Hi all! This is the second week’s installment of #33in28, my birthday celebration reviewing 33 solo games in 28 days! Today I’m featuring Bear, Morning Phase, Operation Cat Chat, and more! Check out these awesome games through my reviews and make sure to click through on their itchio links to find out more and buy your favorites! I want to point out with this post that every single one of these games could be priced far more and still be more than worth it, so *please consider tipping if you buy!*
Bear
by roll / flip / draw
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, lonely, journaling, roleplaying game, meditation, mindfulness
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Not included
Length: Short to Medium, Optional Journaling (At your own pace)
Bear is a simple journaling-optional solo roleplaying game by roll / flip / draw. It is described as a solo ttrpg about care, protection, and growth. In the game, you play a powerful being who observes an adventurer known only as Bear and has the power to protect them, and help them. It’s able to be played as a meditative game and as escapism, though the text does allow that you can write down and record the story if you enjoy doing so.
The setting of the game is a classic fantasy game with you on one plane and Bear on another plane. This difference in space and planar connection is really a fascinating choice, making you truly distant from the adventurer you’re observing. I like the detachment because it forces you to actively care and focus. I feel like this is part of the reason why the game says that when you have the instinct or desire to play it, you should move yourself physically and mark the difference, even if it’s small.
The first time you play you use where you carry tension in your body to determine you’re adventurer’s drive. For me it was tension in my upper back meaning my adventurer needed to prove they exist, in a lasting way. I could identify with this as a person, even though I was playing the distant, powerful being. The Journey section has you use your pulse as Bear’s footsteps basing how much they are moving or standing still on how easily you can find your pulse. You use this to guide them through various environments, if they are alone, or otherwise. This is a fascinating mechanic and I love it – both the tension holding and the Journey are really brilliant.
You next use the weather and time of day to determine actions in Bear’s path and adventure and what they need. For me, the sky was black with stars which meant Bear must repay a long-held debt, and it was evening, so Bear was in need of stories and inspiration. I thought of the cryptid stories my family used to tell alongside the campfire and how we’d talk of hunting the snipes and running from the hillside phimf, and how there are always debts to be paid.
You finish the game session by following your pulse again, and taking a deep breath. This is such a great way to finish a meditative session of play, reminding you to be connected with your body and to breathe, to return to normalcy. There is guidance for additional play sessions that is just as useful and thoughtful, and I think it is very likely I will return to Bear again. The meditative mechanics and mindfulness techniques embedded in this game are so thoughtful and well organized, and to structure them around following an adventurer is brilliant! I really enjoyed this experience.
Bear is a meditative solo roleplaying game by roll / flip / draw. It is a really mindful, pleasant experience telling a story of a powerful, distant being watching and helping an adventurer on their path using mindfulness & meditation techniques. Check it out on itchio today!
Familiar Unfamiliar
By Peach Garden Games
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, lonely, ritual, divination, journaling, cards, tarot, dice, tokens
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Not included
Length: Short to Medium, Journaling (At your own pace)
Familiar Unfamiliar is a journaling ritual game by Peach Garden Games. The game is set in a future of equality where people work together, and tells players brimming with -isms and prejudice that the game is not for them. It also opens the door for players who might be uncomfortable with the divination mechanics or who become uncomfortable during play to put the game down or pause to refresh themselves before continuing if they change their mind or become comfortable. This is a really nice game introduction!
In Familiar Unfamiliar, you are part of the Symbiotic Community Ship IRIS-7 and a key component, specifically a Witch Engine, or will be when you have found an extraterrestrial sprite called a Familiar, and doing so will allow you to keep the people of IRIS-7 alive. The sci-fi-ification of witches and their familiars is a really fantastic concept and I thought the fictional structure surrounding the game was very unique. I also love games about finding things, to be honest, so this was really interesting to me!
As someone with hand tremors, I didn’t feel comfortable drawing the ritual pattern (I feel like it would be too uneven to feel genuine), so I chose to read the text rather than play through the ritual. This could be a barrier for others. It might be nice to have a printout of the ritual excepting the customizing bits to allow players with difficulty drawing to participate more fully!
This is also helped with the alternative Way of Cards ritual that’s offered, allowing you to use tarot or playing cards to do the ritual instead. I personally found this section just a little confusing, which is why I will have to play this in earnest some other day. Here is what I came up with just through trying my best at it, though! I’m not including my journaling bits as they felt personal and also insufficient, so this is just the results of the ritual.
