Top 20 Games for Pure Solo Enthusiasts!

0:00 Hello everyone and welcome to Meet Me at the Table. This is Colin and today we are going to walk through 20 games that allow you to play as a single character. There are many cooperative games you can play solo such as Oathsworn, Dante's Inferno, etc. But they require you to control multiple characters or the game is much better with multiple characters. And so as a solo player you end up playing multi-handed. Now this type of game is great and I do enjoy them a lot but I know a lot of people this can be overwhelming or even reduce the enjoyment of the game because they have to control multiple characters. Because of that I decided to create a list of 20 games you only play as a single character. You can find the detailed list in the description and we have play-throughs of almost all of these games on the channel and I will have links for them in the description as well. Hope you enjoy it and thanks so much for watching. Endeavor places you as the captain of a fleet during the age of discovery. You are exploring uncharted lands while being presented with numerous challenges. In the game your actions will be decided by the weather for the day. You will utilize these actions to manipulate the action row as well as move your ship from node to node. The goal of the game is simple.

1:09 Get to the land space on that last sea card but in order to do that you have to manage your hand, the three different elements that can affect your crew and the inevitable mutiny where your crewmates think it's all hopeless and they take you down. There is even a story driven campaign mode where you play three games in a row. However, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do that because you have to win every game. I do wish it had a fail forward mechanic but I'm appreciative that they have this campaign in the box. I will tell you right now if you are not in the mood to lose, don't even try and pick this one up. It is challenging and a lot of times it can be due to the luck of the draw. However, if you enjoy a tight experience where you are trying to balance movement and exploration with keeping your crew safe, this one's for you. 20 Strong is a solo deck based game system that utilizes dice as resolution for actions within the system. The core system of the game remains the same but the variety of different decks you can buy for the game is what makes this game tick. The core game comes with Solar Sentinel which is a nice intro into the system but from there you can branch out into many of the titles from Chip Theory Games such as Too Many Bones, Hoplomachus, Cloudspire and now the team is even coming out with iterations outside of their own game catalog such as the Tanglewood series, Etherfields or Nemesis. The game's underlying mechanic is rolling the 20 dice that come with the core game to complete challenges.

2:33 Explore the specific deck of cards that you're playing against and ultimately take down a sort of boss. For a solo player the compact nature of this game and ease of play and setup is a huge draw. Now this game may not be for you if you don't love dice randomness as you will be rolling dice a ton in each of the different sets. Core of Discovery is a solo or cooperative deduction exploration game where you will play as Lewis and Clark exploring America while also fighting off monsters and completing challenges. As a solo player you simply take one turn after the other exploring the map and revealing tokens from the board. As you reveal spaces on the map they will have an icon of what is in that location such as wood or water. You'll collect that resource and then utilize the logic of that specific scenario to try and deduce what is in the unrevealed locations adjacent to you. While you're exploring the game will provide you with daily challenges that you must complete otherwise you start losing resources. And the puzzle is trying to complete the daily tasks while also focusing on the main objective and it's just juicy and glorious. I will say you need the expansion in this one otherwise the game's going to go a bit stale with only two scenarios. And although the maps do provide different experiences each time, the game play will continue to be the same. If you can pick up the deluxe edition of this game or at least get some of the expansion scenarios, this is a no-brainer for any solo player looking for a deduction style game or logic style game. Small Time Heroes is an

4:03 epitome of a rogue-lite game where you'll control one of the two heroes or one of the four when the new expansion comes out to defend your home against invading monsters. Each time you defeat a group of enemies you'll be able to level up by choosing new cards from a large stack of upgrade cards for your hero. And there are so many upgrade cards no two plays of this game feel the same. I find it fascinating whenever I pull this one off my shelf and how each play I end up picking completely different upgrade cards and it provides such a unique experience. After you defeat a few waves of minions you take down a boss and if you're able to do so you win. For a solo player the setup and take down for this game is literally less than 5 minutes and the rounds of play are simple and to the point. If you're looking for a compact version of Slay the Spire then this one is for you.

