8 games I played SOLO in September! | SOWING SOLO

0:00 quickly before we get into today's video I wanted to give a huge thank you to the video and channel sponsor which is Floodgate games today I'm going to be talking about their game called kites which is a Cooperative real-time game for two to six players where players will be frantically playing down kite cards that will allow you to flip over sand timers and these sand timers actually represent each of your Kites and if any of the sand timers ever run out that means that one of your kites has fallen to the ground and you immediately lose the game your goal is to get through the entire deck of cards before any of the sand timers run out overall I feel like this is a great fun easy to teach family game that with the holiday season coming up would make a fantastic gift so that is kites hey friends it is Jenna what is up and welcome back to the board game garden and welcome to the sewing solo episode for September so we're going to be chatting about all the games that I played Solo in September which I have actually eight different games in front of me right now eight different solo games that I enjoyed in the month of September if you guys want to know what those are I do think I'm going to start putting the pictures of the games that I'm talking about in The Sewing solo thumbnail so you guys might already know what eight games I'm going to be talking about we will see but I do think that it's really nice to see when a content creator is talking about like reviews of games that they enjoyed not so much like top 10 and stuff I usually like to keep those games secret but when it comes to

1:32 sewing solo I think it's nice to for you guys to be able to see in the thumbnail what games I'm going to be chatting about so maybe you guys will see them in the thumbnail already but if you guys want to see me chat about these eight different games then just keep on watching give this video a big thumbs up if you enjoy Also hit that subscribe button down below if you've yet to do so we'd love to have you here in the garden also comment down below any games that you played Solo in September games that you enjoyed um and also any that you recommend based off of the ones that I talked about today um and also again a huge thank you to Floodgate games for being the channel sponsor and sponsoring today's video without further Ado let's get into this video shall we all right so starting off with the solo monthly Focus for both August and September this is a game that I played probably a solid like 15 to 20 times in the month of August and September and that is my favorite game of all time Hadrian's Wall um that was the solo monthly Focus for August and September I wanted two months for this because I really wanted to focus on the solo campaign for Hadrian's Wall if you guys do not know they have like a printable sheet that you can go through there are I think 16 different forts or scenarios that you go through for the Hadrian's Wall solo campaign and each of them have a unique goal that you're trying to achieve and then also sometimes they have have some unique rules that you have to go by and then there's also an additional challenge

3:04 that if you also get that with the goal as well then you get some sort of perk for the next Fort that you're going to be working on so yes hren wall is like I said my favorite game of all time I don't know if it still is but the last time that I did a top games of all time for me Hadrian Wall was my number one I love this game so so much it just makes me so happy and just fills me with joy when I play it because it's just so satisfying trying to figure out how to maximize each round and try to use and gain as much as possible this is a flip and right but also like a use workers and write um where you are using workers to go up tracks and then certain points on those tracks you're going to be gaining more workers there's going to be certain workers that you're going to be needing to go up on certain tracks and kind of like gain access to different mini games and stuff like that if you have not tried Herrin wall yet I definitely recommend um and yeah the solo campaign I found it I did it on easy you can do the solo campaign on three different difficulties um you can play Hadrian's Wall on three different difficulties in general but I stuck to play it on the easy and the one thing that I did notice there were two different forts or scenarios where the goal of the scenario was something and then also getting 80 plus victory points

4:34 and I cannot for like my life get above 80 points or even 80 I think the closest that I gotten was I think a score of 78 but I cannot get over 80 points please let me know what do you do in Hadrian's Wall in order to get over 80 points because I need to know I must know I cannot do it so yes I did end up end up skipping I did like a few of those forts the two different ones that required that goal of 80 points I did those like three or four times each and I'm like you know what I'm not going to waste my time trying to get these 80 points so I decided at that point to just move on to the next Fort um so yeah I will continue trying but for now I completed the solo campaign uh but I did have to skip a few of those forts but yes that is the first game that I played um in month of September and August that is patreon's wall moving on to the next game this is one that I have yet to play multiplayer but I feel like this one could probably play um very similarly uh multiplayer as does solo because it is a abstract game where you are drafting cards so there could be a little bit of you know fighting over the different cards in the center and also the different um dog tokens but this right here is forever home home I was so excited about this one I love the theme of this one where