Who am I? Inside Cup: Emotional, sensitive, romantic. Art, culture.
Who are you? Outside Wand: Red, orange. Wavering.
First Contact: Outside Coin: Sharing a meal with someone. Taking care of plants. Building something.
How are we alike? Inside Sword: A sharp intellect. Curiosity. Willingness to face pain.
How are we different? Inside Heart: A culture all its own, one for which you have no reference.
An Earnest Wish: Inside Coin: Resources. To grow, to help, to heal.
Moving Forward: Outside Cup: A different, truer, wish is granted. What did you really mean to ask?
These are really killer prompts. I felt like they pulled a lot out of me in a good way, and made me reflect on some very personal things. That may be unintentional but it didn’t feel that way!
I will also say that I love the way that this text has clear, easy to read fonts with readable colors on a white background with flavorful color bursting into the frame. It felt really appropriate and I really thought this was well-written in regards to the prompts to encourage deep, fiction-rich journaling. The notion of finding your Familiar is always one that has appealed to me, and I loved going through this experience.
Familiar Unfamiliar is a ritual journaling game by Peach Garden Games. It uses a divination ritual to help journal through a futuristic science fiction story about a Witch Engine in need of a Familiar to help protect the people of the ship IRIS-7. Check it out on itchio today!
Haunted:
By Keganexe
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, lonely, tarot, relationships, journaling
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Not included
Length: Short to Medium, Journaling (At your own pace)
Haunted: is a solo game that uses tarot and journaling by Keganexe. It directs you to face the ghosts of your old relationships through prompts and card draws. A simple game at the face of it, Haunted: becomes complex in many ways the moment you begin.
I found Haunted: to be an interesting game that was more emotional to play than I expected. The game does not instruct you to choose a fictional situation to play from, but I found that more comfortable as a means to approach a topic with the potential for so much bleed. You may find it the same! This could be useful for real life or for fleshing out character relationships with side characters.
I tried the game from a realistic perspective and wasn’t able to complete it because it does challenge you to Face Your Ghosts and I will say outright: it is well designed to guide you through the prompts and reflections, giving you tokens from your relationship of your emotional responses (positive and negative) and using the tarot cards to guide prompts. However, the game does lack any significant safety guidance for such an emotional game. I found this a little disappointing, but still think the game is really strong.
I also loved the use of Polaroid-style photographs of moments, locations, and objects that give a sense of feeling bereft of something, missing something, but a mixed degree and type of emotional response as to whether all of that missing is good or bad. It’s well executed. The background of the pages could be a little bit lighter to make the smaller monospace style font more readable, but stylistically it is pretty.
Haunted: is a reflective journaling game by Keganexe. It explores past relationships and our current perspective on them using prompts, tokens of emotions, and tarot cards. Check it out on itchio today!
Morning Phase
By GIVEPAUSE, Kyle David Frost
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, lonely, nostalgia, cartography
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Video on YouTube & itchio!
Length: Short to Medium (Length of an Album)
Morning Phase is a nostalgia cartography game by GIVEPAUSE (Kyle David Frost). The game is from the Record Collection 2K21 Jam on itchio and based on the album Morning Phase by Beck. I love cartography and nostalgia is my jam, so I was excited to see how this played out.
This game operates by focusing on a period of time, referred to as The Field, and the time period is specifically one of nostalgic feeling for the player. With each track you listen to of Morning Phase by Beck, you create an Artifact. As someone with synesthesia, listening to music is really important but can come with a lot more emotion and intensity. My map is below.
The time I reflected on was my experience at the Renaissance Festival when I met John, but the more I thought about it, with the nature of the prompts and the music, frankly the sadder I got, but also more reflective. At the end of my time working at the Renaissance Festival, I had something pretty bad happen, but I thought by focusing on my time with John I could stay positive. However, the prompts and music are both tinged with melancholy and ask about regrets and losses.
I did not realize how deep some of the things about the Festival, including the people and my one censored item (for my privacy), really went into my trauma even prior to that one bad event. I used to blame the Festival and its culture entirely for some things that happened, but the reality is that some of it was doomed to happen, inevitable after time.
It made me see how blessed I was to find love with John when I did. It helped that Spotify automatically played Beck’s Up All Night right after, which immediately brightened my mood and reminded me of all the time I spent with John – unintentional by the game, but the blessing of streaming music, I suppose! A lot of what happened to me, and what I did at the Renaissance Festival was going to happen regardless of the setting, but if I hadn’t been there, I never would have met John. This was actually an incredibly, unintentionally therapeutic exercise!
