This week I have a bundle of reviews for you, my readers! As part of #33in28 for my 33rd birthday I’m reviewing 33 solo games in February, which has 28 days. Each week I’ll post a single review on Monday, then a collection of six reviews on the following Sunday. The remaining three reviews will be peppered in on the big review days or as solo posts! As these are Let’s check out what today has to offer…
*Edited 2/9/2021 to correct a name and fix some formatting.
Major Arcana
By Alex Wilcox
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, lonely, tarot, exercises, cards, journaling
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Not included
Length: Short to Medium, Journaling (At your own pace)
Major Arcana is a collection of games that are based on the Major Arcana in tarot cards. Some of the games are not solo games, but some are, so I was intrigued to look into the collection. I’ll be focusing on the solo games for this review!
Overall the document is pretty, and relatively well laid-out, though I will caution that the small text in some places and textured background in others can make it challenging to read if you’re not able to zoom in/adjust brightness.Otherwise, pretty cool looking and each game is on one page. A note that the headers are at the bottom, which initially threw me off but looks stylish.
While I can see how some people might be shaken by The Lovers (“Call your ex.” it says, in large text), I also see the intent behind it, though I don’t know if I’d play it. However, these experiences detailed as games in Major Arcana include The Star, where you count ripples on water and examine the skies. I also really liked The Hierophant which has you examine a key and make commitments about boundaries. Really a thoughtful piece!
The High Priestess has you write a letter with truths and lies and keep it where you’ll see it to open it when you’ve forgotten it, which is a fun memory exercise. The Fool is my favorite, where you flip a coin and leave it, then try to remember it later. It feels like a fool’s errand, and that can be a very fun kind of game! You can also play some of the other games as journaling games instead of group games, which is nice flexibility and allows for different mechanical and narrative experiences.
I really appreciated the safety page at the start of the text that includes trigger and content warnings for each game, plus a note on boundary discussion, use of a safe word, and encouragement to stop if you reach boundaries. Very smart and simple approach to a game collection like this!
I hope you’ll check out Major Arcana by Alex Wilcox, now on Kickstarter! This collection would be great for someone who likes the concepts of tarot and wants to have some small games to express those in an active way. Enjoy!
Thru-Hiker
By Daniel Perez
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, lonely, hiking, journaling, cards
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Examples included in text
Length: Medium to Long, Journaling (At your own pace)
Thru-Hiker is a really interesting journaling game by Daniel Perez, coming to Kickstarter, about long distance hiking. It uses playing cards to assist journaling and includes a number of examples of journaling in the text. I loved the cover right away!
I was intensely grateful for the useful guide to terminology offered at the beginning of the book – more games could do with detailing terms when they’re dealing with specific experiences or unique language. For example, to me, a Triple Crown is when a horse wins all three major races, but in this, it’s accomplishing multiple different trails, including the Appalachian trail. It’s wise to include this kind of differentiation if you’re going to mention terms, even in examples!
While I had some trouble reading the bold script the examples are written in,* they were useful still in helping me understand what you write about while doing your long distance hike and how the game works. Overall, the game is well laid out and pretty tidy, with a nice outdoorsy color palette and licensed photographs. It makes me wish I could have my photographs in a book like this!
I loved card results like “Hiker Trash Wisdom” and “Armchair Meteorologist” next to “This effing trail!” Even as someone who is immobile or limited a lot of the time, the idea of telling the story of a grand hike is really fantastic. I imagined while reading the things you might see or experience, and how this could be so fun to play while still on lockdown and prevented from going to our larger parks. A little wistful perhaps, but that has its place.
I enjoyed the list of examples of challenges, everything from fatigued to bear in the camp! These useful details help people who haven’t had these experiences fill in the gaps. There’s also a hearty list of inspiration in the back! Really useful for people trying to pull ideas when they want to do something new but haven’t been sure how to prepare, so equally useful in this game.
The descriptive text and guidance in the book are really good. I think that the mechanics are pretty simple, and the use of resources and scarcity in this actually makes a lot of sense compared to the use of that mechanical structure in some other games. You only have so much ability to carry resources, and the environment and situation can put those resources in danger! Overall, reading this made me long for the days I could hike for miles and enjoy the beauty of the outdoors. At least with Thru-Hiker, I can live it in fiction!
Thru-Hiker by Daniel Perez is on Kickstarter soon and will be available for purchase afterward on Daniel’s Gumroad. It’s a fun journaling game where you tell the story of your experiences on long distance hikes, balancing resources and dealing with inclement weather while enjoying the beauty of nature and the world. Check it out today!
*After I mentioned this to Daniel, I was told the journal entries will be edited for legibility! Great response to feedback!
Blue-Collar Conjurer
By Travis D. Hill, Press Pot Games
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, lonely, slice-of-life, fantasy, magic, live-action roleplaying game
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Not in text
Length: At your own pace – between .5 hours and 4 work days, if you play over each day
Blue-Collar Conjurer is a fun and stylish single page live action roleplaying game for one player by Travis Hill. Subtitled “a solitaire LARP for the working-class witch or wizard,” it approaches what it would be like to be a magic user working in a shop doing mindless tasks – and in a Sorcerer’s Apprentice kind of vibe, how you might approach those tasks more easily with magic. I love the simple layout with stylized text and fill-in-the-blank character creation.
