The dials and worker placement mechanism makes the game of Black Forest a truly unique experience. Black Forest for me is less strategy and more “vibe” based. And this is fitting given that Black Forest’s solo mode is one of compare your score against a pre-defined list of scores rather than facing off against a bot. Of course, this interaction of gameplay may not be something you want from a solo mode. Other games of course feature this score-beating mechanism like the worker placement of PARKS (although that also has a bot who gets in the way).
Building Your Estate
The set up of the game is the same in the competitive version. Of course that means laying out 36 buildings, flipping 10 over to side B and having the 5 separate boards placed on the table. This is no small solo mode despite being a very chilled experience. The game play is the same, however you are allowed all 5 player tokens in this version and have a total of 25 turns to get the best score you can.
Like the main game you gain basic resources to refine and make glass and provisions. The 5 player tokens act like other players in each village, if you visit a village with another worker in then you must pay a resource of your choice. However, if you visit a village with the white worker then it is free to visit that village. Of course, one of the main components of the game is using provisions of food to move from village to village.
Glass Kingdom
Black Forest Solo offers the possibilities of different play focuses each game. Of course, much depends on the village layouts. Whether farmer, pond monarch or builder there is something to try nee each game. You can also try different tactics such as visiting specific villagers like the carpenter for those estate expansions. Or rushing for commodities to be able to move the travelling merchant. Given that the scoring is simply trying to gain a certain level defined by the designers there is no losses in this one.
A thing to not is the scores that the rulebook suggests, whilst scores in solo mode are higher than PvP games getting a score of 60 or 70 is something I have never been close to. I do however like the mechanism of 5 rounds with 5 turns (10 actions) each. Another positive is that after round 3 the villages reset giving a new puzzle to solve for the last 2 rounds. As mentioned, the “free” worker offers a nice chance to visit the same village more than twice which is a key component of the competitive game.
For learning the game or just having a relaxing evening of around an hour (including set up) then I would recommend the solo mode. For those who are competitive this may or not appeal given the ‘no winner’ format of the game mode. For me I like it and know others who hate losing. But other solo modes like Ark Nova and Wingspan do offer a chance to lose whereas Black Forest doesn’t. For me that isn’t a negative but something I want to highlight before you purchase it for solo.
I really like the solo mode, it similar enough to the main game while offering its own challenge and difference for those that enjoy solo modes.
