More Solitaire than Sherlock: A Review of Sherlock Solitaire (the Solo and Cooperative Game)

This review has been sitting in my hopper for over a year now; not sure why I didn’t get it out earlier!

Sherlock Solitaire is a very small cooperative card game for 1-2 players. This released early in 2024: I had heard about it from my friend Sam and so I quickly ordered it from Wise Wizard website about a month ago (early March 2024). It delivered pretty quickly! I got it to the table solo, but I didn’t want to finish my review until I tried it two-player cooperative .. Sam really wanted to play, but he was busy most of March.

This is a very small and thin package. It plays 1-2 players, is about 20 minutes, and plays ages 12+.

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

Sherlock Solitaire is a teeny tiny box and very thin: see the Coke can above for perspective.

Except for the instruction pamphlet, it’s all cards .. just 55 cards.

The cards are pretty gorgeous.

The game is very pretty on the table: see above.

Rulesheet Not a Rulebook

The rulebook is not a rulebook but a rulesheet: see above. Sigh. It’s a pamphlet.

Considering it’s a pamphlet, it actually does ok on the Chair Test! It fits on the chair next to me and I can read it! The font is a little small (because it’s a folded pamphlet), but it worked on the chair next to me, as I consulted it during gameplay.

The set-up was pretty good: see the picture above.

The rules are a little sparse, but they does work.

It even does a decent job at showing examples and counter-examples of “what is a set”! I appreciated that set of pictures!

Given the constraints of a pamphlet, this rulesheet worked pretty well. The pictures were all informative. There were a number of places where some clarifications could have been provided, but the ruleset was simple enough and consistent enough that we were able to extrapolate rules when needed.

This was a decent to pretty good rulesheet.

Gameplay

Choose a starting scenario: The Intro Case (The Valley of Fear) is just to get you into the game, so it has simpler win conditions. The Final Problem has a much harder win condition.

Each player (works for 1-2 players) takes either the Watson card or the Sherlock Holmes card. See above. The bottom of the card shows the special abilities of each player!

Basically, each character gets 4 cards on their turn to play to one of two areas: the Crime Scene or the Office. There are two types of cards: Investigator cards (labelled 1-4: see above) and Threat Cards (labelled A-D, see below).

Over the course of the game, the player(s) must play two cards to the Crime Scene and two cards to the Office each turn.

In the Office, you are trying to make sets of cards: you have to alternate investigator and threat cards (numbers and letters … see above). All investigators (numbers) must be in the same column, and all letters must be distinct in a column: these are the “sets” the players are making. If you get 3 full sets (4 investigators), you win!

However, you still have to play two cards to the Crime Scene as well: see above. If you ever get 2 of any type of card, you immediately discard those two cards and “do something!”

Two threat cards? You take a wound! See two threats above …

The wound card is a “timer” of sorts: if you ever get 3 wounds, you lose!

If you get two investigators on the Crime Scene, you invoke your special powers!

The rulesheet does a nice job of summarizing of how to use your special powers … see above.

If you get enough sets, you win! If you get 3 wounds, you lose! It all happens in about 20 minutes.

Solo Play

A game called Sherlock Solitaire had better have a solo mode! It does (thank you for following Saunders’ Law): it’s the main way to play!

Once I got past my first few games (after I had to decipher the rulesheet), the game moved pretty quickly.

The best part of the game was when I could be clever and play my special abilities in a clever way to move cards to/from the Crime Scene/Office. The worst part was when I just played cards and didn’t feel like I had a lot of choice. The game was a fairly engaging way to spend 20 minutes. It really did feel like a game of Solitaire as I moved cards around.

More Solitaire Than Sherlock

With a name like Sherlock Solitaire, you might be expecting something more like a mystery. No, this is a lot more Solitaire than Sherlock: you are just playing cards like a game of Solitaire.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the art! The art that comes with this game is gorgeous and very evocative of the Sherlock Holmes stories!

In the end, though, there is no mystery to solve. There isn’t really a lot of theme: this could have been a Cthulu game, a Zombie game, or a Smurf game. Or anything. Nothing about the gameplay really has to be in a Victorian Sherlock Universe.

