Is The Last of Us: Escape the Dark Worth Playing Solo? | I Don't Usually Play Solo #3
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Transcript
I don't usually play solo board games, but I keep buying games that say you can. Ellie didn't take her journey alone, but I will. I'm Ralph from justtheroad.com. I don't usually play solo, but I tried The Last of Us: Escape the Dark. This is a cooperative survival game for one to five players. You're survivors of the Cordyceps outbreak living under the brutal control of FEDRA in the quarantine zone. The plan is simple. First, make it to Jackson, and second,
Endure and survive.
You control a survivor with their own unique dice and stats across three traits and a character floor with actions to complete to unlock a special ability. The board has five locations all connected by routes that can be blocked by threat tokens. Each day starts with a travel phase where survivors can move to one adjacent location, followed by an action phase where survivors take one daily action. Either camp by using the location's camp card for supplies or healing, or explore, which means flipping a character card which drives the game's story and finding out what the game has decided you do today. One survivor takes the lead and whatever's written in bold and capitals happens to them specifically. Sometimes that's fine, sometimes it isn't.
luck, and it is going to run out.
Combat triggers when a chapter card tells you and an enemy is represented by a row of chapter dice following different traits. Your job is to match symbols with your dice and remove them all. Before combat, there's a listen round where you might change up to three chapter dice and/or sneak around to try and get a free attack before combat begins.
You make every shot count. Yeah.
In each combat round, players roll survivor dice and if it matches a chapter die, you remove it. After you attack, if any chapter dice remain, the enemy attacks back. Rinse, repeat. If any survivor's health hits zero, your game ends. No second chances.
Everyone I have cared for has either died or left me.
If you get to Jackson, you try and defeat a boss that has accumulated threat tokens throughout the game, making them tougher with each one. Win with everyone alive and you're out. Lose a survivor, run out of time, or allow six boss tokens to accumulate in Jackson, it becomes overrun and you lose.
After for we've been through, everything that I've done. It can't be for nothing.
This is a first for this solo board game series. In episode one for Neko Syndicate, you play the game in the same way as multiplayer, then compare your score against a solo only bot opponent that played a dummy game. In episode two, Rolling Realms, you play the game in the same way as multiplayer, and each game providing a target for you to meet in a solo only mini golf themed game. In Last of Us: Escape the Dark, you play the game the same way as multiplayer.
Now, it wasn't too bad. There's lots of getting decks of cards out the box, putting so many of them on the board at random, and putting the rest back in the box. All right, I'm set up for my first attempt. This calendar time tracker thing stays the same. These two decks are just piled on. This is Jackson's one of three cards that's going to be your end goal when you get there. Um there are seven of these, I think. Four go on the the board, three return to the box. You use four of the stash down, and two on both sides of the the top two locations at the end. And the rest go to the box. There's one campfire in each of the four campfire spaces. Five campfire spaces, and the rest go back back to the box. Uh and then you have two quarantine zones at the end. And it tells you whether you need them for two or three players or four or five players, which is good on the card. You get your mini three characters. You set your character board up. You give them equipment. You put cubes on things where cubes need to be. So, this shows the amount of ammo you've got for the gun. This shows the amount of durability you have for the weapon. And that is pretty much it. Set up is pretty quick as long as you know what you're doing and you know how many of each card go in which space, then you should be fine. Unfortunately, the game doesn't help you with set up at all. You do need the rule book if it's not all at the forefront of your mind. A couple of the cards have a bit of help on the back, but there's no quality of life parts on the board or on the cards themselves in order to help you set up the game. For example here, you know there's one card going to be uh in Jackson. I think that's fair to remember. You know, it's not going to be easy to remember that there are four of each of these. They could have put it on the space because it's the same for all player counts. There's no reason it's not on the space. You could probably remember there's one campfire, but again, they could have just put a one in
the little corner or something to remind you. And then here, what it says in the rulebook to do, so this is the sewers. You're supposed to put one of these randomly on each of the locations. But now I've covered that up. I've covered all five up. There's no other way to tell which location this is. If you don't remember that it's the sewers and that's the university and that's the lakeside, you're going to forget. So you then have to move these anyway to put these cards on top, which again doesn't tell you how many of these you should put on the board and return to the box. You need the rulebook for that as a reminder. Again, for the for these for the camp, it says two to three survivors, which is good. This says two to three survivors. These starting weapons, it doesn't say two to three survivors on the back, which would have been handy cuz these four weapons, the plank, 9 mm pistol, a second plank, and the revolver, you always have these four weapons when you're playing two to three players and there's two other weapons you have when you're playing four to five. It should have just said two to three on the back. Another thing I haven't mentioned, you put threat markers and you get little crosses I think if you've got the normal version cuz I've got the deluxe collector's edition, whatever it's called. You get these nice little clicker minis. There's nothing on the board to remind you how many of these start. It's the same every game, so why they didn't make maybe outline these circles instead of dash, make them outline so you remember that that's the starting position for those.