The design of the game is simple: prompts to music with cartographic guidance, and the layout is simple and readable (though some text could be larger, and guidance on connecting each Artifact could be clearer). I can’t say that there is much safety guidance in the text, which I actually wish it had, because there are moments where I had to use my own Script Change tools to pull away from areas of even my brightest memories from this time that had dark, sharp edges. I’d recommend using Script Change, an X-card, or self-check-ins with someone to talk to afterward for this game.
Morning Phase is a music-inspired and mechanized cartography game for one player by GIVEPAUSE/Kyle David Frost. It produced a really introspective experience and the music that is part of the game is really excellent! Check it out on itchio today!
Operation: Cat Chat
by Jessica Macrum/angrynerdgirl
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, lonely, pets, cats, cards, recording, tokens, language, communication, isolation
Replayable? Likely, especially with multiple cats
Actual Play Available? Not included
Length: Short to Medium
Operation: Cat Chat is a solo game about quarantining with your cat by Jessica Marcrum/angrynerdgirl. I don’t think I can explain it better than the itchio page, but the general idea is that you are quarantined with your cat alone and decide to learn to speak cat. The page states these requirements:
“To play Operation: Cat Chat, you will need one six-sided die, a standard deck of cards, ten tokens that your cat likes, a recording method, and most importantly, a cat that can tolerate you.“
As someone who has designed a game about interacting with your cat, I was admittedly surprised at how much more complex this game is, but I figure some cats are more chill than others! The safety warning at the start of the game is great and includes warnings (isolation, loss, poverty, hunger, religion, alien invasions, brainwashing, and the feeling of being watched) and the Emergency Button safety tool (very similar to Script Change’s “Pause”). I was initially excited about playing this game with my cat! These warnings, however, made me elect to simply test out pieces of the game and read it – I experience paranoia because of my mental illness, and didn’t want to aggravate it.
I did like the note to respect and be kind to your cat, as we really need to be cognizant that pets are living beings when we make games about them!
I will reemphasize for anyone interested in playing this that the poverty and isolation themes are extremely deep. As the character you play, you’re quarantined with no phone, no internet, and no ability to leave home, and are furloughed from your job. For me, that is a terrifying concept, so please take care.
The layout and graphics for the game are really clear and cute, with larger text. Mechanically you use cards and a die to draw cards to compare to your catpendium, which gives guidance on what to do next, then discard the cards and reflect. You record a daily log of your experiences with the cat and the catpendium. The prompts repeatedly encourage you to pet your cat, and the tokens used in the game are treats to engage your cat and when you successfully engage your cat and give them tokens, you learn to speak cat.
The game’s playful design feels somewhat contrasting to the nature of some of the prompts that made me feel a little unnerved and uncomfortable, like asking if you deserved the scratches your cat gave or blaming the quarantine on toxoplasmosis. I rarely reveal prompts in detail, but those in particular might be upsetting to many people, so I wanted to give a better idea what the more startling narrative was. However, there are plenty of fun questions like asking how your cat communicates with you or encouraging you to take pictures and videos with your cat, as well as the regular reminders to pet your cat.
Generally, I would recommend this for someone who loves cats and has a higher tolerance for anxiety inducing prompts or can see the lighthearted nature more easily. However, for anyone particularly struggling with the pandemic and quarantine, or who struggles with intrusive thoughts, tread carefully, use the safety tools, and absolutely remember that your cat is just a lovely little kitty.
Operation: Cat Chat is a game of isolation with your cat in quarantine by Jessica Marcrum/angrynerdgirl. I can imagine so many people having a wonderful experience playing with their cats and telling outlandish stories in their recordings with this game! Check it out on itchio today!
The Mysteries of Addy Sea
By Jessica L. Washburn
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, lonely, horror, mystery, journaling
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Not included
Length: Short to Long, Journaling (At Your Own Pace), 13 Nights
The Mysteries of Addy Sea is a solo horror journaling game by Jessica L. Washburn. In this game, you play a paranormal investigator staying 13 nights at The Addy Sea, a bed and breakfast built by a colonizer and plumbing supplier from Pittsburgh, John M. Addy, for his family. The text notes that The Addy Sea sits on stolen Algonquin Lands, and that it’s supposedly very haunted. There is a warning for paranormal experiences, implied death via a fall, and mild horror themes, though it is on the itchio page solely, unless I’m missing it.