6:04 you are trying to get Foster dogs into homes and it just it melts my heart I love it so so much this is designed by lahy and Jack Hazel they are the owners of birdwood games the publishing company they also made dog park as well as the dog park expansion and then forever home was their first straight to retail release so this is available if you want to pick it up it is a great small box um abstract game with an amazing theme if you uh like that sort of thing it kind of gives me the Vibes of like Cascadia stuff like that where basically you are going to be um either drafting these dog tokens or you're going to be drafting cards and the cards are going to have a certain layout of dogs on a grid and those dog tokens you're going to be placing onto this Grid in order to complete these cards the cards will then um allow you to take some of the dogs off of the grid and then place them into some different scoring regions so there are four different places that you can send the dogs off too there is I think City Country foster home and suburbs um so you can kind of find them their forever home and it just again warms my heart I love the theme um and then you're going to be gaining victory points based off of the dogs that you have in those four different scoring areas as well as you have these like um different scoring perimeters on this other board where you are like placing certain colored dogs and you're going to

7:34 be gaining victory points for that as well and then you also have the victory points for the cards that you achieve um and I just really enjoyed this solo it um was really cool where you are actually going to be building up your scoring on the other board like I mentioned with the different colored dogs as you play the game so you can kind of get a feel of what color dogs you're going to be having the most of different things like that that and then kind of building up those scoring parameters for yourself in order to gain as many victory points as possible which I really enjoyed um so yes that is forever home I really enjoyed this one it is again going to be one that is easy to just take out get to the table and play um I think it plays within like 20 minutes it says 20 to 45 minutes for a solo game I definitely played it within 20 minutes and it'll definitely be one of those ones that I reach for similar to Cascadia where I just want to have like a nice nice cozy easy game to play um in the evening with a cup of tea um this really really does that so that is forever home I do quickly want to add that forever home was sent to me for review by birdwood games so huge huge thank you to them all right so moving on to a bigger game this one was sent to me as well and this has been one that I've been super excited about ever since hearing about it it has an amazing story behind it as well but this is sweet mess pastry competition this this was sent to me by Pika games as well as Fantasia games so huge huge thank you to them and sweet mess pastry competition like I

9:06 said has a really cool story behind it where basically this was a Kickstarter sweet mess it was just sweet mess um and unfortunately the initial publisher for it wasn't able to complete the campaign and have the games shipped to everyone so what actually happened is Pika games SL Fantasia games they are like sister companies um they actually took over the campaign put a bunch of money into it which I think is amazing for them um a few of them were the designers of this game which is Zach Yom and Johnny pack they actually um took over the game they did a little bit of changes to the game they switched up the name obviously to Sweet mess pastry competition as well as they did update some of the art or all of the art um I don't know if they changed a lot of the mechanics and stuff but they did take over the campaign they put their own money into it and finished up the campaign and actually had it sent to people that back the campaign so I think it's amazing that they jumped in helped out the other publisher and got this game made because this game is so wonderful and I'm so happy that someone has come out with a like pastry competition dessert game which just makes me so incredibly happy cuz I have a huge huge Sweet Tooth if you guys did not know and yeah it is just a theme that I love and I felt like needed to have a game about it so in sweet mess pastry competition you are creating

10:38 dishes with these different ingredient tokens and basically on your turn you're going to be doing one of three different actions those actions actually have two different actions that you can perform but you're going to be choosing which one you want to perform and then you can pay a coin in order to do both of them and most of the time those actions include um grabbing from this middle area that has a bunch of different ingredients in bowls you're going to be taking ingredients from those bowls and then because it's called sweet mess um there's going to be a mess being made and from that ingredient Bowl there's going to be other ingredients that are going to be placed around it and making a mess and you're going to be placing these ingredients into your storage which I think is one of my favorite parts of this game where your storage actually requires you to place different ingredients in very specific spots so there are some spots for four or five different ingredients there's going to be a spot for four of the same ingredients and then there's going to be a spot for two sets of like pairs of ingredients so that is all that you can store and you have to really figure out like can I grab all of these ingredients and do I have space in my storage for all of these in very specific spots and will I have enough space in order to gain all of these different ingredients in order to you know cook this specific um item that I want to cook there's going to be a bunch bunch of different recipes at the top that you're going to be using these ingredient chips in order to bake and then you're going to try to be there's a little bit of like set collection with the different types of

