Top 10 Solo Board Games & GIVEAWAY!

0:00 here herei is the volume working okay probably not cuz it never sounds a good hello everyone welcome back to Foster the meele a Channel all about board games and board gaming things my name is Jamie I'm here today by my myself because Jeff has left me to go to Alberta a trip without me quite rude visiting some of our friends also rude I suppose he's there for work but still rude I am back with a solo video and today's video is going to be an updated version of my top 10 solo board games of all time this is going to be kind of an Ever evolving list for me because I'm constantly trying out new solo games I don't know if you all new but I have my own segment or my own video once a month on Board Game Geek called solo mode where I play solo games and so in the spirit of that series I've been trying out a ton of different solo games solo modes all these different types of things to find games that I want to share with people in that series and because of that I have had the opportunity to discover a lot more games that I enjoy playing solo and I'm very excited to continue on with that series

1:31 and if there's any solo games that you would like to see me play on Board Game Geek put them in the comments below cuz I would love to know anyways let's roll up our sleeves for this one because I have 10 games they are ranked it's a true top 10 and I also have like a butt ton of honorable mentions but without further Ado let's just dive right into it let's start off with honorable mentions now like I just said I have a butt ton of them because well I'm bad I'm bad at making like lists I know everybody wants to see top 10 lists and stuff like that but man it's so hard to narrow things down and there were so many that I had to cut from the top 10 that I'm like but I still want to mention them because I love them so that's what I'm going to do so I'm just going to run through them relatively quickly starting with too many bones now I know that too many bones would probably be one of my favorite solo games however I've only played it solo like once maybe twice and all other times I have played it like cooperatively or two players with Jeff so I just think like I love it solo but I do think I need to play it more solo because I'm so used to playing it with somebody else and so as much as I wanted to put it on this list I was like I haven't really played it enough solo for it to quite make it but I do love that game next up I have seta watch and seta watch is actually there's quite a few of these and I own three of them right now but this is another game you can play co-op um I have only played it solo I

3:01 believe it's meant to be played solo it's best solo and the reason why it didn't quite make my top 10 is because I've only played it once and I desperately want to play this more because it is so fun it's basically you are playing as different like RPG style characters so you know maybe there's a a dwarf and a human and a cleric or whatever a bunch of different types of characters and you are going out onto these little adventures to fight off bad guys coming back to the camp leveling up and kind of going through different stories and campaigns um like I said I've only played it once but I loved my experience playing it and I know it will make the top 10 at some point I also have uh three sisters which is typically on would be on my top 10 solo games I just haven't played it in so long but I do love it and now I also own Motor City and French Quarter I really need to play both of those all part of the same series and I just heard that three sisters is getting like a makeover like a bit of an update so gameplay is the same but I think there will be new maps a campaign mode better solo mode stuff like that so really excited for that another one I was surprised didn't quite sneak in to my top 10 is planet unknown which is a tile placement game that I love love love I also did a solo playthrough for that one and last but not least in honorable mentions I just wanted to show out a few button shy games I made myself choose but only one

4:34 for my top 10 but these ones are pretty close and that's food chain Island ugly Griffin Inn and the Royal limited um I'm sure if you have been watching us for a long time or if you know me at all you know what my favorite solo button shy game is so stay tuned for that but those are my honorable mentions okay let's get into that list starting with number 10 which is a new new to me game this year but I played it one time cooperatively and immediately I was like I love this game I love this game and as soon as my friend left it was Nick Murphy of the brothers murf as soon as he left I set it up and I played it solo multiple times and it's so great and that game is the search for lost species if you're curious if I've ever played the search search for Planet X I have not I have less of an interest in space more of an interest in animals so this is definitely the one for me basically in search for lost species you are searching for the Lost species it's literally right in the title but you are doing that through means of deduction so you are going along a map and there are different ways that you can search areas so maybe you're searching by foot maybe you're searching by boat maybe you're talking to the towns people and all of those different things are going to take certain amount of time and you are just kind of going through the game trying to determine and deduce where the Lost

