Tag: Solo / Solitaire Game

Black Angel

| OTSG Staff

Humanity, through its irresponsible behavior, has exhausted the natural resources of Earth, making it almost uninhabitable. In a burst of lucidity, pressed by the irreversible degradation of your planet, the great nations are forced to put aside their differences and share their knowledge in order to create the most vast spacecraft ever constructed. Thus, the BLACK ANGEL project is launched.

The Black Angel, the first intergalactic frigate in history, must transport the genetic heritage of humanity beyond known worlds, over a journey that is likely to last several thousand years. Her crew will be composed of only robots. Because no nation is willing to trust creation of the AI (artificial intelligence) that will control this crew to any other nation, a compromise is found: The Black Angel will be co-managed by several AIs, and the utility of each decision will be evaluated in VP (Validation Process).

At the completion of this long and perilous voyage, when a new inhabitable planet has been reached, the AI that has earned the most VP will be entrusted with reawakening Humanity, and overseeing its new start….

All the reports are in agreement: The Black Angel is approaching Spes, a planet with the highest probability for habitability by the human species. Take advantage of our approach to maintain the good relations you have gradually woven with the benevolent Alien species populating the galaxy, and watch out for the dreaded Ravagers, who would do anything to prevent you from reaching Spes.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.86

Bitoku

| OTSG Staff

In Bitoku, the players take on the roles of Bitoku spirits of the forest in their path towards transcendence, with the goal of elevating themselves and becoming the next great spirit of the forest. To do so, they will have the help of the yōkai, the kodamas and the different pilgrims that accompany them on their path. This is a hand-management, engine-building game with multiple paths to victory.

Players will have yōkai represented by the cards that make up their hand, which must be placed in the right places at the right times in order to obtain the maximum benefit from the abilities they offer. Furthermore, during the game players can earn more yōkai cards for their deck, thereby increasing their playing options and achieving a higher score. Each player also has three yōkai guardians (in the form of dice) that they can send to the large regions of the forest on the main board in order to obtain all kinds of new options that they can play during the game. These options can be structures they build in certain areas of the forest, soul crystals that generate resources when certain actions are carried out, and many others as well. The players also have the chance to help the mitamas, lost souls in search of redemption by using the chinkon fireflies.

There is truly a wide range of actions to carry out, and this is without taking into account the personal domain where the players can lay out another layer of additional strategy while managing the pilgrims. Pilgrims are followers of the player who embark upon journeys of contemplation and reflection who then share the experiences and learning they can along the spirit path with the Bitoku.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.76

Barrage

| OTSG Staff

In the dystopic 1930s, the industrial revolution pushed the exploitation of fossil-based resources to the limit, and now the only thing powerful enough to quench the thirst for power of the massive machines and of the unstoppable engineering progress is the unlimited hydroelectric energy provided by the rivers.

Barrage is a resource management strategic game in which players compete to build their majestic dams, raise them to increase their storing capacity, and deliver all the potential power through pressure tunnels connected to the energy turbines of their powerhouses.

Each player represents one of the four international companies who are gathering machinery, innovative patents and brilliant engineers to claim the best locations to collect and exploit the water of a contested Alpine region crossed by rivers.

Barrage includes two innovative and challenging mechanisms. First, the players must carefully plan their actions and handle their machinery, since both their action tokens and resources are stored on a Construction Wheel and will only be available after a full turn of the wheel. The better you manage your wheel, the earlier your resources and actions come back to you.

Second, the water flow on the rivers depicted on the board is a shared and contested resource. Players have to intercept and store as much of the water as they can, build dams (upstream dams are expensive but can block part of the water before it reaches the downstream dams), raise the dams to increase their capacity, and build long tunnels to channel the water to their powerhouses. Water is never consumed — its flow is just used to produce energy —, it is instead released back to the rivers, so you have to strategically place your dams to recover the water diverted by you and the other players.