12:09 desserts and you're going to be gaining Awards if you have you know three of the same type of desserts or two of the same type of desserts and there are a bunch of different things going on in the game but I really really enjoy it there's also like different tools that you can use in order to get you additional things and it is I will say it is a pretty straightforward game it's not really doing a ton of super interesting things like I've definitely it's the type where you are gaining ingredients and you're going to be creating these orders or fulfilling these orders it's definitely like a fulfill order type of game which I have definitely played a few in the past but the way that you are storing those chips and the different things that you're doing on your turn um it does make it unique in its own way and again the theme just I love so much paired with the different mechanics I think it just works really really well and it's one that I'm super excited to get back to the table again both solo and multiplayer I did chat about this in the multiplayer games that I played in the month of August as well um but I'm really happy that I got a chance to play it Solo in the month of September and I'm happy that I'm able to uh share it with you guys right now so that is sweet mess pastry competition definitely recommend checking it out if it is like a theme and mechanisms and stuff that you um think you would enjoy also the components in this game and just the production of this game is absolutely fantastic it has the chips that kind of remind me of the chips from um wonderlands War those really nice Hefty

13:41 very satisfying chips and they have like the super cool like plastic game trays player boards for each of the players and it's very cool also the solo variant I didn't really touch on that but the solo variant you are going against a bot and you're simply just flipping over a car C and then they're going to be taking some of the ingredients um stuff like that they're also going to be possibly taking some of the orders from above and I will say I believe I remember it being a pretty challenging solo AI which I really appreciate when it's challenging and not too easy so yes that is a sweet mess pastry competition definitely recommend checking it out all right moving into more of a story driven game this is actually a solo only game and this was on my list of most anticipated games at Gen Con I did actually receive this as a uh review copy from Northstar game studios and that is ISA and something shiny guys this game makes me so incredibly happy I'm going to be honest I've only played one full like scenario or one full chapter of this but I cannot tell you guys how much I enjoyed this game it is a fairly simple game where basically it is kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure Venture game more Tippy toppies well it's down here by the way um it is like a Choose Your Own Adventure game where you're going to be flipping a card you're going to have cards that are in the present and then once you flip over a card you either are going to be putting it into the past and

15:13 never seeing it again or you're going to be putting it into the future where you actually reshuffle it and it comes back to the present for you to kind of um choose what you want to do with it kind of thing and you're going to be going through this story of Isa and and I will say that the end of the first chapter that I played broke my heart and I have heard that the story of this game gets pretty intense and a little bit dark which um some people said that they purchased this to play with their children and it got a little bit more dark than they thought it was going to so just a little bit of a warning there if you're wanting to play this with your kids it does say 12 and up so that makes sense the story does get a little bit dark like I've been told um but I am so excited to continue playing this I played this on stream and I will be playing it on stream again so keep an eye on that I have been streaming more on YouTube so just to let you guys know you will see me a lot more on here live playing different solo games but Island something shiny is definitely one that I want to make my way all the way through I want to see this story with Isa and just the game play like I said is pretty simple where you're just flipping over a card and making a decision and you have like different resources that you're going to be using in order to do different things on those cards and gain more resources and go through this story and figure out different things and I just love the gameplay of it so much it

16:44 is simple but it is just so much fun and the story is fantastic so far and I cannot wait to continue playing this um a huge thank you again to Northstar game studios for sending this over or letting me bring this home from Gen Con um I've been genuinely really enjoying the story and I'm excited to play more so that is ISA and something shiny so moving into a game that I'm a little bit sad to chat about the solo variant of this one because it definitely um was not great for me um but this is the White Castle which I have not played this multiplayer yet I do want to play this multiplayer and will 100% be playing this multiplayer very soon hopefully this weekend um but the White Castle I played solo on stream and unfortunately it didn't end up uh ending very good for me I lost to the solo AI epically and the thing is is that I've actually watched some other solo content creators here um talk about this as well and other ones have had issues with the solo variant as well it seems like the AI definitely gets a lot of points in different ways that I feel like they shouldn't be getting points um basically the White Castle I really enjoyed don't get me wrong I enjoyed the gameplay of this so much and that is why