6:05 species is by figuring out where all of the other animals are and there's different rules like the um I almost called it a loris couscous the couscous is not near the snake and the snake is not anywhere near a frog or whatever it might be it's so fun it's such a great little solo puzzle you can just kind of sit do your thing there's app companion that you can work with that kind of takes you through the game basically and helps you determine whether or not you're right so there's a bunch of different lost species you can find I love it if you haven't tried it please do it's so good I definitely want to do a solo playthrough of this one however my hesitation is I don't want to look stupid cuz I'm not really great at it um and so I know it's one of those like deduction games it's one of those games you do something everybody on the screen be like why did you do that or they'll you know yell at you via screen which is fine but I want to play it and get a little bit better at it before maybe I make a playthrough so that's number 10 number nine for me is going to be oceans from Northstar games and this one has to come with a bit of a caveat the solo mode uh is not readily available like you can't necessarily buy a physical version of the the solo mode I like I assume you can sometimes but it's not available I think however they do have a

7:36 print and play version of it that you can get and I would highly recommend it so I did a solo playthrough of this one but in oceans you are essentially building out different species in the ocean that you need to feed you need to age them so that you can score them and you were doing that by feeding like on fish and things from different areas of the ocean but you can also attack other species that are near you so in the solo mode it comes with a shark and a whale and the whale is feeding from the ocean so it is essentially taking resources away from you and the shark is going to be attacking you taking away your resources which may end up making you go extinct and then you can't continue aging your speci disas and aging is basically collecting fish and the fish are your points this is such like a brain burn when you play it because you have to figure out how to optimize your species because sometimes you like you can trigger your species off of each other you can trigger it off of the whale and the shark you can try and screw over the shark by making it have to attack the whale and like all of these different things it's really difficult because as as the game goes on new elements are introduced for the shark and the whale that are making it more difficult for you like maybe

9:08 they're going to put parasites on you and all of these different things it is so good oceans in general is a great game um but I really really like the solo mode and like I said there's a print andplay version so you can definitely try it out yourself if you're interested plus it's beautiful and it just once again makes you even more terrified of the Ocean than you were to begin with okay moving on to number eight our our wrong it's just me my number eight is life of the Amazonia this game I didn't know what to expect from this game the publisher I think reached out and said hey would you be interested and we're like sure I didn't even know it had a solo mode and then we played it and I was like like you know a game is good when Jeff and I finished our game and he was done playing games so I reset up and played it solo twice in a row immediately after like I just wanted to keep playing this game so basically in life of the Amazonia you are building out a habitat and you are trying to appease different types of animals that you then want to bring over to live on your habitat and you're going to be scoring those animals accordingly so some animals might want to be next to other animals or maybe they want to be all by themselves or maybe they want to be in a group grouping or you're going to score points per alligator whatever in a c-space there's so much variability within this game as well cuz there's lots there's

10:38 the basic animals and then there's other animals that you can add in you are also um going to be like there's objective cards that you can maneuver and something that's really interesting about this is that like the resources that you are using are like kind of filtering almost so you're trying to do some Resource Management as well it's adorable the Animes in this game are out of this world if every meeple looked like these mles I would be like the happiest person in the whole wide world because they're so freaking cute the solo mode itself is basically setting you up with different challenges and you are playing against an AI character that is going to be kind of taking things away from you and you're just trying to get the best score possible I would kind of say that the solo mode for this is pretty similar to that of Calico with all of like the different challenges that you can do um everybody will get like a little starting animal as well it might tell you what animal you start with it might tell you which sides of the different basic animals are going to be starting lots of different things but if you haven't tried this game either Solo or not solo I would highly highly recommend it it is so good next up we have number seven which is is horrified I love horrified I have always loved horrified and it's really interesting because it's not a game that Jeff overly

12:10 enjoys um my brother Jason really loves horrified and same with my niece ACAA and so typically anytime that we had played it we had played it with them because we all enjoy it minus Jeff Jeff likes it but you know not enough then I discovered that you could play it solo and believe it or not I do have a solo mode on this one as well so I love horrified in this game you are basically playing as different towns folk that are trying to stop the universal monsters or the American Myth monsters or the Greek monsters from taking over the town and killing all of the people that are in it each of the monsters is going to have a specific way of how you need to overcome them and they are all all unique and you can make this game a little bit easier by only using like one or two monsters or you can make it really hard by using like three or four monsters if you're crazy that's a lot of monsters and so you can kind of like change the difficulty the only main difference with a solo game is that there are certain characters that you can't use because they all have like a special ability and some of them don't work solo because they bounce off of other people but in general you are doing the same thing you are going through the town you are collecting different things you are moving Town's folk to their preferred places and then you are trying to defeat the different monsters before you die

