Just because you’re looking for the best solo board games, doesn’t mean you have to conduct that search alone. We’re here to help you find the perfect way to spend an evening with just you, your tabletop, and a lovely box of tokens and cards.
In the world of PC gaming, singleplayer has always been an option, with loads of great experiences available. The tabletop hobby has taken a while to catch up. But catch up it has, with an explosion of brilliant solo board games in recent years creating a wonderfully wide spectrum of possibilities. Everyone being stuck inside on their own for a year may have helped get the wheels turning there…
But there are still a lot of board games out there that purport to be playable solo that actually offer watered-down multiplayer experiences, either asking you to essentially just take the role of several players yourself, or serving up a seriously compromised version of the “full” game. The trick is to cut through this chaff to find the games that really embrace solo play.
This list, rounding up some of our absolute favourite solo board games, should help you get started on that quest. Good luck—if nothing else, you’ll definitely find the scheduling easier.
Final Girl
Survive a horror movie and take the fight to the killer.
Final Girl is a singleplayer powerhouse, offering atmosphere, challenge, and variety in an experience aimed directly at solo gaming.
Each set pits a final girl (that is, the horror movie archetype of the innocent young woman who survives to the end of the movie while her less pure friends all get murdered) against a horror villain in a thematic location, whether that’s a masked slasher at a summer camp, a deadly alien on a spaceship, or a vengeful spirit in a haunted house. Your goal, through a clever card-based system, is to traverse the location rescuing hapless victims, gathering useful weapons and items, and battling the killer as they roam around and trigger horrifying events. Ultimately you’ll face off in a final showdown to determine who survives this particular midnight B movie.
It’s accessible and quick to play, perfect for those who get restless sitting at the table for too long. And what really gives it legs is how mix-and-match it is. Any hero you own can battle any killer at any location, creating unique and interesting combinations. Take on that masked killer in a spooky asylum or a grotesque funfair instead of the summer camp, or bring that deadly alien to earth to stalk a suburban neighborhood or a cabin in the woods.
To get started, all you need is the core box and one “Feature Film” box. I recommend The Happy Trails Horror or Once Upon A Full Moon for an easy intro. But be warned: once you get started, you may find yourself drawn into a dark obsession with collecting them all…
Marvel Champions
Super-powered deckbuilding starring your favourite Marvel heroes.
Pick a superhero, any superhero. Marvel Champions is a scenario-driven card game where each hero has their own double sided card, with one side representing their hero identity and the other representing their secret identity, like Spider Man and Peter Parker. Each hero also has their own deck of cards, representing allies, equipment, and special actions—you ‘pay’ to play these cards by discarding others, forcing careful decision-making.
Every villain you face is unique, but all of them require you to do two things: attack them and deal enough damage to advance them to the next phase, and try to slow down the progression of their evil scheme. Each game feels like a race against time with its own challenges, as each villain’s schemes will be different, but all share that tension. All the while, you have to choose when to flip between your hero side, best at leaping into action, and your civilian side, which allows you to rest and recover.
Endless expansions allow you to play as pretty much any Marvel character you can imagine and take on a whole host of different villains and modes. You can also customise your deck, adding to the replayability.
For Northwood
Use strategic trick-taking to unite a woodland realm with diplomacy.
Trick-taking games (traditionally, ones where each player plays a single card and the highest value card wins all the cards played) are one of the oldest forms of card games, but there’s always new ground to break.
For Northwood remixes the old formula for solo play and a strategic feel. Instead of winning the most tricks, you must use your hand of cards—and the special abilities of your ally cards—to win a precise number of tricks based on which ruler you’re dealing with, to represent your dialogue with that leader. Every time you sway a leader over to your side by winning against them, they become an ally you can call on to use their special ability. To win a game you have to convince eight rulers over eight rounds, each one becoming more difficult as you go, but there are also 16 scenarios you can play to mix things up—and with a total of 24 different rulers but only 12 used every time you play, there’s good variety and replay packed into such a straightforward game.
Under Falling Skies
Roll and place dice to fend off descending alien spaceships.
Reminiscent of both XCOM and Space Invaders, Under Falling Skies is a full campaign in a box that charges you with defending the cities of Earth from aliens. Each game takes place on a vertical board divided into columns and rows that represent the skies above and your ground defences and underground base below.
Each turn you roll dice, and then assign them to different tasks, with a larger number producing better results—whether you’re excavating more space for your base, producing more energy, or spending energy on research and defence. However, each die you place will also cause alien ships to move from the mothership at the top of the board down the corresponding columns the same number. In other words, the more powerful the die, the greater the risk.
To keep the tension high, each turn the mothership itself will also move down one row, causing negative effects and bringing the whole invasion down closer to your city. Naturally you lose if it reaches the bottom…
Different cities have different setups, with their own underground base layouts, and the boards also are double sided with a more challenging side that lets you mix-and-match your difficulty level and keep your alien invasions fresh and interesting.
Spirit Island
Use primal magic to stop colonial powers from taking over your land.
Taking control of one or more powerful spirits, you have to use their unique elemental powers to drive out invading conquerors and protect the indigenous people who live on your island. Spirit Island has a lot going on, between power cards, managing your spirit energy, growing your spirit’s presence on the board, and the conquerors’ spreading presence. It can be intimidating keeping track of it all, but it means there’s tons of room for strategic play.
As the invaders colonise the island, they’ll build towns or cities in their wake and blight the land, making your job of protecting things and driving them back a lot harder. Fortunately, using your powers and driving them out of individual parts of the board will grow their fear level, causing drawbacks for them too.
The result is a brilliant tug of war over the land, as you try to grow your power and the colonists run around wrecking everything. If you’re looking for a long and intense but very deep and engaging solo experience, Spirit Island is a great option.
One Deck Dungeon
Solve dice puzzles to dungeon crawl through a deck of cards.
A perfect solo travel game, One Deck Dungeon does exactly what it says it does—crams a dungeon-crawling experience into one deck of cards. Well, that and a few other components—primarily multi-coloured dice, which represent each of the playable heros’ particular strengths and weaknesses. As monsters and obstacles come out of the deck, you roll your character’s dice, and then assign them to spaces on the card to achieve certain results and avoid damage.
Be warned that it does feel more like a dungeon-themed puzzle game than a traditional adventure, but it does still tick plenty of boxes. There’s a full campaign system, you level up and gain loot over the course of each game and there are loads of playable heroes, each with their own spells and abilities.
There are three sets available—each one stands alone, with its own heroes and theme, but they can also be combined freely to create hybrid dungeons. Sticking with one set will still bring you many hours of fun, however, while being small enough to easily bring along for a trip or a long airplane journey.
