Anyone who reads a lot of these blogs might recall that I made a New Years resolution to play more solo games. So, when you’ve had your fill of Sudoku or Wordle and its many reimplementations and clones, then opening the box on a solo board game can take you away from the tiny screen and into a more physical world. Here are a few of our favourites.
Vantage – by Sam de Smith
I play solo to unwind, as a rule, and Vantage - its exceptionally well presented, engaging ruleset - is just that. It is hard to explain but it's an old school open world adventure game in card form.
And yet, it doesn't exactly tell you all the rules. Well it does, but you have to figure out how to do things that are obvious as soon as you realise. In a strange way, it's almost like
Minecraft, insofar as you kinda have to just figure things out - but then that is itself a delight.
Even after a few plays, I've only just started to scratch the surface; but what's immediately impressive is how well it creates a narrative. For example:
I randomly drew the Marine as my starting character. Her random mission? Gather animal specimens. You can just imagine the rest of the crew: Ha, you're a Marine Biologist! So of course, as soon as the chance presented itself, I went and caught a fish!
It's also lovely playing with the deluxe upgrades, as pictured. In that game, I decided to see what would happen if I stayed put for a while before exploring, and found myself having a totally different experience as a result. The narrative that the game weaves is extraordinary, and a very mindful couple of hours were spent.
It is a truly lovely game, and I find fascinating the way you have to use your intuition as much as anything else to play. Onwards!
Under Falling Skies – by Ian Paczek
I was a teenager when video game machines started appearing which featured Space Invaders. Under Falling Skies is a reimplementation of this classic game as a board game using the dice worker placement mechanic. Just like in the original video game, the aliens advance down the board, and you attempt to shoot them before they overrun your base. In this board game you are using dice to activate rooms in your base and there is a balance between dealing with the aliens and powering up your base. To win, you have to complete your research, which means advancing to the top space of the green research track, before the aliens destroy your base.
There are three tracks to manage, and each has a plastic disc to mark your current level. The research track is green, the energy track is yellow, and the damage track is red (obvs!). On each round you roll all five dice and assign them to rooms in your base, but you can only place one die in each column (and there are five columns). Two of your five dice are white and each time you place a white die, you re-roll all remaining unallocated dice. The timing of this can be crucial to success. Finally, you may place one and only one die ahead of your orange excavator token – this will move the excavator and make new rooms available in your base. All other dice have to be placed in existing rooms behind the excavator.
After placing all the dice, the alien ships move a number of rows downward equal to the value of the die in its column. When the alien ships have moved, you resolve the effect of the space they have ended on. Some spaces move the ship to the left or right and some spaces have explosions on them, which take effect when resolving the rooms.
This is one of the central puzzles of the game – placing dice to ensure that alien ships end their turn on explosions, which are then shot down by your fighter jets. Finally, the mothership moves down. If your damage hits the skull symbol, you lose. If the mothership moves to the bottom of its track, another skull symbol, you lose.
Writing this, I can hear the sound of the OG video game with the aliens marching down the screen faster and faster. Under Falling Skies is a great solo game and includes a four-chapter campaign for masses of replayability.
Harvest – by Sophie Jones
Harvest is the kind of solo game that makes you feel like you’re tending a peaceful farm until the challenge hits, and every move suddenly matters. Although Harvest can be enjoyed with others, I prefer it solo. Following the Furroughfield Almanac, you move through a campaign of challenges, playing as specific characters and meeting objectives to advance.
Standing in your way is Mayor Gairy. He’ll snatch the tile you were eyeing, sometimes take the first turn, and generally get in your way thanks to his ridiculous number of wheelbarrows. Even when your next move is planned perfectly, Gairy often turns everything on its head, forcing you to think on your feet, which I love. As an AI, he’s easy to manage, and taking his turn never interrupts your own gameplay.
The campaigns are well designed and steadily increase in difficulty, so you never feel like you’re repeating the same game. Each scenario encourages you to play as a different farmer, each with asymmetric abilities, keeping every run fresh. Harvest always pushes you to improve, and every victory feels well earned.
It took me several attempts to clear the first challenge, but the sense of accomplishment when I finally hit the target was enormous. Each scenario comes with a little story to set the scene, making the world feel alive and keeping the campaign engaging. Playing solo has even improved my multiplayer games as I now approach the economic side more strategically and make better use of each character.
Quick setup means I can grab Harvest for a single-player session without fuss, and the depth ensures even a short game feels satisfying. For a game that combines cosy charm with a satisfying mental challenge, Harvest is my favourite solo pick and one I return to again and again.
A Gentle Rain – by Melissa King
If you had asked me 14 months ago what my favourite solo game was, I couldn’t have given you an answer. Not because I had too many great solo games to choose from, but because I had never played a board game solo before. Fast forward to the birth of my son and 12 months of beautifully chaotic maternity leave. In the brief downtimes of 30 minute naps, I found myself wanting to do something that wasn’t washing dishes, sterilising bottles or hanging out clothes to dry, and that’s when I discovered A Gentle Rain. I found this little gem of a solo game on the Zatu website and after reading some reviews, decided to take the plunge and buy it. Much to my surprise, this game became one of my most played games of 2025!
