and although I lost concentration at points I was still able to have a fulfilling experience.
This feels like a solo game even when you play with others so it’s easy to transition to purely solo. It always feels like a puzzle just to try to make a high score. Also the beauty of a game like this is that you can watch some like @jameystegmaier play realms online and try to beat his score. You could also keep a running record of scores you have achieved when you play against different people and their scores so there’s always that feel of playing with others.
My first score 38.8.
My second score 35.7
It was easy to pack up when my attention needed to be on the children again. It’s something I can easily pick up again and you can choose either to try again with the same cards or randomly select new sets of 3. You can even use the mini golf solo game mode where there are different challenges for you to complete.
This felt like an easy way into my solo gaming experience – I wonder what I will try next?