Here’s the character I created, using the fill in the blank text (speaking to the reader, my contributions bolded):
You, Celerian Mothbottom, have been working at Bits n’Bobs for the last two years, and it has become mindnumbingly droll. Little did you know that after dropping out of the world-renowned Charms College that you would be stuck here as a stock boy.
Fortunately your boss, Wickd Alandry, doesn’t ask much of you. But if only there were a way to make these mindless tasks go by quicker…
How fun! I love the flavor injected into an experience in real life that so many of us are used to. I can see people playing this during breaks at their actual job to help cope with the boring tasks and mindless days. I certainly would have loved it during my days in corporate!
The mechanics are simple d6 mechanics where you create your own spell and incantation based on the die result, adjust your rolls based on who is affected by the roll, note whether it’s good or evil, draw a sigil, and roll a d6 to see whether it’s a good idea to use the spell. I love the combination of dice rolls, word use, drawing, and moral decision-making. It makes this game so much more complex than it could be, but still keeps it approachable for basically anyone.
You do this each day for four days, then total your results. If it’s a high roll, you’re good! If it’s low, um, the game suggests you reroll. It’s very fun and a kind of fiasco if you roll low in my mind, and the game allows you a lot of creative freedoms to interpret the results. What kind of spells are evil to you? Which ones are good? What tasks do you try to magic out of the way? So many good questions to answer.
Blue-Collar Conjurer is a fun live action solo game by Travis D. Hill about being a working-class witch or wizard who tries to magic their way through the thoughtless tasks of their daily work. Check it out on itchio today for a good time!
Bro, Is It Gay To Dock?
By Kevin Thien Vu Long Nguyen, Nguyen Conditions
The General Idea
Genre Tags: single player, romantic, pirates, fantasy, sea-faring, drama, queer, facilitated
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Some examples in text
Length: Short to Medium
Bro, Is It Gay To Dock? is a queer pirate themed romantic drama roleplaying game by Kevin Thien Vu Long Nguyen and it is one of my favorite games I have seen in ever. My desire for a queer pirate romance has been long known, I think, but few approaches have presented it so simply and enjoyably as this game. It is a facilitated game, for 1-4 players, but I’m approaching it as a single player facilitated game.
I love the artistic way the text is laid out, with flavorful font choices, seemingly handwritten red notes giving extra guidance or cheerfully commentating, and a gorgeous cover. The insistence that you can be any gender to play, and that The Legend, your love interest, can also be any gender, while writing to the experience of queer men seeking queer men is really great. The text is well-written and approachable!
The final page’s text is a little small, but it does contain some wonderfully entertaining scenario details that I recommend reading for sure. Great inspiration for telling a storied drama with lots of fascinating details! There’s even a megalodon! I love megalodons!
I made myself a pirate using the rules of the text:
Name/Pronouns: Patchwork Patrick, they/them
Look: Thick with rumpled clothing, covered partway in patchwork tattoos for every flag of every country or territory they’ve come ashore of, a scar cutting through the flag of England.
Stuff: Clothing that’s fine but not well-cared-for in rich colors and textures, a pickaxe and a long needle, and a spyglass.
Before the seas seduced them… Patrick was a tailor who made clothes and sundry for the elite. They did not pay Patrick well.
Good at: stabbing and sewing.
I love it! Patchwork Patrick is so much fun to imagine falling in love with the handsome Legend, who I also made…
Name: Stalwart Stellan
Look: A jawline that could cut glass and eyes that could bore through stone with their intensity, a gaze filled with green shine that builds envy and desperation in Patrick – wanting to be him and be with him simultaneously, a small treasure map tattoo on his treasure trail that guides the way to x-marks the spot that is always partially hidden between his cropped vest and breeches. Why does he wear breeches? He never says.
Quirks: He always loses at cards when it’s the highest stakes, especially against those who would hurt from the loss. His eyes close when he takes a drink, unless it’s slow draught across a table from his target.
Reputation: 1) He’s pulled a kraken from the water with his own two arms, and the treasure map reveals the kraken’s treasure. 2) He’s actually found the treasure, and used it to save a community from ruin. 3) He killed the mayor of the community and took his place before returning to the seas, but no one knows why.
Ah that was really awesome! I’m a little in love with The Legend already, imagining those gorgeous green eyes pulling me into the depths. I love how deeply rich the character creation is allowed to be, but also how simple you can keep it to allow for it to expand over time. The lack of a specific time also leaves a lot of flexibility.