18:14 I am very very much looking forward to playing this multiplayer but I feel like the solo variant just didn't work out for me where the AI seemed to be getting a lot of points during the game they will be getting points during the game for a bunch of different things at the end of each of the three rounds and throughout the game as the like player you don't really get a lot of points during the game so it's weird to me that the AI both gets a ton of points during the game and then also gets just as much points as you at the end of the game for all of the same things so it's just weird to me that the AI gets points during the game and after the game game where as the player you get like maybe a few points throughout the game and then you also get a lot of your points at the end of the game so I think what I'm going to try to do I'm going to try to play The White Castle again and I think I might I will say right now I could just be really bad at this game and I probably just need to play it more and I need to just get better at it and figure out better ways to gain victory points during the game that could very well be it but I just found like honestly I think I ended up with like 30 something victory points and then the AI ended up with like 70 to 80 something so it was like a blowout the AI killed me and it did not feel good I will say it did not

19:45 feel good um so I definitely do need to play this more I will say that but if I continue playing this more and the AI doesn't seem to get any easier then I might end up house ruling it maybe taking away of the few of the things that the AI gets victory points during the game um but yeah it just it didn't make me feel good I was so excited to play The White Castle um solo specifically because I really do enjoy how this is such a small box game with a big beefy um like crunchy game on the inside I really love that I also do have the red Cathedral so I'm super excited to dive into that one as well um but yeah it was a little bit of a let down I will say but um I'm going to play it more solo I'm going to finally play this multiplayer cuz I've heard so many people say how great it is multiplayer um so yes that is the White Castle a little bit of a let down when it came to the solo um but I am super pumped to play this multiplayer and I'll also add that um the White Castle was sent me for review by deir so huge thank you to them I am trying to in this video you guys might notice and in all future videos to make sure I let you guys know what games are sent to me for review and which ones are not so uh yeah you guys will probably notice me throwing in things here and there because I really want to make sure that I'm being upfront and honest about all the games that I'm being sent and which ones I'm not so just to let you guys know so moving on

21:15 to another game that was sent over to me for review um this is one that I was actually genuinely really really excited about um I've worked with awaken Realms before for their castles burgundy special edition and once I was finished working with them for that I noticed that they were coming out with this game somewhat soon and it was a primarily solo game you can play it with two players um Cooperative if you'd like but I just mentioned to them that I was really looking forward to this one and I'd love to check it out so they did send me a prototype of this um so a huge thank you to awaken Realms I'm sure you guys know what one I'm talking about uh if you are on uh top of all of the releases from awaken Realms but that is Dragon Eclipse so I did end up doing a live stream playing through um the second scenario of dragon Eclipse which with the prototypes that they sent to content creators they sent like a little bit or like a little bit of a snippet of the full campaign of what dragon eclipse is going to be just so that we could test it out kind of play a few scenarios and share it with our audiences so um this is a prototype like I said and I was able to play through two different scenarios I believe the like final product of this is going to have like 30 plus scenarios but I was so excited for this one and still after playing those two scenarios I am so excited to hopefully dive more into Dragon eclipse this is a campaign story driven game

22:49 where it kind of reminds me a lot of content creators have mentioned this but it reminds me a little bit of a Pokemon where you have these different monsters and you're going out and kind of battling against these monsters taming them potentially and then kind of adding them to your roster of monsters that you can use and befriend and have in your little group which makes me really really happy I love this whole like collecting different monsters and the different types of monsters that they have revealed in their campaign um I just love every single one of them there's one called bulb which oh my goodness he is incredibly cute um there's also some amazing uh minis which I don't have with me right now but maybe I'll include a few clips of b-roll of the minis cuz they are absolutely fantastic I saw all of the minis for the castles of burgundy the castles and stuff but these minis are like fantastic and I know a lot of people have always said like awaken Realms minis are amazing they have so much small details and you're not kidding those minis are amazing and I see why people get obsessed with uh Minis and stuff cuz they are just mesmerizing and I could look at them forever I don't even want to paint them because they're so good I feel like I would mess them up but anyways Dragon Eclipse I genuinely enjoyed um I will say when I did stream it it took me quite a long time I think the stream