13:43 it's so fun it is I would say a pretty like welcoming solo experience I think a lot of people have played horrified a lot of people already know the game and because the rules don't change a ton it's a really great way to get into solo games and it's just an overall freaking good time all right let's move on to number six and my number six is going to be black Sonata this is by far one of the most unique solo games I've ever played it is a hidden movement deduction solo game based in like Shakespeare time so like the 1600s in London and essentially what you are trying to do is you're trying to find the dark lady she's hiding somewhere in London she's moving all around and there is a deck that you're going to be playing through you're going to be finding different Clues and trying to deduce her location based on the clues you're getting based on places where she has been you're going to be moving around it is difficult to win you want solo games to be difficult to win in my personal opinion but it is just so unique like who would have thought that you could have had like a hidden movement St Style game that you're playing by yourself it runs really smoothly I think the biggest thing is that this game might be a little bit harder to find or at least it was it might not be the case now because I think they recently had a new expansion

15:15 come out it's so fun like if you get an opportunity to play this if you are up for a little bit of a challenge if the theme sounds interesting um I would highly recommend that you try this one it's it's so good like I really I really want to play it cuz I think he'd really like it as well you could probably even play this Co-op not supposed to but you probably could next is another one that I have done a solo mode for uh and that is 20 strong from Chip Theory games 20 strong is I think it just came out this year I don't know time is such a weird thing like I have no idea maybe it came out last year don't remember but 20 strong is essentially like a dice building dice rolling Adventure game where you are trying to defeat different baddies different like scenarios go on different Adventures it really depends because there's a bunch of different themes that you can play my personal favorite one is too many bones um where you are almost just playing like a mini version of too many bones you get to be one of the gear loocks you get to have your little dice pool and your special ability and you're kind of going through an adventure and different encounters and overcoming the baddies by Rolling Dice and pushing your luck now that being said there's a huge luck element to this once again it's just extremely difficult because like I have lost this game within like the first

16:48 couple of rounds because you don't always get the dice back so basically each of the things that you need to overcome let's call them the baddies in this situation are going to have specific like combination of dice that you need to roll in order to defeat them so on your turn you have to choose Dice from your active pool that you want to roll you roll them then you can assign them and then you exhaust them and then you only have what's left you continue doing that but then at the end of the turn you can only bring a certain amount back into your active pool so you don't want to use too many dice if you can avoid it but then if you don't kill the B there's going to be some kind of a negative effect that happens maybe you lose more dice maybe you have to pull another baddy that you have to overcome maybe you like take damage all of that stuff you're just trying to survive and get through the game and defeat all of the things like I said there is a few different versions too many bones there's ho hoam H I can't say that word hoam ham hakus Victor I probably said that wrong still it's fine and solar Sentinels are the kind of base three and there's more and more that are going to be coming out and they all work like base rules are generally the same like the mechanics but then they're all going to add different elements and and how they play so the solar Sentinels will play a little bit differently than too many bones which will play differently than H

18:18 ham victorum anyways it's super fun super challenging would highly recommend and it's a nice little size box hello everyone I interrupt this top 10 for a very special giveaway announcement we are going to be giving away a Kickstarter pledge of A's Dream from alycat games which was very kindly sponsored by alycat games so shout out to them for doing this giveaway for you guys all of the information is going to be listed in the description below but all you need to do is comment down below what is your alltime favorite solo game okay that's what you need to say it maybe put giveaway entry or something like that A's dream can be played solo this is a super like crunchy type of game where you are playing out AA love LA's life Jeff and I have an entire video on this which I will link in the description if you'd like to learn more about it but if you would like to win yourself a copy of aa's dream enter the giveaway and thanks again to Aly cat games for sponsoring the giveaway thank you bye Boop my number four is going to be kfire delve where am I there's one right there that's scorn Stockade we also have V glor's Grotto um Callis lab I think is the third one which we should have coming soon kire dve this was up there for I think was it in the same