The mechanics for shooting, flirting, etc. are all very simple – you’re encouraged to “roll the bones! Or two six-sided dice, I guess…” – and add or subtract to the roll based on situational factors and resources. An 8 or higher is a success, below you don’t get what you wanted or how you wanted it, or both. Very simple, and it includes an option to fail a roll to get an intimate moment with The Legend, which is the best impetus for failing forward I’ve ever seen. *heart eyes*
I honestly think that this game could be played fully solo if you wanted to, just being creative, and embracing drama and failure and success. I played through it a bit myself just solo, and it was really fun and exciting! I do recommend trying it out as recommended with your chosen safety tool or taking it for a solo spin and playing through scenes yourself.
Bro, Is It Gay To Dock? is a facilitated queer pirate game by Kevin Thien Vu Long Nguyen, and is a really fun, rich experience of romance and drama! Check it out on itchio today!
One White Eye
By Will Lentz
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, horror, roleplaying game, journaling, thriller, isolation
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? None in text
Length: Short to Medium, Journaling (At your own pace)
Content warning: Imprisonment, isolation, death, potential suicide
One White Eye is an intriguing horror roleplaying game by Will Lentz currently on itchio. I was drawn into this project by the compelling title and the simple mechanics. I also love the art! Very lovely layout for a single-page project, though the prompts have relatively small text as a heads up – just zoom on the PDF and you should be fine.
The premise alone is utterly fascinating, where you as the player character are imprisoned with nothing but some scraps of paper, the body of the previous inhabitant, and a bleak pit that beckons you to death. Through a crack in the wall, One White Eye glares through off and on, and the text asks, “Does it want you to write or leap?”
The mechanics are simple. You roll a d20 to consult the prompts and journal about it, and add 1 to a Dread tracker that starts at 0 based on particular prompts or if you roll the same prompts twice. If you roll the same prompt twice, you additionally roll a d6, and if you roll above your current Dread you live, if not, you throw yourself into the pit. A terrifying end, but potentially a relief from the haunting eye and isolation.
I find myself unnerved by the concept of suicide, but reading through the prompts I find myself fascinated by how terrifying it would be to be often silently, or not-so-silently, watched by a blank eye staring through a crack in the wall of my nightmarish isolation. Seeing things through walls particularly frightens me, so this struck right into my lizard brain and made me spooked! I think the well written prompts and queries also really help guide you to scare yourself more than the text will scare you itself.
The simple mechanic combined with at times startling prompts (which I will not reveal to avoid spoiling) make an effective horror journaling game. It’s also very thoughtful about how heavily to apply the horror and the thrill of fear in the game. Brilliantly executed!
One White Eye is a horror journaling game by Will Lentz under Gamenomicon available as a single-page game. Check it out on itchio today!
The Ringing in My Ears
By Paul Czege
The General Idea
Genre Tags: single player, multi-player, drama, roleplaying game, facilitating
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? None in text
Length: Short to Medium
The Ringing in My Ears is a fascinating roleplaying game by Paul Czege in which you take three roles and hand them out to three friends, one each, and don’t play yourself. This may seem like a violation of the solo-game rule, but I think there’s an element of play in how you choose the final players, and each player is kind of playing their own solo game until they encounter the other players, and even within that time frame, has their own rules and guidance. There are four players total: you, The Secret Lover, The True Friend, and The Hateful Enemy.
This game calls into question, what is a solo game? At what point are we each just playing a game by ourselves that happens to collide with another person’s game? What if a game is secretly multiple games within a game? How isolated do you have to be for it to be solo play, and what is play? Does choosing others to play roles based on assumed factors count as play? Does facilitating count as play? It’s so interesting and so rad, there’s a lot to think about before you even touch the game(s) itself.
The roles in this game are kept private until the end, and build through narrative prompts to encourage discovering new information about each other through play. You play through conversation, asking questions, and trying to reach the Finish in which you try to determine who is the enemy of the person who gave out the card. It is really intriguing to me especially because there’s no guidance at the start of the game to create a fictional existence. This raises my brows in wondering, what true feelings could be accidentally revealed in playing such a game? How much bleed might players encounter and what might be discovered about themselves and each other in such an arrangement?
Overall, the game is something I would be terrified to play but I also desperately want to play, though only if I were able to observe the conversations that took place as the originating player. I want to know what people in these roles would say, even were I playing a fictional character. Is part of the game that you would not be able to know, or might be tempted to eavesdrop? I think so. “Make yourself scarce,” says the text. Well, walls can be thin, says my desire to know everyone’s thoughts about me. Do I violate the rules? A good question, I think.
The Ringing in My Ears is a game with four roles by Paul Czege and one of the deviations from the standard solo format that I wanted to examine with these reviews. It’s very much worth reading and playing, and you should check it out on itchio!
Thank you so much for reading this week’s installation of #33in28 Reviews! Look out for another review tomorrow and the next set the following Sunday! For the games on itchio, you can check out the collection here, and make sure to check out the Kickstarters that are live and linked in each review that has one!
Support Thoughty at ko-fi.com/Thoughty! I’m phasing out my Patreon by end of March so please consider joining at the ko-fi <3
Have a Game to Suggest for #33in28?
This form will close on February 22, 2021.