24:19 ended up being like 2 and a half hours and I didn't even finish the one scenario but I will say that's because with this type of game the kind of story driven game you do have to read quite a bit and with it being on stream you do have to like read aloud and that sort of thing and also chat with the chat and I feel like um the first scenario that I did it was a lot quicker I got through it a lot quicker um because it was just simply me reading to myself and not chatting to chat and stuff like that um but there's basically two different types of phases that you go through in this game where you have your scenarios we have had two different books scenario one and scenario 2 and you're going to be reading through a little bit and then getting into some sort of battle um obviously each scenario is going to be different how it uh pans out but basically there is a battle phase where you'll be going One V one against some sort of monster potentially more than one V one could be one against many monsters I don't know what other scenarios are going to bring but you can potentially um battle this monster and then there's some specific thing that you have to do in order to tame it you're going to be I really love the way that you play this out it is a little bit of like a deck builder in a way where you're going to be building a deck for each of the monsters and I had a monster and I had a deck and basically you put out I think there's four different cards four or five different cards and each of them are going to have a different amount of energy that you're

25:49 going to gain when using that power and the powers are going to allow you to do different things it'll allow you to move it'll allow you to attack different things like that um gain more energy and wherever that card is in that row it's going to have a certain amount of energy that you can um grab when you use that card and then you can use that energy I think it's called like Elemental energy um in order to do extra things and move more and attack more and there's certain cards that require you to use more of that Elemental energy and different things like that so I really enjoy that like usage of the energy and the usage of the cards and building that deck up and kind of customizing the deck to your monster I really think that is very very cool and then once you are finished with the like battle phase you can go into more exploration where there are different like maps that you can go into and it's pretty much just like a Choose Your Own Adventure type thing as well where you're choosing different numbers on the map and then you are going to be able to read some sort of paragraph and then make decisions based off of that um there's a little bit of like a push your luck element to it as well where some situations in the exploration will have you flipping over cards and kind of pushing your luck until you get to a certain number um but there are these different like Moon icons where if you get a certain amount of moons you will like lose time and stuff like that um so this just really cool push your luck element there um and I really enjoyed that as well you can get items you can get different secrets and stuff and I

27:21 just really really enjoyed it so that is Dragon eclips I went on a little bit too long about this one but I genuinely really really enjoyed it and like I said I'm excited to possibly dive in more to it um I believe I don't know if this is still going right now when this video goes live but if it is I will let you guys know down in the description but that is Dragon Eclipse all right so moving on to the last two these were actually two that I added last minute one was one that I actually had a preview up on the channel and that is portals so portals is one that I recently put up a preview for so if you guys want to go check that out I will have it up here but this is from crowd games and they did sponsor a preview for that and sent me this prototype here this is available now I believe they had copies available at Essen as well this is an abstract strategy game where basically someone has gone missing Dominic do Dominic day which his name is very difficult to say Dominic day has gone missing he actually discovered um using these like elemental powers in order to make different portals and he's been going through these portals to go to different worlds and one day he went missing in Another Universe and you as the players are trying to create these different Elemental portals in order to try to find Dominic and it is very very fun so I've played this a few times solo

28:52 I've also played it um once multiplayer and I really like the solo it actually includes a few different modules that you can add in to the multiplayer but when you are playing solo you actually play with both of those modules and you are just trying to get the best score as possible which I will say I did not do very good in the whole like trying to get as many points as possible I think I got the like lowest on the ranking because it has a little chart in the rule book I think I got lowest both times or multiple times that I've played um so it's definitely one that I want to get better at um but basically you are going to be drafting these different um like Elemental stones in the multiplayer game you're going to be drafting from these different areas but in the solo game you actually just taking them from a board um one by one and then placing them onto different key cards that you're going to be drafting as well the key cards are going to have different spots on them specific spots that you have to place these Elemental stones and then once a key card is full you're actually going to be placing it onto one of the these boards and trying to match up the colors um because you will gain victory points based off of matching colors in the multiplayer game you're also going to be gaining victory points for um adjacent colors as well so if you have adjacent colors that are the same you're going to gain victory points for that in the solo game you do not in the solo game you're just going to be matching the color of the stone with the color on the board that you place it on

