Tag: Solo / Solitaire Game

Isle of Cats, The

| OTSG Staff

The Isle of Cats is a competitive, medium-weight, card-drafting, polyomino cat-placement board game.

In the game, you are citizens of Squalls End on a rescue mission to The Isle of Cats and must rescue as many cats as possible before the evil Lord Vesh arrives. Each cat is represented by a unique tile and belongs to a family, you must find a way to make them all fit on your boat while keeping families together. You will also need to manage resources as you:

  • Explore the island (by drafting cards)
  • Rescue cats
  • Find treasures
  • Befriend Oshax
  • Study ancient lessons

Each lesson you collect gives you another personal way of scoring points, and 38 unique lessons are available. Complete lessons, fill your boat, and keep cat families together to score points, and the player with the most points after five rounds wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.36

Inventors of the South Tigris

| OTSG Staff

Inventors of the South Tigris is set during the height of the Abbasid Caliphate, circa 850 AD. Over the past decades, Baghdad has become home to thousands of mathematicians, astronomers, chemists, and physicians. As inspired innovators, players are eager to develop clever contraptions to impress their peers. Will your ingenious devices adorn the House of Wisdom, or are they destined for dust and decay?

The aim of Inventors of the South Tigris is to be the player with the most Victory Points (VP) at the game’s end. Points are primarily gained by Inventing, Building, Testing, and Publishing Devices. Players can also score points by training their Craftspeople, developing their Workshops, Researching, and Influencing the 3 scientific Guilds.

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.46

Imperium: Horizons

| OTSG Staff

Formidable adversaries are arrayed against you. Your people stand ready. History beckons.

In your hands lies the destiny of one of the most storied peoples of history. Under constant threat of attack, you must conquer new lands, oversee dramatic scientific and cultural advances, and lead your people into the era of empire. Expand too rapidly and unrest will bring your civilisation to its knees; build up too slowly, however, and you might find yourself a mere footnote of history. As one of fourteen radically asymmetric civilisations, you will compete to become the most dominant empire the world has ever seen.

Imperium: Horizons is a standalone game that contains the Abbasid, Aksumite, Cultist, Gupta, Inuit, Japanese, Magyar, Martian, Mayan, Polynesian, Sassanid, Taino, Tang, and Wagadou civilisations. Each makes for a unique and challenging opponent in both multiplayer and solo games.

Fully compatible with Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends for those wanting to expand their pool of civilisations even further, Imperium: Horizons also incorporates a new trade module that allows players to recreate all the intrigue, wealth generation, and dynamic politics of a thriving economy.

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 160 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.97

Hunt a Killer: Game Night Gone Wrong

| OTSG Staff

Connor’s murder mystery birthday party goes wrong when the game ends abruptly, his roommate is dead, and he must decide which of his friends is the killer.

Be the detective and help Connor prove his innocence.

Put your detective skills to the test with Game Night Gone Wrong, a gripping true crime board game from Hunt A Killer. A party turns deadly—and it’s up to you to figure out who did it, how, and why. Examine realistic evidence, analyze witness statements, and uncover hidden motives in this mystery game designed for solo or group play.

Difficulty 3/5

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1+ Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Horrified: Greek Monsters

| OTSG Staff

Pandora’s Box has been opened, and Greece’s most notorious monsters have escaped.

Horrified: Greek Monsters is a standalone game that features gameplay similar to 2019’s Horrified. In this co-operative game, players become avatars of the Greek gods and must work together to re-capture these monsters.

To do that, they must first uncover the monsters’ lairs. Medusa, Cerberus, Chimera, and Minotaur are hidden in locations that must be discovered: the Statue Garden, Underworld Door, Chimera’s Cave, and Labyrinth. Similar to the myths that inspired the game, uncovering the lairs comes with a cost: Players must discard three color items before the lair token can be flipped over to reveal which monster’s hideout they’ve discovered.

Horrified: Greek Monsters includes six monsters, each with unique abilities, and the more monsters in the game, the harder the challenge, with players needing to use their unique powers to figure out how to defeat each monster.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.13

Hit Z Road

| OTSG Staff

In the fast-paced and morbidly kitschy game Hit Z Road, you and your fellow players embark on a road trip going south from Chicago along America’s famous Route 66 — now infested by zombies. As you travel though a deck of adventure cards rife with dangers, you battle zombie hordes, drive abandoned school buses, scavenge for gas and bullets, and explore a darkened, tainted American countryside full of shambling undead, haunted carnivals, and plumes of toxic gas. Your goal is to stay alive until you reach the safe, sandy beaches of the California coast.