Over five rounds, the players must fulfill power requirements represented by a common competitive power track and meet specific requests of personal contracts. At the same time, by placing a limited number of engineers, they attempt to enhance their machinery to acquire new and more efficient construction actions and to build and activate special unique-effect buildings to forward their own developing strategy.

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.12

Arkham Horror: The Card Game

| OTSG Staff

Something evil stirs in Arkham, and only you can stop it. Blurring the traditional lines between role-playing and card game experiences, Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a Living Card Game of Lovecraftian mystery, monsters, and madness!

In the game, you and your friend (or up to three friends with two Core Sets) become characters within the quiet New England town of Arkham. You have your talents, sure, but you also have your flaws. Perhaps you’ve dabbled a little too much in the writings of the Necronomicon, and its words continue to haunt you. Perhaps you feel compelled to cover up any signs of otherworldly evils, hampering your own investigations in order to protect the quiet confidence of the greater population. Perhaps you’ll be scarred by your encounters with a ghoulish cult.

No matter what compels you, no matter what haunts you, you’ll find both your strengths and weaknesses reflected in your custom deck of cards, and these cards will be your resources as you work with your friends to unravel the world’s most terrifying mysteries.

Each of your adventures in Arkham Horror LCG carries you deeper into mystery. You’ll find cultists and foul rituals. You’ll find haunted houses and strange creatures. And you may find signs of the Ancient Ones straining against the barriers to our world…

The basic mode of play in Arkham LCG is not the adventure, but the campaign. You might be scarred by your adventures, your sanity may be strained, and you may alter Arkham’s landscape, burning buildings to the ground. All your choices and actions have consequences that reach far beyond the immediate resolution of the scenario at hand—and your actions may earn you valuable experience with which you can better prepare yourself for the adventures that still lie before you.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.55

51st State: Master Set 🟠

| OTSG Staff

The world you know no longer exists. There is no government. No army. No civilization. The United States has collapsed, and now thirty years after the war started, new powers finally try to take control over the ruined country, try to establish a new order, try to control others and create a new country, a new state: the 51st State.

51st State is a card game in which players control one of four powers trying to build a new country. Players put new locations into play, hire leaders, and send people to work in buildings to gain resources and new skills. To do this, every card in 51st State can be used in three different ways:

  • Raze a location to gain many resources once.
  • Deal with this location to gain one resource every turn.
  • Build the location so that you can use its skill each turn.

51st State: Master Set marks the rebirth of the 51st State line, with this set containing 88 cards from the original base game, and 50 cards each from both the New Era and Winter expansions; one of these expansions can be mixed with the cards of the base game, but not both at the same time. The entire set has been rebalanced to offer a cohesive experience no matter which expansion you choose to use.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.89

Glass Road

| OTSG Staff

The game Glass Road commemorates the 700-year-old tradition of glass-making in the Bavarian Forest. (Today, the “Glass Road” is a route through the Bavarian forest that takes visitors to many of the old glass houses and museums of that region.) You must skillfully manage your glass and brick production in order to build the right structures that help you keep your business flowing. Cut the forest to keep the fires burning in the ovens, and spread and remove ponds, pits, and groves to supply yourself with the items you need. Fifteen specialists are there at your side to carry out your orders…

In more detail, the game consists of four building periods. Each player has an identical set of fifteen specialist cards, and each specialist comes with two abilities. At the beginning of each building period, you choose a hand of five specialists. If during this building period, you play a specialist that no other player has in hand, you may use both abilities on that card; if two or more players play the same specialist, each of them may use only one of the two abilities. Exploiting the abilities of these specialists lets you collect resources, lay out new landscape tiles (e.g., ponds and pits), and build a variety of buildings, which come in three types:

  • Processing buildings
  • “Immediate” buildings with a one-time effect
  • Buildings that provide bonus points at the end of the game for various accomplishments

Mastering the balance of knowing the best specialist card to play and being flexible about when you play it — together with assembling a clever combination of buildings — is the key to this game.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.96

Ginkgopolis

| OTSG Staff

2212: Ginkgo Biloba, the oldest and strongest tree in the world, has become the symbol of a new method for building cities in symbiosis with nature. Humans have exhausted the resources that the Earth offered them, and humanity must now develop cities that maintain a delicate balance between resource production and consumption. Habitable space is scarce, however, and mankind must now face the challenge of building ever upwards. To develop this new type of city, you will gather a team of experts around you, and try to become the best urban planner for Ginkgopolis.