There's a loads of things they could have done to just help just that little bit of taking it out of a memory game and again putting the rulebook to one side. So set up of the game for solo is exactly the same as if you're setting up the game multiplayer. So we're going to include the full quarantine zone step as part of the setup because it's basically the prelude to the game. It's different to the rest of the game. So what you do is you flip your quarantine zones. So we have here, interrogate a federal guard. And then we've got on this side. And ooh, if I can flip it round, gain intel in the suburbs, gain intel at downtown. So they're the two locations that you go to first. And then draw two items. And each survivor taking this route loses one HP. So I'll get to see what's at the suburbs and I only lose one HP. So, I'm going to do is I'm going to send both of them this way. So, then you gain intel. So, you gain intel at the suburbs. To gain intel, you get the stash item deck and you flip it face up.
And if it's an item, you leave it there, but this is an event. So, it says on reveal, danger avoided. So, if I'd gone here and then looked at this, I would have got tripwire and lost two HP, but because I've gained intel, I know those tripwires are there. I'm now going to get rid of this card. So, that is avoided that danger. That's good. And I'm going to do the same on the other side. Um because we also gain intel at downtown. This is downtown. So, here we are. Danger avoided again. That's good. So, we got rid of two dangers. Although, I probably won't be going to downtown because they're going to go this way. I'm going to draw two item cards. They are right the other side of the board. I'm going to have to stand up and lean over cuz it's quite a big board. This is why I'm not using the GoPro. I'm using the my phone and giving everyone motion sickness. So, you get the binding and ammo. The ammo goes in ammo slots.
Binding goes in item slots. I think we can give it to every anyone. So, I'm going to give Ellie the the binding tape there so she can make a shiv later on. So, see what items you need to combine. If you played the video game, they're very familiar. And the ammo card obviously gives you ammo for your gun. Uh we've So, we've done that and then we lose one HP. So, Ellie loses one HP. Joel loses one HP. This is very random, isn't it? I don't intend it to be like this. And then you move to the location which goes under the camp card. So, we will go here. He's much better at camera work than me, but there you go. Uh so, that is the prelude done. You get rid of these two cards and you're ready for turn one. The game adds nothing for the solo game other than you're controlling two survivors instead of one each. That is it. And when I say it's played exactly the same, I believe this is the only reference to solo in the rulebook. So, if you're playing solo, choose two survivors, you will control both because that is legitimately the only change and that is fine by me.
Except for controlling two characters at a time, it is exactly the same as the multiplayer game. There's only table space and brain space that is preventing you playing for five characters on your own when you're playing by yourself. One of the positives though is there's no quarterback player. I am the quarterback. I'm also the halfback, the tight end, the offensive coach, and my own cheerleader. Unfortunately, I'm also the referee. If I make a mistake while playing the game, there's no one to help me catch the ball, which in this analogy is a rules mirror. In this play through I've just done, I know that I've made at least three mistakes and one of them was quite big and cost me a lot of health. Also, as this is a team game we're playing, I'm the only coach on this team, so I've no one to help me with strategy, which could be why I've never beat this game. I think the game itself is worth the effort. There's not too much mental load once you know what you're doing. The only thing you need to remember is Intel, but Intel is flipping a card face up and that card stays face up on top of that deck, so you'll always see it. So, you don't need to remember where you've got Intel from and what the Intel was.