4:53 Next up let's dive into the ocean itself and control the Nautilus as Captain Nemo. Nemo's War second edition provides an emergent story like none other. You start off in the first act the world is your oyster but as the acts progress more and more ships will start to hear you and you will need to find a way to manage your resources and survive. The catch is surviving is only half the battle. Before you even start playing the game you get to decide on which motive Nemo has. Are you looking for anti-imperialism, exploration or war? All of these different goals provide more or less victory points for certain actions in the game. Your job is to try and focus on the objective that scores you the most VP and try not to die while doing it. You'll be sinking ships, inciting rebellions, exploring the deep oceans and managing your crew. The kicker is this is all done by rolling dice. Lots and lots and lots of dice so be ready for it. Your actions per round is based on dice and your action resolution is all dice centered. I would never recommend this game to anyone who doesn't love the rush of throwing those cubes on the table to see what fate has decided. I have always been in awe of the vast expanse of our universe and Space Core: Ventures allows me to explore the possibilities of expanding human influence beyond the moon and even our solar system. As a solo player you'll be up against the competition bot that can use one of the 11 headquarters maps for a unique experience each time.

6:21 The game plays over three different eras. The first era focuses on exploring out to Mars, the second one you're going out all the way to Pluto and beyond and the third era is where it gets insane. We discover how to travel to different galaxies. I just read Project Hail Mary so Tau Ceti is certainly on my mind and it's on this map. This game is a truly epic solo experience. You will be utilizing your cards to complete actions to make bases, satellites, etc. on different planets. As you complete actions to provide you VP you will track your score over the three eras and compare it to the competition. I personally love having the three different eras in this game but I can see it this would be daunting for many players. Each era has some similar rules but many of them do change and it can be a lot to track over one play session.

7:11 The game is also far from short so you'll likely need a place to keep it out on the table or have a long night to play. If you're looking for a game that provides a more realistic feel to exploring the cosmos you should definitely check this one out. Slay the Spire is one of the best rogue-like games for your phone or computer and in 2024 they turned this into a board game. This conversion was a smashing hit. The game felt similar to the video game experience and the pure joy that comes with constantly leveling up and finding combos with your character is what makes this game so addicting. The biggest advantage of the board game version is that co-op is built into the game. Why would I still recommend it for solo? Well for me personally I don't play games on my phone so this provides that similar feel with physical cards, metal coins and cardboard. The game has three acts and a secret fourth act that I won't go into in this video. For each act your goal is to get to the top of the map and defeat the boss. And each time you defeat enemies you get to level up your cards, gain new cards and new relics. If you die you can unlock some items and try again from scratch. The game comes with four very unique characters to play but I will say after 40 plays of this one I am wishing I had more characters to try. Also, as you continue to play this game over and over you will start to feel the repetition on the enemies too. I am very much ready for the expansion. I would only recommend this one for solo if you do not want to play the game on your phone.

8:38 Otherwise the difference between the two is quite negligible and the phone game is certainly easier to set up. I may be cheating on this one as I'm combining four games into one but you'll just have to deal with it. There is currently three Kill Fourth games and one Dungeon Crawler game set in a similar universe. In the three Kill Fourth games you can play as a solo adventurer traversing across the land trying to level up enough to take down an ancient who is wreaking havoc on the land. Plot cards will be spawned all over the map and you must handle those while also dealing with events and enemies that simply spawn on the board. All three versions of the Kill Fourth series is great. I do think my favorite is Call with Gloom being a close second as it was the original and the simplicity of the game is a huge plus. Creel Manor is a solo or cooperative dungeon crawler where you have a personal story for your character and you complete five missions where missions two through four have branching paths for you to complete. The game utilizes a simple system of exhausting one of three actions, fight, explore or sneak, to complete challenges. You will gain loot, obtain story through the plot cards and work to defeat the final scenario before you've lost too many times. All four of these games play exceptionally well solo and if you enjoy the art style and adventure style game any of these four will be a great choice. Unfortunately there are very few solo Star Wars games. However, there is one that is a fantastic experience and that one's called Star Wars Outer Rim.

