December - 2021

Dec 31, 2021

End Times 2021: A Gentle 2022

Take a deep breath and relax... Get comfortable... Change into some loose clothing if you can. Perhaps turn on soft music or make yourself some tea. Take a moment to stand up and stretch and roll the stress out of your shoulders. Inhale through your nose, hold that breath for a moment, then exhale through your mouth. You have come to the lake... That was not me speaking, and you aren't reading a mindfulness manual. It is in fact an excerpt from a rulebook, and the game is A G

224 views2 comments

End Times 2021: The Best of Solitaire Times

Dec 30, 2021

End Times 2021: The Best of Solitaire Times

2021 is the year our website turned in on itself. Kind of fitting for another year of curfews and lockdowns and rain over here in Europe. Nothing real exciting happened. Our posts were mainly read by regular visitors. If we don't watch out, we'll slowly fade away, like the folks in nursing homes. But hey! Don't let it bring you down. Not on our watch. We're just moving to a new editorial formula, and I'm actually really looking forward to next year. We gave ourselves some bre

554 views1 comment

Athena

Dec 29, 2021

End Times 2021: Crowdfunding list 2022

The time has come to post our annual list of solo and soloable games that have been scheduled to launch on crowdfunding platforms. This year we have a mega-list of 85 games, not including those that don't have a BGG page yet. Some of these releases have been announced on this Pre-launch list, others were unearthed by our resident newshound Zerbique. With so many items, there should be something for everyone. Click away, and discover what the future in board gaming holds... **

754 views7 comments

Dec 29, 2021

End Times 2021: JW's Playlist

Everybody had a hard year Everybody had a good time Oh yeah Oh yeah Well, I don't know about you of course, but I sure had. 2021 was a very nice year for solo board gaming, despite the troubles inside my head and in the outside world. And the documentary Get Back did indeed get me back, to my childhood and my first love in pop music. The Beatles ❤️ Around the age of 12 I knew everything there was to know about them, even about songs I'd never heard. I've always had obsessions

219 views7 comments

Dec 27, 2021

End Times 2021: The Art of Shopping

I like to play games that are new to me. I am not a chess player who gets his kick out of improving himself at a game. I absolutely suck at most games. But I like to suck at a new game every week. I wouldn't call myself an addict, but it will get me high. As a solo player, joining a board game club isn’t going to help me here. I will have to score the drugs myself. The problem is, we don’t have a local board game store. Of course I could spend 10 euro on train and bus tickets

174 views8 comments

Athena

Dec 26, 2021

End Times 2021: On collecting cards

Ever since I started board gaming, I realized I have a fascination with cards. The games I enjoy the most are card-driven, even though I dislike shuffling. I'm not sure if it's the little piece of artwork on each card that draws me in, I mean, it certainly is, but it's not just that. What I enjoy the most is choosing the best among an array of options: I have a hand of cards which I must study and decide which one(s) to play. It is not just cards that offer possibilities, of

205 views5 comments

Athena

Dec 25, 2021

End Times 2021: Solitarot

Solitarot is one of the simplest games you can play with a deck of cards. It's almost embarrassing to admit I like it as much as I do... It has minimal decision space and relies mostly on luck of the draw. Somehow I find it enjoyable though, and recommend it as a relaxing activity if you have a tarot deck in your collection. To start playing, you shuffle the deck and lay out 5 cards. As you may know, tarot has four suits - Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles - plus the Major A

166 views1 comment

Athena

Dec 24, 2021

End Times 2021: The Shooting Party

I imagine it must be hard for designers to infuse theme into a solitaire/patience variant. These are, after all, games that rely on numbers, two contrasting colours, and just four triplets of people in the court cards. The Shooting Party is a simple game that uses almost half a deck of playing cards, and yet manages to feel lively and bubbly, provided you view the cards as the designer instructs you to. We are in the midst of a high class soirée, a party which you have someho