Literally, everything else on the table is fully visible all game, so you don't need to remember bits and bobs. But, there are some fiddly rules, especially around combat and listen and sneak and sneak attacks. It's a bit more complicated than it really needed to be. Now, the game length varies depending on the number of encounters that you have. Skipping days to avoid encounters reduces the game turns, meaning the game will be shorter if you keep skipping encounters. Obviously, you're just making it harder for yourself as well, giving you less time to do everything you need to do. So, game is played up to 16 days as you can see on the day tracker there. Now, normally what you do on the days divided into two, you've got your travel phase and your action phase. And the travel phase is skipped in phase one. So, we've got to do something in the suburbs. So, what I'm going to do first, I'm going to split the party, whether that's a clever thing to do or not, we'll soon find out. So, I'm going to get Ellie to camp cuz you can this camp action is once per game. And it's draw two item cards. I think getting items early is pretty good. So, I'm going to you put an X on it show that you've used it. I'm going to put Ellie on there as well as a reminder that I've used Ellie already. If you've watched the other videos in this series, you know that anything I can do to remind me that uh an action has been taken or I need to do something, I will do it because I make mistakes cuz I go too quick. So, uh it says draw two items.
I've already done that. I've give Ellie the the bottle which can be thrown to during a sneak round. We'll get to sneak round and combat later. And Joel has a rag which you can combine with alcohol to make either a health kit or a Molotov, but now it's Joel's turn. It is annoying getting the cards out the box, shuffling them, put some here, and then some back in the box. Doing that so many times is annoying, but that's where the replayability and variability comes from. Every time you visit a location, you kind of know what's going to be there, but it's always going to be a surprise of which card is actually on top that you're going to encounter next. Okay, once per day, you can explore each location. So, if we had to split the party, somebody could explore downtown and somebody could explore the suburbs, but I'm going to explore with Joel. I'm just going to move Joel here as a reminder that I'm taking Joel's action. When you explore, you flip over the top card, you read the italic text.
So, it says, "Slipping through a gap in the chain link fence, you emerge into an expansive yard where hunters have established a command post. The lookout spots you." Begin combat. Oh dear. So, now we're going to set up the chapter dice. Now, I'm going in solo, so I'm going to use this section. If you go as a group, you're going to roll dice depending on the number of survivors you've got there. We've only got one, so we're going in here. This is the number of dice equal to the threat level. The threat level is three. We have three threats. So, I'll roll these three dice. Next, it shows you one with a might and a wisdom symbol, so we'll got the might and the wisdom symbol here ready, and then that question mark is another dice. So, I'm going to roll these four dice and I'm going to add them to the dice we already have and not Joel over in the process. And here we go. This is the dice we need to defeat in this chapter.
So, now we've got all the chapter dice, you can do a listen and/or sneak round, and if they will be grayed out if you're not allowed to do them, but here you can do a listen and a sneak. And listen, it says here, if you roll your dice and you get a wisdom, you get to change three of the chapter dice to whatever side you want. If you get a crit, you get to change five, but if you fail, you have to add an extra chapter dice, so there's a risk there. And then sneak, you roll and if you get cunning, you get to remove a dice. If you crit to get a crit, you remove two dice, but again, if you fail, you're going to take damage from the body, which their damage is ranged and melee there. So, seeing as Joel is not very cunning, but he is fairly wise, there's a 50-50 I'll get to change five of these dice and I want to change these with a double sides on, so let's give those a go. And here we go, we're looking for a crit, but a star wisdom symbol will do.
It's not It's not either of those, so unfortunately, we need to roll another die and add that into the uh the die pool. Oh dear. If you happen to take a lot of damage early, you're going to need to take more turns in order to try and recover. You need to go and scavenge places to try and get healing items to get your health back up before you can progress the game. So, the game's going to take as long as it needs to, really. There's no real time limit. With this game here, because I was writing notes in between taking actions, it took me about 90 minutes to play a game, but I think if I wasn't taking notes and taking little bits of film and talking you through the bits as I'm going, it only takes about 20 minutes, once it's set up, of course. Okay, it's time for me to make an attack. So, cuz I need to remove seven dice and for every time I shoot, they're going to shoot back and deal two damage, uh but only one damage from melee. And cuz this is only going to remove one dice even if I hit. So, I'm going to go with a melee attack, uh which means rolling the die, and that is a wisdom symbol, so I can remove a wisdom symbol from here. So, I can get rid of one of their dice, and they attack me back for one, so I lose another health.