In Ginkgopolis, the city tiles come in three colors: yellow, which provides victory points; red, which provides resources; and blue, which provides new city tiles. Some tiles start in play, and they’re surrounded by letter markers that show where new tiles can be placed.

On a turn, each player chooses a card from his hand simultaneously. Players reveal these cards, adding new tiles to the border of the city in the appropriate location or placing tiles on top of existing tiles. Each card in your hand that you don’t play is passed on to your left-hand neighbor, so keep in mind how your play might set up theirs!

When you add a new tile to the city, you take a “power” card of the same color, and these cards provide you additional abilities during the game, allowing you to scale up your building and point-scoring efforts.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91

Ghost Stories

| OTSG Staff

Ghost Stories is a cooperative game in which the players protect the village from incarnations of the lord of hell – Wu-Feng – and his legions of ghosts before they haunt a town and recover the ashes that will allow him to return to life. Each Player represents a Taoist monk working together with the others to fight off waves of ghosts.

The players, using teamwork, will have to exorcise the ghosts that appear during the course of the game. At the beginning of his turn, a player brings a ghost into play and places it on a free spot, and more than one can come in at the same time. The ghosts all have abilities of their own – some affecting the Taoists and their powers, some causing the active player to roll the curse die for a random effect, and others haunting the villager tiles and blocking that tile’s special action. On his turn, a Taoist can move on a tile in order to exorcise adjacent ghosts or to benefit from the villager living on the tile, providing it is not haunted. Each tile of the village allows the players to benefit from a different bonus. With the cemetery, for example, Taoists can bring a dead Taoist back to life, while the herbalist allows to recover spent Tao tokens, etc. It will also be possible to get traps or move ghosts or unhaunt other village tiles.

To exorcise a ghost, the Taoist rolls three Tao dice with different colors: red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white. If the result of the roll matches the color(s) of the ghost or incarnation of Wu-Feng, the exorcism succeeds. The white result is a wild color that can be used as any color. For example, to exorcise a green ghost with 3 resistance, you need to roll three green, three white, or a combination of both. If your die rolls fall short, you can also use Tao tokens that match the color in addition to your roll. You may choose to use these after your roll. Taoists gain these tokens by using certain village tiles or by exorcising certain ghosts. One of the Taoists has a power that allows him to receive such a token once per turn.

To win, the players must defeat the incarnation of Wu-Feng, a boss who arrives at the end of the game. There are also harder difficulty levels that add more incarnations of Wu-Feng, in which to win, you must defeat all of them.

There are many more ways to lose, however. The players lose if three of the village’s tiles are haunted, if the draw pile is emptied while the incarnation of Wu-Feng is still in play, or if all the priests are dead.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91

Gentes: Deluxified Edition

| OTSG Staff

“Gentes” is the Latin plural word for greater groups of human beings (e.g., tribes, nations, people; singular: “gens”). In this game, players take the role of an ancient people who are attempting to develop by building monuments and colonizing or founding new cities in the Mediterranean sea.