This game is the game in which I realized I can very quickly scare the daylights out of myself – I only managed to actively play through four nights because laughing children gives me nightmares. I have, however, read through the full text and played more casually than I originally planned. If you’re very creative and simultaneously easily spooked, please use a safety tool or two to help you play, because the prompts are simple enough to let your mind go wild. I recommend any horror game include safety tools!
You are given some tools in the narrative to aid your experience playing, and each night you’re asked which you use and why. The tools include an infrared thermometer, a digital voice recorder, an EMF sensor, a camera with night vision, a Ghost Box (a device that sweeps AM/FM radio frequencies), and a journal. You only use the journal as a player, recording your activities and responses to the various events of the game. There are thirteen rooms, and my judgment was that yes, it is definitely haunted!
I love how simple and engaging the prompts are, and how the questions asked make you scare yourself. One prompt I’ll share is in Room One, where it asks, “Do you dare take a bath in the tub?” and you know, a simple question like that shouldn’t be spooky, but the dare makes you wonder – why…w hy would I not take a bath in the tub? Why WOULD I take a bath in the tub? What’s going on with the tub, man? The following question I won’t reveal fully, but it has to do with the fact that the prompt reveals that this copper tub shakes – and the question makes you confirm just how. Unnerving and so subtle a way to start off a creepy experience!
The fun pop music I was listening to for help staying unspooked while playing suddenly beeped loudly at the start of Opposites Attract by Paula Abdul, and I jumped out of my chair. The further you go through the rooms, the more unsettling the experience gets, and the deeper you query the source of the haunting. None of it gets gory or too explicit, but the vagueness only furthers the curiosity for me, and it felt very much like a found-footage film where someone came to find the journal written in Room 13, and left in a hurry.
The Mysteries of Addy Sea is a very spooky creative journaling game for one player by Jessica L. Washburn. I genuinely have to say I loved this game, and I hope I get the courage to write a detailed journal of it someday (maybe I’ll play alongside a friend in separate journals! Solo games like this can sometimes be shared!). Experience a haunting experience and leave shuddering… or not. Check it out on itchio today!
With These Phantom Hands
By FractalDragon
The General Idea
Genre Tags: solo, lonely, dice, ghosts, horror, journaling
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Not included
Length: Short to Medium, Journaling (At your own pace)
With These Phantom Hands is a one-move game for one player by Fractal Dragon. The title of this game alone is very compelling! It starts with a quote by Guillermo del Toro, which automatically wins me over and I’d like to share here:
“¿Qué es un fantasma?
Un evento terrible, condenado a repetirse una y otra vez.
Un instante de dolor, quizá.
Algo muerto, que por momentos parece vivo aún.
Un sentimiento suspendido en el tiempo.
Como una fotografía borrosa. Como un insecto atrapado en ámbar.”“What is a ghost?
A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and time again.
A moment of pain, perhaps.
Something dead which still seems to be alive.
An emotion suspended in time.
Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.”
—Guillermo del Toro, El Espinazo del Diablo
This is from a film called El Espinazo del Diablo, or The Devil’s Backbone, which I have seen and I think is one of the greatest achievements of both horror and war filmography. I think that the game well captures the mood of the film, and that it’s a hauntingly beautiful short game. In the game, you play a ghost who haunts three people, and you explore those hauntings using a simple 2d6 mechanic. The layout is simple but well-purposed!
As you play you fill out a sheet to answer questions about who you are, how you died, and why you haunt the people you do. I love simply designed games with beautiful results! The prompts you recieve when you roll are related to your life, your death, how the haunted respond to your haunting, and your progress to Your End. If you roll on the same number, you move to one near it, and this contributes to the only way you are given impetus to do violence – something I think was wise in design.
During your choosing of those you haunt, you write out what they Deserve, which is extremely powerful and hits directly into the heart of the quoted film. Some people deserve to find their freedom, some deserve love, and so many other things, including finding their own End. It should go without saying that this game involves death, potentially violence, and is steeped in the possibility of both tragedy and peace. I wish it had some basic safety guidance, but as it is a short game it’s common to leave this out. Nonetheless, it’s a very rich experience for such a small game and struck me quite strongly.
With These Phantom Hands is an intimately haunting solo horror game by FractalDragon. It takes the character through the course of discovering who they were as a living being, and how they died, by haunting three important people and exploring their experiences. Check it out on itchio today!
Thank you so much for reading this week’s reviews! All of the games on itchio that I’ve reviewed can be found in this collection, and there will be more #33in28 solo game reviews on Monday and Sunday of each week until the end of February!