And then we go back to me. I'm going to roll. That is a crit, which means I can remove any die, which means I'm going to remove one of these with two symbols on it. That makes sense, doesn't it? But because it's also a shield, that means I've got one block. So, that one damage that they would deal now does not deal damage to me. And this just repeats until I give up. Well, that's good cuz that gets rid of that one. But there's no shield, so I lose another life. Ooh, 11. I didn't realize it zigzagged. That's annoying. But anyway, uh yeah. So, you can quit. I've got crit. So, we'll get rid of cunning because that's the hardest one for Joel to remove and he's going to block the one damage. So, that's [clears throat] good. Uh oh, I've got another crit. Get rid of another wisdom. Uh there's only two dice left. Another crit. Oh, I'm on a roll. We'll get rid of the star and I block the damage again. So, I might actually do it.
And we've got a fist and a a block. So, we have actually done it. It was That was quicker than I thought it was going to be. Uh and I only took what, two damage in the process? That's not bad. So, it says if you defeat the enemy, discard a threat token, then search. So, we'll discard the threat token. And I can't remember what search is. So, the one helpful helpful crib sheet does actually say. So, it says as a group take two bonus actions or you can lose a dice, which means moving this back and taking fewer turns overall, and add a boss token, which is another end game condition that we haven't spoken about yet. To take four of these actions. So, if I take two of the actions, I can gain intel, draw one reveal stash item card at this location. I can draw a blind one or I can scavenge one item card. So, I think I'm going to draw a blind from here. So, I get a Ooh, a hunting rifle. That's good. So, I might have to equip that. So, that one when you get a hit, you remove two dice, any two dice, which is good. And I also gain an item, which is all the way over here.
Which is a snack bar, which I can discard to restore one HP, which I think I will do straight away. I think you can do that. I don't know if that's in the rules or not, but uh I've done it now anyway because there's no one here to stop me. The The of playing solo that you can do that. I'm not cheating. [clears throat]
I think the more you play as well, you're going to stop reading the bits on the cards. You're just going to go straight to playing the dice matching game at the bottom and not worry about any of the theme on the cards. Yes, I would in a way. I like the choose your own adventure style game play and I like the theme, the universe, The Last of Us universe. I love The Last of Us. As nothing changes for multiplayer, I'm playing the exact same game I would play if I was playing with other people. So, I don't have to worry about getting them to play if they don't want to or upsetting anyone or missing out on playing something else cuz I'm playing this. So, that helps. Especially with it being based on a video game and a TV show that people might not like. They might not be interested in playing this game at all. I've always said this about games based on IP. If people don't like the IP, they might not play the board game even though the two things aren't really connected. But, don't have to worry about that because I can play it on my own whenever I want. So, at the start of day two, you can now take a travel action so we can move from the suburbs to the sewers. That would be nice to be able to do, but you can't cuz you can see this threat connected by this line is on this dotted area which means you can't move through this area until you remove this threat. You remove right to left and you add on left to right. So, I need to remove at least one more threat which means doing another explore and potentially having more combat and oh dear, this is going to get tricky. But, I do want to get to the sewers. So, let's do another explore here. But, as I mentioned, as I'm playing by myself, I haven't got the other people here to look at the threat assessment, look at the board to help me strategize. Like I said, I'm not winning this game. I'm getting to Jackson in very poor state and not being able to complete the final boss. So, if there was other people
there who would maybe help me and maybe point out where I'm going wrong and work together as a team because that's what The Last of Us is all about. It's working together. Cuz I'm playing on my own, I'm not really getting to that next level to be able to progress and and actually win the game. I just realized I can't get too excited cuz I'm advancing the day at the end of that turn to day three which goes on to one of these icons which means you need to add a threat token to every location anyway, so I need to put one back on here and I'm I'm stuck in the suburbs still. And it is a lot of table space it is taking up my entire table here and I'm only playing with two characters. I couldn't play with more if I wanted to. I've got a little side table here I could put them on, but then I would be switching between two seats which would be a bit uncomfortable. As I said, the rules are a bit fiddly as well. I don't really want to have five characters and the fiddly rules in my head because I would definitely go wrong. I've gone wrong with two characters, so I'm definitely going to go wrong with five.
I think this would have been better as a book like a choose your own adventure book. You could include the dice as well on the side of this roll the dice on the side and just have a printable table that you can play on. That would have been much better I think. And it does get repetitive just playing that dice matching game over and over and over. It is just a case of just trying to get through each one just rolling dice just saying, "Okay, can we just get to the next one, please?" Just to say they're not all bad. Obviously, in the game when you're walking around you get to explore different houses and things. There won't always be threats in them. So, this is just a nice little empty house that you've come across. You discard a threat token which means I get rid of this one which means I can move next turn. And then you search, so that was nice and relaxing. It's rated 7.1 from 461 reviews. The sample size is small of just 10 votes, but no votes for the game being best solo only recommended as a solo game. La la la rated it nine based on three solo plays and says it has a rather high RNG due to the high amount of dice rolling.