The game is played in six rounds, each consisting of two phases: action phase, and tidying up. There are three eras — rounds 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 — with new monument cards entering the game at the beginning of rounds 1, 3 and 5. Each player has a personal player mat with a time track for action markers and sand timer markers. In the action phase of a round, the players take their turns in clockwise order, conducting one action per turn. Each action requires an action marker from the main board that is placed on the time track. Depending on the information on the action marker, you have to also pay some money or take sand timers that are placed on the time track. When you have no free spaces on your time track, you must pass for the remainder of the round. Therefore, the number of actions per player in a single round may vary significantly if, for example, you choose double sand timers instead of two single ones or take action markers that require more money but fewer sand timers. Single sand timers are dropped in the tidying up phase, while double sand timers are flipped to become single sand timer markers and stay for another round. The actions are:

Buy new cards from the common display
Build monuments (playing cards from your hand to your personal display for victory points and new options)
Train/Educate your people
Build/found cities
Take money
To play a card, you must meet the requirements printed on that card, such as having specific persons on your personal board (e.g., two priests and four soldiers). These requirements are why training — i.e., getting specific people — is important, but that is not that easy because there are six different types of people — three on the left and three on the right side of your personal player board — and you have only six spaces in total for the two types in the same line. If you have three merchants, for example, you move your marker for counting merchants three spaces toward the side of the soldiers and thus you have only three spaces left for soldiers. By educating a fourth soldier and moving your soldier marker forward to its fourth space, you automatically lose one merchant because that marker is pushed back to its second space.

It is crucial to generate additional actions by using the specific functions of monuments in your display and cities you have built. Cities are expensive, but they create benefits at the end of each round or provide new options for taking an action without acquiring an action marker, gaining only a sand timer marker instead.

Try to have a steady income to avoid wasting actions to take money. Pay attention to the display of common cards, which is new in every single game, because the monument cards are shuffled randomly within the decks of eras I, II and III. Collect identical achievement symbols on the cards to benefit from the increasing victory points for a series of symbols. Build cities to enlarge your options!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 75 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.25

Genotype: A Mendelian Genetics Game MISSING

| OTSG Staff

Gregor Mendel is the 19th Century Augustinian Friar credited with the discovery of modern genetics. In Genotype, you play as his assistants, competing to collect experimental data on pea plants by trying to control how the plants inherit key Traits from their parents: seed shape, flower color, stem color, and plant height. The observable Traits of a Pea Plant (its Phenotype) are determined by its genetic makeup (its Genotype). The relationship between Genotype and Phenotype and the nature of genetic inheritance are at the heart of Genotype: A Mendelian Genetics Game.

During the game, players get Pea Plant Cards which show a set of Phenotype Traits they hope to produce and collect (such as pink flowers and tall height) in order to score points. Each round, Dice are rolled to represent Plant breeding, which may result in the Traits players are looking for. After the Dice Roll, players take turns drafting Dice towards completing their Pea Plant Cards or advancing their Research. The Traits produced during the Dice Roll come through the science of Punnett Squares, which show how the parent genes combine, one from each parent plant. By changing the genes of these parent plants, players can influence the likelihood of rolling the Traits they need. The completion of Pea Plant Cards via the Dice Draft is the main way players score points.

Each round consists of 3 phases: Worker Placement, Dice Drafting, and Upgrades.
1) During Worker Placement, players take actions to get more Plant Cards, change the genes of a parent plant, Garden, Research, stake Phenotype claims, gather new Tools, or even position themselves ahead of other players for the Dice Drafting Phase in a couple of ways.
2) Dice Drafting features a couple of interest steps, including the possibility to get first pick of dice, but only for one type of Trait (like plant height), or the possibility to get a pick of any dice, but only after those first picks have happened. De Novo Mutation Dice allow players to change the Trait of other Dice or gain additional Research.
3) The Upgrades phase lets players spend their Research to gain upgrades that let them work on more Plant Cards, draft more Dice each round, or gain additional Workers to be used during the Worker Placement Phase of each round.

Players work to match their Pea Plant Cards to the outcome of the Dice Draft and complete the cards for points. If they’ve placed a Phenotype marker, they will earn bonus points for every completed card that matches their claim. At the end of 5 rounds, the player with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.78