The art is really the only thing that makes you think of Sherlock Holmes: and it is phenomenal art!

Two Player Game

I had to wait almost a whole month to play with Sam!! He was interested in the game, but was busy with family and work all March.

There are two ways to play Sherlock Solitaire 2-Player:

Play as the solo game, but both players together make all the decisions
Each player takes Sherlock and Watson, and alternates turns

We chose to alternate turns. The solo game with 2 players making all the decisions seemed less fun … and at that point, it’s just the solo game anyways.

What we found was that … the second player got a little bored. There is no strategy in a 2-Player game, as you have no idea what cards you get until your turn. What that means is that if you are waiting for you turn, you can do nothing useful!! You just sit there waiting for your turn.

The two-player game was much less interesting, as someone was always “waiting” with nothing to do.

… until we tried a little house rule.

House Rule for Two Players

When it’s not your turn, draw some cards! Instead of sitting there “doing nothing” during your friend’s turn, you can then “be thinking” about what you want to do when it’s your turn! To keep this from being too overpowering (from the game balance perspective), we choose to just draw two cards at the end of the turn and two at the beginning of the turn.

That way, we were still playing four cards per turn, but had a hint of what we could on our turn.

Weirdly, me and Sam didn’t feel like this changed the game balance too much, and in fact didn’t change our turn too much, but it felt like it mattered! With this simple rule, we both felt more engaged, even if it didn’t change the game too much! We felt like we mattered more, even if it was just a small amount! And that made a big difference.

Conclusion

If you were expecting something with a mystery of some sort, then Sherlock Solitaire may be a big disappointment. There’s a lot more Solitaire than Sherlock in this game: it’s basically just a card game about making sets and moving cards.

The special powers of the Sherlock and Watson characters make the game interesting, as you can make many moves in the game that make you feel clever.

And despite the lack of theme to this all card game, the art is still very nice and evocative.

As a solo game, I’d probably give a 5.5 or 6/10. I might play it again: it’s pretty straight forward and quick … and there are moments where I feel clever. I freely admit that the art brings it up the score a little bit: the fantastic look makes this game stand out on the table.

As a two-player game, I would give the unaltered game a 5/10: there was just too much downtime between turns. If, however, we played with our house rule (always having two cards in your hand), then I would bump this up to a 6.5/10! We felt much more engaged even if it was just our preception! My favorite way of playing Sherlock Solitaire was 2-Player with our house rule: that’s probably how I’d play it again.

Soul Raiders: A Solo and Cooperative Review

Soul Raiders is a cooperative fantasy adventure game that was on Kickstarter back in July 2021 and promised delivery in December 2022. I backed the deluxe Grimoire Edition (above). Well, it finally arrived last month (March 2025), so it’s about 2.3 years late. This wasn’t on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2022, but it probably was my #11 or #12!

This sat unplayed in the box longer than it should have; I think I was scared of how big it was! Look how big it is!!! Did I have the cycles to even try it?

Well, I finally got around to getting out and trying it … was it worth it?

Unboxing

Although this unboxing here is to show you what’s in the box, it’s also here to remind me how to put the box together! So, it’s for me and you!

This is a BIG box. This is the Grimoire Edition.

It’s got a lot of stuff packed in: see the character boxes above (this is a cooperative fantasy adventure game).

This game is so grandiose, it has it’s own lore book!

If you really want to get into a fantasy universe, this might be the right game for you!

This dual-layered board (above) keeps track of a lot of shared attributes and state of the game.

There’s lot of little boxes to store your game between sessions.

There’s some fabulous minis.

The campaign notebook allows to save the game between chapters.

There’s a bunch of cardboard tokens.

And boards for the characters.

Underneath all that, are the three main chapters of the game.

The cards of the game are in two boxes: see above.

Each of the chapter boxes has huge Location cards and little cards.

This game is GORGEOUS. The production is GORGEOUS.

Consult the pictures above for when you need to repack your box!

Rulebook

The rulebook is good. Well, ish.

It gets about a B+ on the Chair Test: it overhangs on the chair next to me just a little (see above), but it lays flat and open, it has a big readable fonts, and it has lot of pictures.