10:03 To get the most out of this game from a solo perspective, you will need to either pick up the official expansion Unfinished Business or the fan-made expansion Hotshots. In this game, there are no Skywalkers, there's no lightsabers. Instead, there's cargos, jobs, and bounties. This sandbox adventure allows you to find the best way to obtain fame. You will gain and lose reputation with the four factions of the world and you'll have to dodge patrols and complete jobs faster than your AI-controlled player. The expansion provides two key elements for the solo player. One, each character now has a unique AI card and two, you can have an AI player even be a bounty hunter type. You also have the ability now to play against two bots, which I plan to do on my next play-through. This will provide more interaction and life to the universe as you explore it. If you're looking for a grandiose Star Wars game, this isn't it. But if you are in the market for a game focused more on the underbelly of the Star Wars theme, this one will not disappoint. Spirit Island is a complex and thematic co-op and solo game about defending your island home from colonizing invaders. As a solo player, you can control a single spirit on a small piece of land and must either scare the invaders away or kill enough of them that you win the game. What is really unique in this game is that the invaders do not attack the spirits directly, but rather they blight the land by building towns and cities and this blight starts to destroy your spirits' essence on the island. You must

11:34 utilize your starting cards for your spirit and then slowly gain power by selecting minor and major powers and unlock special abilities on your spirits' board. These powers are used to push, pull, destroy, and scare those invaders enough so that they start to leave on their own accord. The game has a fantastic arc where at the beginning you feel helpless, but as you gain more abilities and stronger cards, you start to fight back and turn the tides against the invaders. And there are multiple expansions which can provide an event deck for more immersion and unknown to the game. You have fast and slow powers that activate in different phases and the decisions on when to activate these powers is what makes this game sing. As a solo player, it is super easy to set the game up and jump right in. Just be ready for some brain-burning fun. So, if you're looking for a lighter game, you might want to look elsewhere. As a kid, I grew up collecting Pokémon cards but didn't have friends that wanted to play with me. All of a sudden, Awaken Realms created a game called Dragon Eclipse and I was elated. Here's a game that I can play solo. It was actually designed as a solo game initially and it feels like Pokémon where I have Miselyn companions that I can summon to battle and try and tame others to join my crew. This was a dream come true. The game plays out in two distinct parts. The first part is the story portion where you have paragraphs of text and a map. You'll be going to different locations and reading about what you see and making decisions.

13:00 After doing this for a bit, there'll come a time when you have to fight another Miselyn and so you pull out the appropriate arena board and decide between one of two Miselyns to try and complete the encounter. You can complete the encounter either by simply defeating the Miselyn or by taming them. The adventure portion of the game is great as it doesn't try to do too much and just allows you to focus on the story. The combat can be really fun and puzzling and even more fun when you try and tame the Miselyn you're fighting versus just defeating it. I will say as I continue with my campaign, the story is a little bit lackluster at best and it does feel like the devs may have rushed on that portion. But the fights continue to be great and I'm excited to finish the campaign. There's a new expansion coming out and I do hope they spend maybe a little bit more time on the story for this one. Most civilization building games comes with complex rules and are much stronger as a multiplayer experience versus a solo experience. That is not the case with Kingdom Legacy Feudal Kingdom. This is a solo-only game where you will slowly and methodically upgrade your kingdom by upgrading cards, placing stickers on them, and discovering secrets along the way. The core game experience can provide you with about 5 hours of enjoyment and then it has three built-in expansions, which will give you at least another 3 hours of play. Once you've completed this, you can purchase expansions and continue to expand your same kingdom. My favorite expansion by far, without a doubt, is the Distant Lands expansion. I would even argue this expansion was better than the base game.