Now, obviously, The Last of Us video game is deterministic. It is skill-based. If you take a shot and miss it's because you weren't pointing in the right direction. But here, with the dice rolling and the RNG, it does get a bit annoying if you can't shoot with Joel because you know if you have the game with your controller in your hand, you would be hitting no problem. TM Banks makes some good points rating it eight after three plays one of which was solo and says, "All three rounds I've made it to the final boss then realized we were way out of our depth." Which is exactly how I felt. I've been punished so much on the way there then when I've got there, I've just had nothing left. So, I thought I'd get to Jackson just so I could say I got there. I got an infected swarm which gives you three waves of enemies. I've got the one token which adds an extra dice onto that wave one. And so you have to get through these three combats, the same as any other combat, really. Just need to survive. And they're only dealing three, two, and then one damage as the waves go on with fewer dice. So, I should be able to survive, except let's have a look at the current status. So, Joel has hunting bow, which has been quite useful. The sneak attacks remove three dice, which is great. He's on one health, so that's not good. And then Ellie has El Diablo with some ammo. You can reload El Diablo. El Diablo only has two dice. But Ellie's on one health. And one thing I've been forgetting to do was these. I forgot to do the flaws. I don't think I would have got all the way. So, it doesn't actually matter. They wouldn't have got a special ability for doing so.
But I made it to Jackson. I'm just going to die here. Fun. Tim Maxwell goes on to say, "I see a lot of reviews posting about the game has zero replayability. I think eventually you'll get there, but every time you set the game up, you shuffle the cards, put X into play, put the remaining X back in the box. So, every game you'll see different story cards, which I mentioned before and I agree with completely." Also says the game is mostly dice rolling and look. And yeah, I do think look is the issue in this game. Now, there aren't many reviews on BoardGameGeek, but eight is the lowest I found for people who have mentioned this as a solo game. So, I've got to look further down to see what other people are saying who have rated it lower than eight. So, Rubes Cubes 97 rated it three and makes a good point. It says, "Of the 35 chapters in the game, only five do something interesting with the game mechanics. The rest are either you take damage or a combat which has all the choices of an auto battler." And for me, I think this is the issue with the game.
It's either a clicker attack or a raiding party attack or a bear trap. Ow. This game is purely for fans of The Last of Us video game. A lot of the references in the game itself are more video game based rather than the TV show. The crafting, which doesn't really happen as much in the TV show, and the the names of the weapons and things that you get, which are the names of the weapons you get in the game and that your encounters and stuff are more video game based rather than TV show based. If you like fantasy, Escape the Dark Castle and its three adventure packs will give you plenty of gameplay. If you like sci-fi, Escape the Dark Sector and its three mission packs will give you plenty of gameplay. The Last of Us: Escape the Dark currently, at the time of recording and writing, has zero DLCs planned at the moment and it has one audience and one audience only. Who knows if we'll get to play as Abby, Lev, or Dina in the future or even encounter the WLF or the Rat King? Who knows? I don't want the Rat King.
It kind of does, but not really. If you watch my series called Shelf Forgotten where I re-review each game in my collection decide which are good to keep, you will know that I decided not to keep this game. The problem is I do like playing games in this world and I like playing games in this world solo. I just don't know how I can do it. What a chin scratcher. How can I play The Last of Us game solo and enjoy it? Hmm. Cuz I don't usually play board games solo, but I did try The Last of Us: Escape the Dark. If you played this one solo, let me know what you think. Does it actually work for you? If you think there's a game I should try solo, drop it in the comments.
Thanks for watching. If you want to see more board game videos like this, I've got this series, I've got the series Shelf Forgotten where I'm reviewing all my collection, I've got top 10 videos coming out, and I've got how-to-play videos when I get new games in. Don't forget to follow me on socials. I'm just posting on Instagram @justtherogue. Obviously, YouTube is also justtherogue and my blog is justtherogue.com. I'll be Rob AKA justtherogue. Thanks for watching and I'll see you soon.