This beautiful little drop in the solo gaming world ocean is a big game disguised in a small box. 28 lake tiles and 8 bloom tokens are all it takes to have a lot of solo fun, making this game the perfect coffee shop travel companion, and quick to pack up if baby wakes up sooner than expected! A Gentle Rain is super quick to learn and play. My little boy was always the king of a cat-nap, so when he went down, I knew I wasn’t getting more than 30 minutes to myself – the perfect about of time to play at least 3-4 games of A Gentle Rain. The art and components in A Gentle Rain are so delicate and beautiful, that you can’t help but feel relaxed while playing, even if you are trying your best to beat your most recent high score! I never thought that such a game could invoke competitiveness and calmness at the same time! A Gentle Rain is the solo game equivalent of curling up on the sofa with a big bowl of your favourite comfort food on a cold and blustery day. It’s a calming yet exhilarating game of self-care and mindfulness, with a sprinkling of competition and drive to beat your best score!
Cyberion – by Dan Phillips
InPatience , in recent years, has become the publisher most associated with solo games, and more importantly small box games that don’t take up too much room. Designed for only one (or two if you want to work together), this collection of games focusses on card based solo experiences and Cyberion has quickly become my favourite of the bunch.
Thematically you are running a factory where you send robots to help damaged machinery and you need to fix them quickly and effectively as to not lead to complete meltdown. It is essentially a card management game as you use robot cards to either fix machines or to trigger powerful one-off effects, but if you ever run out of cards and all machines have not been fixed, then you lose. The base game is quite simple in its premise but the real heart of this game is the ability track. Spend cards to upgrade your abilities early on and you can draw on them as the game goes on but if you go too heavy on this then you will find you won’t have enough cards to complete the game. It’s a tough but really fun puzzle. Also in the box are a handful of modules and alternative game modes meaning you get a real bang for you buck. And to top it all off the artwork is just so charming! The characters brought to life by each illustration are just joyful, not to mention the little baby robots!!
As a solo gamer, I often love a big bombastic experience like Final Girl or Batman the Dark Knight but I find that more and more I fancy a small little puzzle that is easy to set up and quick to get going and Cyberion is just the tonic.
HEAT – by Panto Pete Bartlam
HEAT may seem an odd choice for favourite solo game as surely the thrill of motor racing is dicing for supremacy with the other cars. Whilst this is inevitably true, HEAT has an excellent and easy to use automated driver system that means you can always race with a full grid. The turning over of one card per round will provide the movement of up to 6 robot cars or is that auto autos?
Each card from a deck of 10 shows 6 racing helmets in the colours of the base set cars. Each has a number showing the maximum spaces it can move that turn. The helmets are displayed in 4 separate columns with yellow diamonds above numbered from 0 to 3. If a car can move its full distance without going through a corner, it does so, otherwise it either stops before the corner on the corresponding yellow diamond space on the track or goes through moving the number of spaces equal to the speed limit plus the car’s yellow diamond number.
Cars are moved in normal race order. When the 1st automated car is moved the Legend card is turned over that will dictate the moves of all the auto cars that round. When playing with friends we always fill the grid up to minimum 6 and with all the expansions a maximum of 9.
Talking of which I’ve just got Rocky Roads with its South Africa and Germany tracks (pictured) and I’m already testing them driving the new white car against the autos. If you think it’s easy to beat them, I only finished 2nd, some way back, in my first game. You can always tinker with their top speeds if you want a greater challenge.
In the meantime –
Pedal to the Metal!
Forest Shuffle Exploration – by Daniel Cook
Forest shuffle is a deck planting game where you have to create a vibrant ecological community by planting trees and shrubs followed by placing different mammals, insects, birds, plants, amphibians and mushrooms to try and score the most points. Some cards individually give you points whilst others combine with other cards. The exploration expansion pack gives you the opportunity for a solo mode where you have to complete a series of different challenges against the automa deck. It can be played with just the base game or one or both of the other two expansion packs with you then removing a certain number of cards depending on which packs you are using. This creates the first of the challenges as not all the cards are in play so you could end up waiting for cards that never come.
But what makes this a great solo game. Flexibility, this is as good of a solo game as a group game and there not a big change of game play between the two. Aesthetics, each card has been beautifully designed. Travel, this game is a Redwood hidden inside a dwarf willow, it’s expansive game that won’t take up much space in your suitcase. Replayability, with multiple levels across multiple challenges across different expansions, you’ll be playing over and over. Self-improvement, the challenges in solo mode force you into different strategies making your game more well-rounded and consider strategies you wouldn’t usually go for.
If you love nature, deckbuilding, strategies and a game you want to keep playing, this is the game for you.