The components page is well-labelled and notated (see above). It even breaks up the cards by chapters.

The set-up works pretty well, although it doesn’t show how the story cards will be laid out (which we need to discuss more).

This is a gorgeous rulebook that’s written pretty well, it has lots of examples and lots of pictures.

It even ends with a very useful summary of icons on the back!

Although I liked this rulebook a lot, it made the mistake of putting too much content into the examples. I like it when rules have clear definitions, then maybe use the examples to help explain and/or clarify. Unfortunately, I think this leaned a little too much into using the examples AS the rules a few times. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad the examples are there, but I wanted clear succinct rules as well. (I think the last time we noticed this “rules in examples” phenomena was back Sleeping Gods rules: see link here).

The rulebook was generally good, and it frankly looks gorgeous (like the rest of the game).

Gameplay

The best way to describe this game? It feels like it a video game: a Point-And-Click (fantasy) Adventure game with lots of monster fighting.

Each player takes the role of one of six characters: see the character boxes above.

Each character has his own set of cards: there’s basic Action cards (above top) and Heroic Action cards (above bottom). Notice the Heroic Action cards have a special foil on them so you can tell them apart!

These Heroic Action cards are earned (in order) by spending Heroism tokens (3 to earn a new Heroic Action card). Cool fact; you can spend 3 Heroism tokens at ANY time to immediately earn a new card! Very useful when you need a card immediately!

You get Heroism tokens are various plot points in the story, but the most reliable way to getting Heroism Tokens is by defeating BIG BAD MONSTERS! Defeating the one above opens Story Card 14, but also earns the player 2 Heroism tokens!

By the end of Chapter 1, I had been able to earn 6 new Heroic Actions cards! (Heroic Action Cards must be earned in order: note the numbers on far right).

The cards are you primary currency for “getting things done”. Some cards are more attuned to movement (as you must explore) … see above …

… and some cards are more attuned to fighting! See above. Basically, you can always use the value on the card for whatever you want, but the card will have “bonuses” if you use it for the specific specialization!

For example, Heroic Action card #6 (the top one) has a basic value of 5, but if you use it for fighting, you get an extra +3!

Example above: Even though the cards I drew were all movement-centric, I can use the values on the cards for fighting: 4+4 = 8 takes out the first shield on the bad guy, and 4+2 = 6 takes out the second shield! I used all my cards, and I didn’t get any advantages, but I was able to do what I needed!

Basically, your character explores the world, moves around, interacts with the world, and fights monsters! All actions are based on the values on your cards!

Basically, you character(s) move around on the Location sheets and explore!

The Locations have arrows which tell you how much its cost to move between Locations: see above and below.

For example, to move to Location 2, I need to spend 4 points from my cards.

This is kind of a choose-your-own adventure tale! You decide which paths to take, which monsters to fight, which puzzles to interact with! It feels very much like a choose-your-own adventure!

What’s cool is that each Location has pretty great art (a little comic-booky, but I like it) which describes all the things you can do at that Location … kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure book does in each section.

See above as the character starts on the maps!

An interesting thing that happens is that there is a “clock” pushing the game forward. At the end of every “turn” after you’ve played all your cards, the Vitae track moves down. Basically, every time it “wraps around” back to 30, you drop the Action token one space (upper right). If your threat or the action space ever get to the end, the game is over!

To win, you need to find the Red Stars on the story cards. If you don’t find appropriate story cards, you lose!

Explore, fight monsters, interact with your world: this is an adventure game! The way the movement works, it feels very much like a choose-your-adventure game (as the Locations could just be pages numbers in a book!) This game also feels like a Point-And-Click Adventure game too! See our Top 10 Point-And-Click Adventure Board Games for more discussion of this genre!

Solo Play

So, this game supports the solo player (thank you for following Saunders’ Law). This is a true solo game: the solo player operates one character.

The only real change for solo play is on the Game board:

On the Game Board, the final space has a “3” marker on it (instead of 2). This is the number of cards you draw every turn, so the solo player has that extra advantage that (on the last set of rounds) they get three Action cards instead of two. And that’s the only change!