19:49 spot I don't remember if it was in the same spot in our Co-op list but basically you could play this cooperatively cooperatively at two players or more if you have multip copies or the different versions of the game but what you are trying to do is you're trying to get through a well deck and you are doing that by putting out different challenges and trying to overcome the challenges you are playing as a Seeker that Seeker is going to have some kind of a special ability you're overcoming the challenges which are like different colors basically by playing out cards from your hand in order to try and overcome your also going to be rolling D that are going to give you extra points towards overcoming the different things some of the challenges are going to trigger off of each other making it more difficult um and basically you are trying to survive you're trying to delve down through that well deck until you then unveil the boss and then you have to defeat the boss as well in the solo version of this game you are able to actually boost your own cards whereas in a two-player game your partner would be able to help you out in some of those challenges by boosting cards but a big thing with this game is hand management because you don't get your cards back after you use them and if you use all your cards or any point when you need to get cards back you have to then uh take like an exhaustion card you pull that from the exhausted deck

21:20 and it could be something really bad there's certain cards in there that if you pull this one and then this one you immediately lose so you really want to try and use as few cards as you can to overcome challenges but speaking of challenges it is a very challenging game but I would highly recommend it it is so good it's so it's such a good solo game and I really like it at two players as well I like both versions I do have a solo mode on Vang glor's Grotto if you're interested in it um I love it I just I freaking love it I can't wait for the next one let's move on to number three Calico I love Calico I love Calico in every form of Calico I want to play it with other people I want to play it by myself but I even find when I'm playing with other people I'm basically just playing for myself like Calico is a tile placement puzzle game where you are building out a quilt where you're trying to satisfy cats and I don't know about you I've got cats they're hard to satisfy they don't like the texture of this blanket maybe they don't like the pattern of that blanket so that's what you're trying to do now you're trying to satisfy the cat so you get points but on your board there are also going to be three different scoring tiles where you are also trying to satisfy those so one might be okay well you need two different colors two different colors two different colors but also two patterns two patterns two patterns and if you just score one or the other then

22:51 you're going to get a certain amount of points if you can do both then you're going to get even more points and you're just trying to maximize your points as best as you can in the solo game you getting different kind of challenges it'll tell you which cats to use it might tell you what how to start out on your board all of these different things Calico is just a great brain activity it is so fun it's a great little puzzle it's fun to play with a coffee or just sitting at the coffee table or at the kitchen table in the morning put a little Calico out have a great time burn your brain my number two is Marvel Champions I love Marvel Champions and I do prefer it solo I enjoy it cooperatively um but I think solo for me is just like one of the best ways to play this game this is actually I think the first solo game that I ever played uh because Jeff and I had played Marvel Champions and a few times and we played with my brother and whatever and Jeff's just not huge into Marvel and he's kind of like H like I don't know like this game is good but I don't really want to keep playing it but I want it to keep playing it and so I learned how to play it solo and haven't looked back I took a break from it for a while and then in the last year I started playing it again I went out I bought a bunch more characters because you know that's just how I do and it's just so good basically

24:25 in Marvel Champions you are going to take on the role of a different Marvel hero and then you are going to be trying to defeat a different Marvel villain and you're going to do that by attacking them um thwarting their schemes they're going to be coming back at you scheming and and attacking and doing all these things and it's just like a basically a head-to-head battle where you are trying to defeat them before they defeat you each of the characters work in a unique way one thing that I really like about this game is that the way that you pay for cards is by discarding cards in your hand so there's a huge hand management element to this game where you're like ah all of these cards are good I don't really want to get rid of this one but I I need to play this out I just love the variability it's oh like every game is going to be new there's a ton of different villains a ton of different Heroes um and this is definitely one that I want to do a solo mode video on cuz I know this is a very well-loved game I'm not the only one that loves it so why not share a little bit of that Marvel Champion love this is a great game I love it last but not least this my number one game everybody already knows what it is it now has to come with the caveat it is my number one game of all time it is just my favorite board game and the caveat is of course that I work for the company so that's going to come with I'm sure I always get comments

