Even though our main focus here at CO-OP Gestalt is cooperative games, solo games are many times the other side of the coin of the cooperative games! Frequently, we play the solo game to learn the game so as to teach the cooperative game! We frequently talk about Saunders’ Law (the hope that a cooperative game has a viable solo mode)! We discuss ways to play cooperative games solo (The Changing Perspectives idea and Least Intellectual Overhead idea)! We care a lot about solo games, but this is our first year calling them out!

Honorable Mention: Marvel Midnight Suns

Our favorite solo game of the year wasn’t a board game or a card game, but a video game: Marvel Midnight Suns!  Strictly speaking, this came out in Dec 2022, but we didn’t get this until March 2023 or so.  So, because it’s a video game AND it didn’t come out in 2022, it can only make our Honorable Mention here in the solo games list. But we played it so much in 2023!

What’s weird is that this video game is a deck-building game!   Combat is performed via a deck-building like mechanism within the video game.  But what this game nails, and is part of the reason I liked it so much, was the exploration and the story!  There is such a great story that unfolds as you explore this world.  

This should have been our #1 solo game of 2023, but it can’t be because it’s a video game that came out in December 2022.  Considering we spent 100+ hours playing this solo in 2023, so it has to make this list at least as an Honorable Mention.

See our review of Marvel Midnight Suns here to see if this is something you would like.

10. Illiterati

A solo word game is a rare beast! Luckily, Illiterati is a word game which works well both solo and cooperatively!  The components, especially the plastic letters, are wonderful!

The solo gamer makes words using letters given a theme (by some cards).  You can choose to play this realtime or not: I personally prefer my word games to be untimed, but the game supports both real-time and off-line modes.

See our review here to see if Illiterati is the type of solo word game you want!

9. Lost Ruins of Arnak: The Missing Expedition

Strictly speaking, this is an expansion for the base game Lost Ruins of Arnak (so you need the base game and this expansion to play), but it really fleshes out the solo mode of the original game with a neat campaign! 

The solo gameplay stays relatively the same, but there’s a lot of new ideas: new story,  new cards, new leaders, and new approaches!

Everything about this solo mode is fun! It is a bit of a table hog getting both the original game (which was also a table hog) and the new expansion set-up with it!

8. Age of Comics

Age of Comics is, by default, a competitive worker placement game for 1-4 players: it’s a victory point game!  But it does come with a dedicated solo mode!  This is a game all about making comic books in the Golden Age of comics! 

The art and components are really evocative of the Golden Years of Comics, with lots of comic book 1950s style art on all sorts of components: cards, tokens, and boards!

If you want to play this solo, you really need to play the competitive version first! The solo rules make it clear: “You need to play the base game first!”  So, for my first play, I played me-vs-me to learn the rules:  see above for a 2-Player game (where the two players are me and me). I just barely beat myself by 1 point! It was a close game!

Finally, once I learned the base rules, I can pull out the solo rules by Nestor (see above).  The official solo mode is similar to the me-vs.-me game, as the solo gamer plays against a solo AI, trying to get more victory points that the AI!  There are a few places where the solo rules need some clarification (Sales especially), but it’s still very fun and very playable.  I am really glad I picked this game up! Age of Comics can give you a very nice solo experience: either me-vs.-me or using the built-in solo rules!

7. Roll For Great Old Ones

Roll For Great Old Ones is a roll-and-write game about stopping the Cultists of Cthulu (or your favorite Great Old One) from summoning terrifying creatures!

This Cthulu roll-and-write game was surprisingly thematic and surprisingly deep for a roll-and-write game.  You felt terror as the summoning approached, you felt dread as the dice conspired against you, and you went mad making choices  (… well, not really …)!  There’s even a re-roll mechanism in the game … but it has a cost … which is also very thematic!

This was a fun solo game (and cooperative too)!

See our review here to see if Roll For Great Old Ones is something you might like!

6. Find The Source

This was a surprisingly good year for solo and cooperative roll-and-write games!  Find The Source was solidly good roll-and-write that works well for both the solo or cooperative game.

The components are quite good, with thick boards and good pens (and amazing erasers!)  This game is easy to set-up, easy to learn, quick to play, and has a lot of interesting decisions.  The component quality and ease-of-play give this is a slight leg up on our other solo roll-and-write Roll For Great Old Ones (#6).

See our review here of Find The Source to see if this is a game you would enjoy solo!

5. Skytear Horde

Skytear Horde is one of those omni-mode games you can play solo, cooperatively, or competitively. Now, I only got to play it solo, but I really liked it!

This is basically a tower defense game: you play cards stop the attacking horde and defend your place of power!  There’s quite a bit of content here, but if you need more, there is an expansion coming soon which adds more content to this game.  The solo game is good fun!

The art on the cards is quite nice!  And the components quite high quality.

Take a look at our review of Skytear Horde to see if something you would enjoy solo!

4. Marvel United: SpiderGeddon

SpiderGeddon was a little hard to get a hold of, but it should be available soon (it’s on Amazon as this goes up)! It’s sort of the precursor the the next wave of Marvel United (Marvel United: Mulitiverse) coming out in 2024.

What made this stand out for us was that they finally addressed the weird solo mode that comes with Marvel United!  (See our discussion here and here). The solo mode that came with the original Marvel United (and X-Men) had some rules that required a bunch of exceptions: it felt like it really diverged from the main cooperative game! We almost always played solo with the 2-handed Solo games! 

Now, the newest Marvel United: SpiderGedden introduces a newer and more interesting solo ruleset (called Commander Solo Mode) for Marvel United!  This newer solo mode is precisely why this is so high on this list: it’s a much better solo game now!

3. Race to the Raft

Race to the Raft is a very puzzly and fun solo tile-playing game in the Isle of Cats universe!

At the time of the review, we had just finished our Top 10 Cooperative Tile-Playing/Tile Placement game!  Looking back, I think Race to the Raft should be the new #1 on that list, except for timing! Ah well!

What makes this game stand out so much (and place so high on this list) is that everything you do is a choice! Which tile do you get from which pile? How do you place the raft tiles?  Where do you place the fire tiles?  I think Race To the Raft is a fantastic game, and the solo mode is just great!  I think I like to solo mode more than the cooperative mode! It’s such a great puzzle!

See our review here to see if Race to the Raft is something you might like! We loved it!

2. Earthborne Rangers

Earthborne Rangers is a game all about exploring.  It’s a thoughtful romp through a fantasy land, with deck-building (sort of) as a main mechanism.

The art is here is phenomenal, and, in a very chill fashion, you get to explore this wonderful world!

There are a lot of rules and a lot of things you have to absorb before you can really enjoy the game, but once you get into it, the game moves quickly and can be quite fun!   The game seems significantly better as a solo game (which is why it’s so high on this list), but my friends still had fun playing cooperatively.

See our review of Earthborne Rangers here to see if you might enjoy it!

1. Suspects: Eternal Detective Claire Harper

This surprised me too!  My favorite solo experience of the year was playing case #1 from the Suspects box solo!  Normally, this game goes over great as a cooperative game, but the solo game works so well too! 

I think since the mystery is confined to the cards, it’s not quite as necessary to have a bunch of brains working on the mystery (as opposed to deeper mystery games like Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective).  

If you love your murder mysteries like Death In Paradise or Midsomer Murder, why not solve a mystery rather than watch it? See our review of Suspects: Eternal Detective Claire Harper here to see if this is something you might like!