30:22 um and then you're also going to be gaining points for these secret sign cards and it's just a very fun puzzle again this one kind of reminds me a little bit of like forever home Cascadia one that you can come to the table set it up real quick and then play a game in about 20 minutes not even solo which is amazing and it's just so easy to play and I really really enjoy the puzzle of it so that is portals if you guys want to know more about this one like I said I will have the video uh linked up at the top but yes that is portals all right so moving on to the last one this is a very very small little game that I think will be fantastic for travel there are also a few more in this series and I will admit I did play this one more recently I actually think I played this in October technically so this one should be waiting until the end of this month but I do know that it is up on crowdfunding right now um so I really wanted to mention it in this video but that is forage so forage is I don't know if you guys can see it it's very bright but yes forage is a nine card solitire game by side room games and this is the final installment in the harvesting Trilogy so if you guys have ever heard of these These are Solo only games if you guys have never heard of this trilogy there are two other games in this set there is Orchard and there's also Grove which I have not played either of those um but this is the third and final in that little Trilogy it is a

31:54 solo only game um nine card solitaire game and this one I actually really genuinely enjoyed it is a small box game it has 18 cards but you are going to be shuffling them and then dealing out nine cards and then they actually tell you to put the nine the other nine to the side cuz you can immediately after playing the first game play the second game um there are dice as well in this game so basically in forage you're going to be taking these cards you're going to have the nine you're going to flip over one and have it in the center Cent and each of these cards are going to be split into I think it's six different sections but then one of them is split in half like on a diagonal and basically you're going to be picking up two cards from the pile and you're going to be placing one of them or overlapping one of them on another card whenever you overlap two of the same type um there's a few different like small rules about it but whenever basically whenever you um layer two of the same type over top then you're going to be placing a die and whenever in future rounds with future cards you um overlap other ones other cards with the same type with dice on it those dice are going to um get more and more and then eventually by the end of the game you're going to have a bunch of overlapped cards with a bunch of different dice with different pip numbers on them um I believe if you ever overlap something that has a die on it with a different type that D actually turns into a rat which is going to get

33:25 you negative points so you are ultimately trying to overlap the same type as many times as possible because that's going to actually multiply the die number or the dice pip that is um on top of that and then at the end of the game you're going to be adding up all the Pips and that is going to be the game but additionally on the back of all the cards there's going to be different objectives they are called recipe cards and you're going to um if you want to add the recipe cards to the game um you can simply play it without the recipe cards but I person personally oopsie I personally enjoyed it with the recipe cards cuz it adds a little bit more to think about um but the recipe cards are just going to give you two additional like small things that you have to think about when it comes to the game it's going to give you some objectives that you're going to gain a bonus points for at the end of the game so yeah I really like this one um it is a fairly simple game but it is small it is compact it is easy to get to the table and I'm excited to if I do keep this I'm not sure if I am allowed to keep this uh prototype um but I actually might back the um Kickstarter or the crowdfunding um campaign for this because I would really love to try the other two as well and just have some really easy to get to the table easy to travel with solo games um yeah I think it'll be really fun so that is that it also says includes multiplayer rules um but each player does require to have one of these so you would have to get together with other friends that did have forage in order to

34:58 play it multiplayers so um yes that is the last game that I enjoyed somewhat in September this one I actually enjoyed in like early October but like I said I really wanted to shout this out because I do know that it is up on crowdfunding right now so that is forage all right friends so that is going to be everything for today's sewing solo hopefully you enjoyed if you did please give this video a big thumbs up also hit that subscribe button down below if you've yet to do so we'd love to have you here in the garden like I said in the intro comment down below what games you played Solo in the month of September I'd love to chat about that down in the comments I've already played a few fantastic games Solo in the month of October so I'm very very excited to talk about those I will also add I don't think I've said this anywhere but I did have a stream for it um final girl is the solo monthly Focus for the month of October I did put up a bunch of different spooky SL cozy games on my patreon for my patreon members to vote on for the monthly solo focus and final girl did win so I'm very excited to hop in to a bunch of games of final girl I've already played it a few times um but yeah hopefully you're enjoying that um if you're not already a part of the Discord we do have a full Channel um all about the solo Focus so if you're not already be sure to join the Discord we'd love to have you there as well and then also a quick little shout out to my patreon I do have the board game Garden

36:28 patreon it is always linked down below and that just uh really helps me out uh supports me if you are able to and want to then go check it out never pressure to do so if you can't I just appreciate you guys being here and hanging out with me but hopefully you have a good rest of your day I love you guys so so much remember you are somebody's Reas to smile and I will see you in the next b game video bye friends that's