14:32 It is so easy to pull this one off your shelf and play and it's so addicting. If you're allergic to destructible games, I wouldn't recommend this one. But if you are okay with a one-time use game, you got to check this one out, Kingdom Legacy. Another legacy game that just recently came out and flew right into my top 10 here is Cozy Sticker Ville. In this game, you'll go through 10 years, 12 months each, cultivating your land and enjoying puzzles, meeting interesting NPCs, and deciding what type of town you want to have. The game takes literally 2 seconds to set up and each turn consists of a single action. As you continue to take actions, you'll discover interesting plots and unique characters that you simply grow attached to. The game comes with enough stickers for two full plays and you can play on the backside of the board for the second play-through. All in all, this game provides between 8 to 10 hours of enjoyment and I have already played two full campaigns and bought another copy and I'm playing with my kids. I would not recommend this game to anyone who has a hard time with legacy games and although we say this is a game, it is a bit more of an experience, but it is a great experience and it's one for a solo player I think you'd really enjoy.

15:46 Tamashi is a cyberpunk adventure board game with a post-apocalyptic vibe where players are fighting against an AI by completing programming hacks on their launcher. This game is full of interesting mechanics. Each turn, you will fill your launcher with data and you can program that data to match specific patterns. Once you do that, you'll go onto the board and move your current body around revealing tiles, activating abilities, and completing objectives. As you adventure in this virtual world, you will gain trace from these enemies and they'll soon attach to your launcher. You must then deal with enemies while completing objectives and try not to die. The game has this semi-campaign element to it in that any scenario can be played, but it will unlock additional enemies or cards or bodies that you can use in future missions. Boss fights are also super cool as they are enemies that sit on the board instead of being attached to your launcher. If you're looking for a good cyberpunk-themed game, this is a great choice. But if you have a hard time with a very procedural game, meaning lots of phases and pieces to track, this one might not be for you.

16:53 Somehow I put my two cyber-punk games back-to-back. This is Deckers. Deckers was designed by one of the best YouTubers out there, Ricky Royal. This game is a solo player's dream. At its heart, the game is a deck builder. You will be purchasing cards from the hack shack, even though that's not what it's called in this version, and they will directly go into your hand and you'll remove another card from your deck. This means your deck will never have more or less than 15 cards in it. Each round, you'll have an objective that you have to try and complete and if you can not die by the end of that third objective, you win the game. This was fun, but sometimes felt a bit anticlimactic and that is where Deckers stands out from the original game Renegade. You now can add a fourth round where you try and actually defeat the boss itself and that's how you win. I absolutely love that. That was such a great add. The game comes with a ton of difficulty levers that you can utilize to make the game easier or harder and the game constantly makes you feel clever as you manipulate your data tokens on the board to try and defeat Sparks and whatnot. It is such a great solo experience. Huge recommend Deckers. In Halls of Hegra, you play as the commander of a Norwegian force during a siege that takes place during World War II with the Germans trying to breach the Hegra fortress. The game is split into three phases: mobilization, first attack, and then siege. Each phase has different rules and objectives, but the overall goal is

18:24 simply to survive long enough and keep the morale high of your fellow compatriots. The game has a fun bag-building mechanic where you're trying to obtain as many units as you can to survive, but not all units are created equal. Some could be farmers who may be good at obtaining food but stink at manning the guns. Or you could find hunters who are avid shovelers of snow but are not great at helping morale. You have to balance so many different facets in this game and you will continue to be punished with events, random dice rolls, etc. Your compatriots will start getting sick or injured or you won't have enough food to ready them. Oh, it's always such a challenge. It is a true testament to the people who tried to survive at this fortress. The emergent narrative that comes with each play is a huge boon for the game and win or lose, I always have a fantastic time trying to survive. If you're looking for a great game similar to Robinson Crusoe, look no more than Halls of Hegra. In Hoplomachus: Victorum, you are a gladiator setting your sights on taking down a nasty scion from Pluto. The core game has you play 48 single sessions choosing between bloodshed and sport events, recruiting units to your team, and leveling up your gladiator while you use the blessings from the gods when you inevitably succumb to your wounds. The expansion Pandora's Box has a module called Mercury's Boots, which took this epic 48-session game and cut it in half. I will now never play this without this module as it speeds up the upgrades and