113 views9 comments

Athena

Dec 23, 2021

End Times 2021: Adaman

In spite of my love for card games, I had never looked into printing the Decktet deck because I mistakenly thought it would be a hassle. But as I was searching the internet for games to fill my End Times posts with, I found out this is not the case at all. It is just 36 cards (plus an expansion of 9 which you won't need for all games). Veselko Kelava, the YouTuber who frequently films PnP playthroughs showcased it on his channel and said it's addictive. That was enough to spa

132 views0 comments

Athena

Dec 22, 2021

End Times 2021: Joker Jailbreak

As 2021 is drawing to a close, JW and I decided to do another End Times countdown to the final day of December. For my part of the series, I went back to basics: simple games with cards. Not card games you can buy from your local store but games you can play with a poker deck, a tarot deck, or a decktet. Cheap, compact, portable. Even festive. (I don't know about you, but I have memories of spending New Year's Eve with family around a game of '31'.) JW enjoys doing overviews

242 views12 comments

Zerbique

Dec 13, 2021

Freshly added to BGG, December 13, 2021

Another batch, so soon! Even though KS seems to have gone into hibernation these days, the stream of new additions to the BGG database does not falter from the cold days and is as vivid as ever! Since Christmas is approaching, let’s start with a small socket game – and designed as such, Pocket Aquarium from Mark Tuck, renowned for Orchard and Grove. In this 18 card game published through the Game Crafter, you must re-arrange tiles forming an aquarium by either activating the

317 views6 comments

Dec 13, 2021

Watch your Back: Week December 13 to 19

Not much crowdfunding going on in December. Or if it is, nobody tells us about it. Or if they do, they don't tell anything about their games. But two can play that game. Here's a post telling you absolutely nothing right back.* Two games are scheduled to launch this coming week: Call of Kilforth: A Fantasy Quest Game, and Ancient Blood: The Order of Vampire Hunters. *** First up is Call of Kilforth: A Fantasy Quest Game. It's Gloom of Kilforth and Shadows of Kilforth all over

262 views2 comments

Dec 8, 2021

Whatever happened to... Solotober?

In October JW joined a challenge to play a different solo game every day. He also aimed to get ten games off the shelf of shame that month. But after two weeks things got awfully quiet. Leaving readers wondering: did he fail, did he flee, is he even still alive? We are used to not hearing from him for a long time, but when November came and went, we agreed to send an investigating team over to the Netherlands. JW refused to open the door to them, claiming "covid isolation". O

281 views12 comments

Zerbique

Dec 7, 2021

Freshly added to BGG, December 6, 2021

Let’s start exploring today’s numerous entries with our PnP pick of the week: Torch & Blade, an old-school, black-and-white, paper-and-pencil, fur-slip and horned-helmet solo RPG, in which you can play throughout a long campaign that will see your character raising in power (and probably find a more protective adventure gear). Since we are discussing helmet styles, we may ask what our Viking friends have to say about it, unless they are too busy saving the Christmas holidays

213 views5 comments

If in doubt don’t back… or screw that and do back

Zerbique

Dec 2, 2021

If in doubt don’t back… or screw that and do back

There is one thing that annoys me, and that’s echo chambers: when a small community starts to adhere to a creed and keeps repeating it on the first occasion, with much congratulations and cheers and joy every time someone enthusiastically rehearses it. It’s just regular mechanics of community-binding, I know that, but well, I’m a bit rogue in this regard and I can’t but challenge these creeds eventually. So, if you didn’t guess it, I’m speaking about the Sifting thread of KS

314 views1 comment

Dec 1, 2021

Underground

On the occasion of the 2021 People's Choice Top 200 Solo Games, we share some favourite games with you as well. Today JW puts the spotlight on some gems from his collection that didn't make the top 200. Compiling a top 20 is hard for me. There are those all-time greats that I may not have played this year, there are the new hot titles that I may have forgotten all about a year or two from now... I've played over 250 games solo, how to rank them anyway? 🤷🏻 So this year I com

303 views15 comments