25:57 like P to as if this hasn't been one of my favorite games since the very first time I picked it up that is final girl of course there it is it's quite literally surrounding me it is by far my most played board game of all time I love this game it is like my pure love and dedication to final girl that is the reason why I even ended up working for Van Rider games but you're a human you're an adult you make your own decisions about your thoughts on this being my number one but I'm going to talk about anyways because it's my favorite game final girl is a solo only board game where you are taking on the role of a final girl which is obviously a classic horror movie Trope and you are trying to defeat a different killer so depending on which set you get every game is going to be incredibly different and one of my favorite things about final girl is that it's all mix and match so every feature film comes with two final girls one killer one location all of those things can be completely mixed and matched with everything else there's currently 11 sets out if you count um North Pole nightmare which is a special feature film there's going to be Series 3 is going to be coming out later this year with another five and it's just like the ultimate variability and so long as you

27:27 have the box you can pick and choose which sets you want like you don't need everything of course you're like hey I don't like carnivals perfect you don't need to get the carnival of blood maybe you really like fairy tales and folklore then you should get Once Upon a full moon which is my favorite one so there's just something I find magical about final girl there's also like such a strong Community behind it like this is one of those games very similar to too many bones that has like a cult following like there's certain games too many bones final girl dice Throne that have like these like true fans where some people like the final girls the only game they play it's the same thing for too many bones and stuff like that and I just love that like it's just built like such a passionate Community um like I said my most played game of all time obviously I play it even more more now because I stream it for work and I just I never ever get sick of it ever are there certain sets that I like more than others definitely I did an entire ranking video if you're interested in that I'll if I remember I'll link it below so you can kind of see what my favorite ones are like I said my favorite is this one Once Upon a full moon I also of course love Camp Happy Trails cuz it's classic I didn't really tell you about the game but basically you are playing out different

28:58 cards and then you're going to be rolling die to determine your level of success in order to do the action on the card moving around the map trying to save victims trying to attack the killer the Killer's going to get a turn where it's going to be moving around the map killing victims attacking you and doing all sorts of crazy stuff depending on what the Killer is and I what's not to love about that I guess unless you don't like horror Blood and Guts lots of that in this game that's for sure you definitely need to be into the theme yeah I don't know what else to say I love it I feel like my love for it is only growing so those are my top 10 solo board games of all time as of right now like I said this list is constantly changing like upstairs I have set aside a few more little solo games that I'm going to play I really want to try Harmony solo like there's just there's so I have Nemo's War I haven't played that yet there's so many games that I need to play solo so many games so little time I'll would be super interested to know below um what your favorite solo games are if based on my list there's any that you think I should definitely try please leave those in the comments below I'd love to know I'm always looking for more suggestions honestly I really love um some of the heavier games but I do love being able to like quickly set up something do you know what I just realized did you just realize the same thing I did

30:28 I somehow left numers off of this list just so everybody knows it's going to have to be an honorable mention because I already made the list but numers from buttony should be on this top 10 and it would most likely if I had to redo it it would most likely come in at number eight meaning life of the Amazonia would be nine oceans would be 10 and search search for lost species would be 11 I was writing out all of my like I was like oh button shy Bo and I just forgot to put numers on nster should definitely be on this list numers is a solo only 18 card game where you are playing as numbers that are eating other numbers and it's amazing I can't believe I forgot to put on the list H the list is null and void anyways that just threw me for a big loop that is everything that I have for each today if you're interested in buying board games like any of the many that I mentioned today you should first start by checking your friendly local gaming store and for us that is the boardroom Game Cafe and if you like what you see do you like what you see I'm doing the outro so Juno think she gets to leave if you like what you see Please Subscribe I hope to see you again soon and now I say goodbye goodbye did I get paint on my nails hot down here so hot down here there's a

32:02 spider hanging from one of my cords but he's so little he's just he's just living I don't kill spiders in our house just so everybody knows they're just doing their job you know keeping all them buggies out junah I forgot about numers what do you even think about that do you care are you listening come here come see come on up what's your favorite solo game something think about dogs there's a game called good peppers I don't know if you could play it solo but you could try you would probably just eat it because she likes to eat all of our games now that's a big fun thing that you do you ate three of our games and that wasn't very nice okay down o y