19:54 consequences of the game. Just like all chip theory games, the tactical play is quite good and the dice chucking is fun and tense, but what really hooks me is seeing how I can level up even the same gladiator in so many different ways and explore different biomes that provide such unique and interesting mechanics. Finally, that epic boss fight at the end feels insurmountable, but when you get there, your battle hardened crew is ready to kick some scion butt. Oh, it is such a glorious feeling. The epic nature of this game is indescribable. A terrible corruption has spread over the world of Decaria and it's up to the golden blade syndicate to solve the mystery of this growing blight. You do this by utilizing a 40-card deck of warriors, clerics, paladins, and bards, activating their special abilities, and trying to survive each of the 12 scenarios. Unlike most legacy games, this one requires you to win each scenario to move on, which at first I thought would be a huge negative, but how the game handles losses is fantastic and it makes each scenario an interesting puzzle you must complete to progress the story. Each scenario vastly changes the basic formula of Regicide and I am excited each time I get to open a new chapter. I'm currently playing two different campaigns and I'm enjoying both of them so much. For a game with a linear story, I am more invested than I thought I was going to be. Certainly the same if not more than a game like

21:25 Pandemic Legacy. Once you finish the campaign, you can still use your copy for some additional scenarios, so this isn't just a one and done campaign. I would say you will likely get between 25 to 30 plays of this game through the course of the 12 chapters. Sandbox games that are done well is one of my go-to's and Xia: Legends of a Drift System is no exception. In solo, you will be exploring the verse finding planets, ice comets, dropping off cargo, shooting down NPC ships, and you can play the game as a single session, trying to score fame faster than the NPCs, or you can play the solo campaign mode where each solo scenario has different requirements to win. This is what I highly recommend for a solo player as it forces you to try different ships and try different strategies. I find I enjoy just staring at the verse trying to decide the best strategy of gaining fame while avoiding the NPCs. The game is absolutely chalked full with dice chucking, but the expansion, which you will need in order to play solo, provides you with many ways to mitigate that randomness. However, dice can still just kill you. At this point, I do feel like this is my best sandbox solo game that I own. Mage Knight: The Board Game is the best solo puzzler I have ever played and it ties some of my favorite mechanics together in a fantasy theme.

22:47 The game utilizes multi-use cards, deck building, tile exploration, and leveling up to provide a solo player with so many juicy options on how to complete the scenario that you're playing. For some crazy awesome reason, WizKids has decided to continue to support the game, coming out with one new expansion, the Apocalypse Dragon, and another expansion next year. This is going to help more people find this game and discover the beauty of taking down your first city. All that feeling I will never forget the sense of accomplishment I felt when I defeated my first city in Mage Knight. The game is challenging both in terms of rules overhead as well as execution, but once you get over that initial hump, the experience is unlike any other game I have in my collection. Well, there you have it, a list of 20 solo player games which I'm really enjoying. Let me know which ones I missed. Someone on my top 20 campaign list told me about Kingdom Legacy and I will forever be grateful as I love that one so much. I would like to give a huge shoutout to our patrons and subscribers. It's because of you that Barrett and I do what we do on this channel. And if you're excited to see what we have coming next, then I need you to meet me at the table. Goodbye, everyone. You're my master plan to set me up against your enemies.

24:07 It's our master plan to set me up against your enemies.