Three different stages of adventure cards create an experience of increasing difficulty and ensure that each playthrough is unique. Each round begins with an auction that determines both player order and which cards you will encounter. Since the resources used for bidding are the same as those used to battle the oncoming zombie hordes, your survival depends as much on your resource management as it does upon winning those bidding wars. The player who either accumulates the most points or survives the longest wins.

Zombies of all types await, with cannibals, anti-personnel mines and radioactive wastes also being among the hazards awaiting the players. Who will survive the zombie onslaught?

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.86

Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Board Game

| OTSG Staff

Do you stand beside Queen Catherine Ironfist and vanquish the lurking chaos? Do you help the power-hungry Mutare fulfill her plans and turn her into a dragon? Or, maybe you despise all of this and want, together with Sandro, to cover the whole world with the shadow of death? Move through the beautiful land of Antagarich, plunge into adventures and strategic battles with endless possibilities.

Heroes of Might & Magic III: The Board Game is an adventure-driven strategy game set in the cult fantasy universe. The game includes competitive, cooperative, and solo scenarios to battle and explore your way through. The adventure maps will be represented by tiles, with each tile divided into seven hexagonal fields.

Play different scenarios with different victory conditions, explore the adventure map to discover various locations, and play out epic battles using the unique miniature models that represent the iconic units from the original game. All battles will be performed with models on separate boards.

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 3 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.48

Harmonies

| OTSG Staff

In Harmonies, build landscapes by placing colored tokens and create habitats for your animals. To earn the most points and win the game, incorporate the habitats in your landscapes wisely and have as many animals as you can settle there.

Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, each player will choose a set of 3 terrain tokens from the central area to place on their personal board. They may optionally choose an Animal card from the 5 displayed and/or place an Animal cube from their Animal card(s) on any completed patterns on their board that match their personal Animal cards. There is a 4-card limit per player. After their turn, refill with a new set of 3 tokens and a new Animal card if needed.

Placement of the terrain tokens will depend on the personal Animal card goals, and scoring rules for the various terrain types (mountain, field, forest, etc). For example, mountain tiles score based on how high they are (1 tile scores 1, while 3 tiles stacked score 7), but the mountain scores zero if it is not adjacent to at least one other mountain. If all the cubes on a given Animal card have been placed, the card is set aside and a new card can be drawn. The cards are scored at game end based on the highest number that isn’t covered by a cube.

The games ends when there are no tokens left in the bag to refill the central area, or at least one players has 2 or fewer empty spaces on their player board. Play continues until all players have had an equal turn that round. The player with the highest points is the winner.

Optionally, you can use Nature’s Spirit cards for richer gameplay. During setup, each player chooses 1 of 2 spirit cards and places a Spirit cube on the card. They follow the same placement rules as Animal cards, but tend to have an ongoing effect once completed. The spirit card does count towards the 4-card hand limit.

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.01

Guild of Merchant Explorers, the

| OTSG Staff

In The Guild of Merchant Explorers, each player starts with one city on their personal map board.

Shuffle the deck of terrain cards, then reveal most of these cards one by one. Based on the terrain revealed, each player places on their board cubes that are connected to their starting city or other cubes. You want to complete areas on your board, cross the seas to new land, and establish new cities on the board. You can explore capsized ships for treasure — which gives you special placement capabilities — and create linked connections between locations to score bonus points. Common objectives can be completed by all players, with those who complete it first scoring more points.

At the end of a round, all cubes are removed from each board, leaving only the cities behind, so if you don’t establish new cities, you’ll be stuck in the same places.

The Guild of Merchant Explorers contains multiple copies of four different maps, and the game is designed so that you can play remotely with one or more copies.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.05

Great Western Trail: New Zealand

| OTSG Staff

Kia ora, and welcome to Great Western Trail New Zealand!

Towards the end of the 19th century, you established yourself as a runholder (owner of a sheep station) on the South Island of New Zealand. Recent years have seen your family farm prosper by diversifying your breeds of sheep and increasing the value of your wool.

With the dawn of the new century, difficult challenges have arisen. You must acquire improved and valuable breeds of sheep to ensure the prosperity of your family business and the labourers who work for you. Decide whether to focus on your past strengths or to diversify into new ventures. Will the beginning of the 20th century be as rewarding as earlier years, or will the efforts of others surpass your strategy? Good luck, and kia kaha!

In Great Western Trail New Zealand, you move your runholder along a trail that winds and forks from the lower left corner of the game board to Wellington in the upper right. Along your path, you perform actions that provide you with various ways to earn victory points.

Each time your runholder reaches Wellington, you deliver sheep to a local or foreign trading post, which may also be worth victory points. Afterwards, your runholder continues its movement again.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 75 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.01