Jessica's Top 5 Lesser-Known Solo Games

0:00 hey everybody it's me jessica you might know me from gamer bound or albia from board game geek i am here to talk more about solo stuff which is always exciting and thanks again to ed for having me on his channel to chat today so i wanted to go through and look at some of the games that i have rated pretty well that i really do enjoy for different aspects but which are kind of lesser known kind of way down there in terms of bgg rankings not ratings so these are not games that i rated like a 10 and everybody else said it's a four these are ones that are just kind of lesser known they're not really out there in circulation that much or for whatever reason they're just not that well known so let's dive in and see why i like some of these knit games first up is harsh shadows which is a solo spy game which really does capture the theme really well this is in a small box and you're going to be kind of going around setting up locations and sort of tracking down and collecting clues and trying to track somebody out there so it's really quick um and i enjoy it just because it's very different and you do get that you feel like you're you're just tracking somebody like you get that whole spy aspect um which is hard to do in solo because again this is not necessarily a hidden movement type of game but think about a lot of the ones or a lot of the the games that you would

1:31 think of for doing something where it's spy related there's a lot of hidden information and a lot of kind of you know i'm gonna do this but nobody knows what else is going on this works really really well as a solo game and i enjoy it it's been a little bit easy when i play um but we'll just say that i'm a super spy right but that is harsh shadows really fun game another one which actually surprised me recently um this has been sitting uh on a shelf i think my husband picks up random games i don't even hear of this is actually roon and this one surprised me because it is one of those ones where it looks like it has no solo mode it looks like it's a two to three player game um i opened it up just kind of going through checking components this is what i do and there were actually solo rules and there's three different solo modes i decided let me give the first one a whirl and just see what it plays as and it was really great it's almost a mix if you're familiar with sprolopolis or orchard a nine card solitaire game it's almost a mix of those you're sort of laying out cards they can either overlap or go adjacent to each other and you're just creating areas of three different types of runes which you can see on the cover there's three different colors um you set out a couple of meeples who are sort of your rune masters and you just figure out your high score it's very quick this plays in maybe you know this is a five minute game um but there's

3:04 also other solo modes to explore and i found myself just really enjoying just the the simple fun of just laying out patterns and seeing how i could sort of manipulate the cards to get some really good scores i did not get some very good scores but it was still fun nevertheless so that was roon another one is project dreamscape and this one is you're sort of going through a dream and you are collecting sort of making patterns with the cards it has a really unique uh art style some people love it other ones don't this kind of reminds me of mr cabbage heads garden where some people the vegetable people are great cute whimsical other people are like ah no thank you but i like the art style here it does feel like it's it's very dreamy um i mean you have like little little sheep you know like counting sheep in the sleep um sequence but it it's uh it's another one about kind of laying out a pattern of cards this time uh and but each card sort of has its own different abilities so you might be able to move a card back or flip it and actually each card sort of has its own sort of has two different parts of it so you're gonna decide which part of that card you're gonna use so there's dual purpose cards really nice just the the theme of this again um is like on iron on a rim the one that i can never pronounce

4:34 of kind of going through a dream um but this one i think is it has a much different art style and it does not play the same with just kind of the the card play there's a lot more going on here but it's still pretty lightweight and it's just a very pretty nice type of game that i have definitely have not played in a while i looked at this i saw it i said hey was the last time i played that i don't know but this is what happens when you have too many games but i digress next game on this list is sort of a unique title i would say and that is the crusoe crew and this one is a little bit more of it's more of a game book but you actually get four game books here and i'm just gonna we will we're not doing unboxings i want this to be quick what has been forever doing this um but what you get is you sort of have let's take a look if i can if i can open it up here there we go that's not a problem with the box at all that would be me operator error you have a map which is going to help you decide where to be going when you get clues but what you get are four different books so here's one and then each so each character has their own book you might say well are they completely different they're not but it's pretty cool how it works so you can play this solo which is how i play it but you can play up with up to four different people um each with their own book and what ends up happening is each character again has their own unique ones so this character has a

6:06 little little friend a little animal friend so in a scene you might see that three of the characters have the exact same scene in their books identical fine we you know it's great but then someone might say wait a second i have like a hidden number over here and i can i can go and do something in my book that you can't do can i go do this and there's a cool thing where um you know every character has their own strength so each book is a little bit different so i have played through this multiple times there's multiple adventures and each book again this is not a you know it's not a very thick type of book that's going to take forever to play but there's different adventures in it i play this occasionally because luckily i don't remember things that well so it does have a lot of kind of long-term value for me which is great and it's very fun um you're finding all these different like hidden puzzles along the way there's a time element but not you know it's not like a time time thing it's it's when you come across a time you mark it in in your on your sheet and that's kind of the countdown because every adventure must come to an end but that is the crusoe crew which again very different very unique um but something that i enjoy playing every now and then it's just it's very different and very fun and then lastly on this list because again i'm trying to keep these short this is the last one here but let's grab this box all these boxes were pretty

7:37 small this one not so much this is veil wraith and veil wraith i actually played a lot when i first got it and it's like there he is there's there's my friend right here this box is semi-heavy and let's just i'm going to put it over there for a second i might actually grab the box top that's how you do it you know you plan these things so well and then the box stop doesn't want to cooperate i got it i got it box top it's not it's not a light game this is just the back stop but anyway it is also a very shiny box so there's a lot of uh all right you know what stop it that rafe valerie let's talk about it rather than playing around the box but this one is a really interesting game where you're playing through vignettes vignettes i can't i'm getting over the flu and that's one of the words that just will not come out right now anyway you play through these vignettes or scenes you have your deck your starting deck and as you go through you augment this this deck a little bit and kind of pick how you're going to be going through these adventures and they are tough you're trying to collect keys as you go through but you have enemies along the way and beating them is not easy there's a little action type system and i'm just really paraphrasing this here it's not a super complex game but there's there is a lot to it um and the actions you can kind of chain them and they have a different cost because you can't just use the same

9:08 action over and over again so you have that in front of you and your cards you kind of have to work through them and figure out how am i going to do this and then you get to choose again at the end of each vignette when you succeed hopefully you get to kind of change up how your deck works and you learn over time when i first played it i definitely did not make the best decisions but there's a lot to choose from and sort of figure out your own path through there and there's there's an overarching story i found it to be really really different um and not again not too in-depth but still really enjoyable so i wasn't sitting there forever being like all right i gotta construct this deck and i gotta change this and what is this it was pretty straightforward but also fun and i can definitely see myself playing through it again i also have the expansion as i figured out when i opened the box that i never played yet so plenty more content there and lots more to enjoy so that's veil wraith and that is everything for this video at least kind of the five games that i enjoy that are really down there in terms of sort of the the overall ranking on board game geek which doesn't tell you everything but does sort of indicate these are lesser known titles but you find a lot of great ones down there these all are like around 5000 or 6000 so down there but again it's fun to kind of explore different games um and just find what's out there so i am sure i will be back with more hidden

10:38 gems and then some of the top games i do own a lot and i play a lot solo so i have a lot to talk about thank you for watching hopefully this was fun and enjoyable to see these sure i'll be back again take care enjoy playing solo bye