The solo player explores, fights, and interacts … but just by himself! There’s no real balancing anywhere else. It seems a little weird that there are no other balancing mechanisms, but basically what tends to happen is that more enemies come out as more people play, so that tends to balance the game. We’ll address that a little more in the cooperative section.

Cooperative

The cooperative game brought up a lot of rules I didn’t have to deal with in the solo game! When you explore new Locations, whether or not someone is already there “changes” how the Location works!

Unfortunately, the Icons were very confusing about this. A slight change of color AND whether its on side A or B makes a big difference. It actually took us almost half the game sessions to get this right!

Although the cooperative game has a sense of Player Selected Turn Order, there really is no turn order! Players just play when they want and support each other if it made sense. Although I love this idea, as it should make the game go faster, the game tended to serialize as each player waited to see what happened to see if they needed help. “Let’s wait to see what Sam gets!” I love this from a cooperative point of view, as it lets us support each other!! Unfortunately, what really happened more often than not is that the game really just slowed down behind one (the current active player). To be fair, there were also plenty of times when concurrent play kept the game moving forward. This system worked pretty well from a cooperative point of view. From a length of game point of view, this was not optimal.

Although this game is a 1-4 Player game, I was the fifth player and “the rules guy”. I just read the rules and taught the game and looked up clarifications. Sadly, this was a very busy position for most of the game! I would constantly be looking up rules clarifications, icon clarifications, and other things. I had played the solo game for about 8 hours, and I was still struggling to find some rules!

There are good moments of cooperation as the players supported each other. Me being the “rule guy” actually worked pretty well, although it was sort of depressing that I had to fill this role.

Urgency

This game has, essentially, a built-in clock. Every time you have finished playing all your cards, you have to take “Vitae” damage (basically, a shared hit point pool) based on the the current. The threat will go up occasionally as monsters or other things happen. And you can’t “usually” just rest on a Location: almost all Locations force you to fight new monsters if you stay there.

So the game is just always pushing forward: This is both good and bad. If you are looking for a contemplative adventure/exploration game, this isn’t really it. If you want an adventure game that doesn’t stand still, but presents a sense of “you have to keep moving“, this is the adventure game for you. Here’s a very bad analogy; some sharks have to keep moving in water or they die. That’s kind of what you feel like here: players always have to keep moving (exploring) or you die.

Whether you like that urgency or not is up to you.

Kind of a Big Mess

When you take out the Location cards, there’s no real rhyme or reason to them. They don’t form a map (like Arydia Locations did: see that review here), they are more like “pages of a book”. See my big mess after finishing chapter 1!

The problem is that you WANT to see the connections from previous Locations you visited! So you try to keep a lot of Locations out as you play so you can see how you came here. And you can see my big mess above as I try to keep some Locations out. To be clear: the Locations DO NOT form a map! (The rulebook even emphasizes this point).

So, the Locations that come out are kind of a mess. Shrug. It feels like there should be a better way to deal with it?

Portals

There are some very cool minis for portals! See above!

You can see above as I have built at least one early in the game! I was hoping to make this spot an easy one to come back since there are no “monster spawners” there!

And yet, I don’t think I took full advantage of the portals. At all. I don’t think I used them once. Which is a real shame, because they are so nice!

This is where I feel like this is even more like a Video game … where you replay the level to get the highest score and use the portals to their best advantage. I played Chapter One and got a few extras, but not enough. I feel like what I would do in a video game is replay it until I got the perfect score for that level! I think to do that, I think you’d almost have to use the portals.

Maybe the portals will become more useful later on. I was … disappointed with them. Given how you never really get to just “think” (see Urgency section above), the only time it feels like you might be able to take full advantage of them is to replay the level. Remember how I said this feels like a video game? That min-max feeling emphasizes that point even more …

Save Game

This is a campaign. You will need to save you game between chapters. Unless you can leave the game set-up (and it is a table hog), you will have to save your game.

You can either use the campaign book (above) …

Or just take a picture of your game and extras at the end (see above). The cards are pretty well marked.

Let’s be clear: this is a campaign you can reset! I have a solo game going, but we are also playing a cooperative game at the same time. Sure, I’ll have to “pick” the cards out I want, but it’s fairly easy to reset the campaign to replay it from scratch. This is not a legacy game.

