The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

I can second 7th Continent as a solo game, it's a fair bit of fun and I agree that it's nice that you can explore it a bit at your own pace. It's also one of those solo games that I take some liberties with the rules and even a bit of the luck; any given curse is pretty long and I really just want to experience the game I picked up Sleeping Gods hoping it would be a more streamlined 7th Continent but after a couple of plays it really didn't click with me and left me wanting to play 7th Continent more.

Right now my favorite solo game is Descent: Legends in the Dark. It's big and a bit expensive but it's easily my favorite dungeon crawler. The app is really good:
* It takes away the tedious part of monster activation. There's little to learn for rules and all of the special rules for each monster are presented in the app and repeated at critical times so you don't forget anything.
* It adds variety that would otherwise be difficult to manage. There are only a few "base" types of monsters but each scenario introduces variants on them that have different special attacks, health, range, etc. All of that is effortlessly managed by the app which is awesome.
* It introduces some stats-based gear that has percentage chances to proc and all of that is managed by the app. It makes for interesting items that would be pretty tedious to manage physically.

I've played through the main campaign solo 1 1/2 times now (currently on my second play). My first play I tried managing only two heroes and to be honest it was pretty rough. Playing all four heroes solo is much more fun and not nearly as overwhelming as I was afraid it might be. Steam says I've put over 70 hours into the app between my solo and group plays. It's really the only solo games I've significantly gotten into.

Generally speaking I'm not a fan of the "multiplayer board game with solo rules" take on things, especially when it's some form of AI/automated player thing. One that surprised me in how well it worked though was Twilight Inscription. If you want a long form roll and write this one is pretty great. I'm not sure I would get it only for solo play but I was surprised at how simple it worked just as a counter that essentially forced you to pay attention to certain aspects of the game at different points in time.

Another fun little roll and write that I've had fun with solo is Dungeons, Dice and Danger. I like the way it makes you manage your probabilities a bit as you explore through the dungeon. It's just a score chase but puzzling through the decisions is fun enough. It's a bit like Super Skill Pinball although unlike that I think Dungeons, Dice and Danger is also fun multiplayer.

Got curious about this and read the original post. Seems some people really hate negative scores. I had negative twentyish when I played, but I didn't mind since it was my first time. That said once I understood how it worked. It's much easier to calculate the score with the new system.

A couple of games Ive enjoyed solo is Judge Dredd Cursed Earth. I like that its easy to setup and play, very similar to doing a round of solitaire. I also really enjoyed Super pinball solo.

Yeah, it's a fair bit different. It's fully coop so the monsters are run by the app, there's no overlord player. They've also changed the mechanics quite a bit. You get three actions per turn: a move and two other actions. Unlike prior Descent games you can't spent fatigue on things like moment, instead you use fatigue on your ability cards to use special abilities. Instead of resting you can take an action (or use special abilities) to flip cards over. Not only does this clear all the tokens (e.g. fatigue, poison) on the cards, it also makes the ability on the other side available to you.

The game is still very much about fatigue management but the way you are spending and managing fatigue is quite a bit different than in Descent 2nd edition. There's also a bit less variety in terms of how monsters are represented on the map, e.g. there's no kobold or spider swarms. Generally less figures on the map but they make up for that by giving monsters more variety in the things they can do. That also means there's less area of effect attacks and such on heroes, but again I think that's made up for in different ways. Finally you are also generally chucking less dice as you only roll one die on attack and one die on defense but there's more interesting things to do with surges and ways to spend fatigue that lets you enhance your attacks.

I think the area it has most in common is in scenario design in that I think it's very strong in terms of fun, interesting scenarios to work through. I do think some of the scenarios in 2nd edition were just super iconic and really fun and I don't know if this version quite hits those highs but I think it's quite strong overall.

As a whole it's easily my favorite version of Descent. One of the folks in my game group preferred 2nd edition. It is worth noting that there is a free app for Descent 2nd edition that will have the app take control of the overlord so you could experiment with that as well. I haven't really tried that as I ended up going the Descent Legends in the Dark route but if you have 2nd edition I'd say try that out first.

My game group has loved our plays of Twilight Inscription so far. I agree that it doesn't feel overly "Twilight Inscription"-y mechanically as you are playing it but it has all the races and powers you'd want. It's also the most interactive roll and write I've played as your military directly interacts with your neighbors and the votes are a fun time for everyone to come together along with the "racing" aspect to see who claims various objectives first. Honestly my only complaint is that there's not enough crazy variety in the votes, I kinda wish they went a bit more extreme in that regard especially given how much variety there is in races and board layouts (so many boards!). Other than that there's a ton to think about on your turn and while most players will have covered a good chunk of their boards by the end, everyone will have taken different paths and it's fun to see how that plays out.

So yeah, I pretty strongly recommend Twilight Inscription but I get that it's not going to be for everyone.

The always excellent Dan Thurot has an interview with my favorite board game designer at the moment, Jenna Felli (of Cosmic Frog fame). https://spacebiff.com/2023/09/19/sbsc-32/

This made my morning! I haven't been able to find a copy, so this will be my go-to for my racing fix. Love they have solo mode included. Still on the hunt for a copy, though - would love to introduce my kids to it (they enjoy F1).