Too Many Rules?

For such a lavish game, it’s both really simple and really complicated. The basic card play is really straight forward, but all the little rules for combat and especially movement feel very complicated. If you enter a Location with someone else, it has a different effect depending on the Icon in there, which has subtle difference between other Icons.

The fact that my role as “The Rules Guy” (as the 5th player and NOT playing the game) was pretty active the entire game might be an indicator that maybe there’s a few too many rules.

Reactions

Oof, Soul Raiders did not go over well with my group. My friends compared this to Tainted Grail (see part I and part II here) where it was just a grind to explore. Andrew even commented: “This doesn’t feel like an exploration game, even though it kind of looks like one! I have no mental model for how the map lays out because it’s so clumsy!” Sara commented that the “.. Exploration feels like Tainted Grail because you just keep getting monsters! You don’t really feel like you advance!”

Andrew pointed out, “It’s not even really choose-your-own Adventure, because you don’t really have a lot of choices! You left, right, or forward most of the time! And it feels randoms!”

The reactions were ok to not great.

Sara and Andrew: 5/10. “Don’t really want to play it again. It didn’t feel like exploration. It felt too grindy like Tainted Grail.”

Sam: 5.5/10 “I’d play it again, but I really didn’t love it. I thought Luddite from last week was more thematic than Soul Raiders!”

Teresa: 6.5/10 “I had okay fun and would play again.”

Rich: As a cooperative game, I definitely saw what my friends saw with the grindiness, and I could see why my friends didn’t love it. As a solo game, I’m right on the fence of recommending it: I’ll give it a 7/10 for the solo game, and maybe I could see it working as an intimate 2-Player game. I think as a solo player, I became more invested in the story, but I still had some of the problems that my friends had. I love the art, and I really like the simplicity of the card system. I also really like the upgrade system (where you can IMMEDIATELY grab a card with 3 Heroism). I think there is some interesting stuff happening in the story, but the game does fall to the grind sometimes.

Conclusion

Soul Riders is a gorgeous cooperative adventure with a sense of urgency. That urgency adds to it’s video game feel: it’s kind of a Point-And-Click Adventure in a board game, with exploring and interacting, but also lots of fighting!

Unfortunately, this game didn’t go over very well with my friends as a cooperative game, with scores ranging between 5/10 and 6.5/10. Soul Raiders reminded my friends too much of the grindiness of the original Tainted Grail in both its exploration and fighting. And that grindiness was a big turn off. Having said that, the system worked well from a cooperative perspective, because my friends seemed to cooperate well!

As a solo player, I become fairly invested in the story and I enjoyed it a little more. I think the solo player can reflect a little more than a cooperative team, so maybe that urgency in the game is less intrusive for the solo player? I do think that an intimate 2-Player game could go over well as the solo game.

Hopefully this review can tell you whether or not that Soul Raiders is right for you.

Luddite Can Be An Experience, If You Let It. A Review

Luddite arrived at my house about a month or more ago, but I have been afraid to open it. Why? I mean Luddite was the #5 entry on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024! I paid money and Kickstarted it!! Why was I worried?

Luddite “looks” big because it has a graphic novel associated with it; there’s a lot of story here. I was afraid I’d mentally have to prepare myself to embrace it.

I don’t know why I worried! At the end of the day, this is “just” a roll-and-write game! You roll 3 dice, mark off spaces on your sheet above (See above) and try to score points (aka damage)! The base game is pretty straight-forward!

The object is to do enough damage to move to the next level! You need 60 at easy difficulty; see above as I miss by 1! Heart-breaking!

In order to inflict the damage, you have to “move” the metal token (left side above; from the START to the END): if you don’t move that token, you can’t do any damage at all! So, while trying to get “points” (aka, damage), you also have to make sure the token above moves!

The game plays solo, cooperatively, and competitively. The solo game is all about doing enough damage, and the competitive game is “who can do the most damage to win”. The cooperative game is really just multiplayer solitaire: take the scores of all players and average them to get a score; if that score is high enough, players collectively win!

To be clear, there is NO cooperation in the cooperative game; each player just takes their own book and plays completely independently. Players can’t help each other, they can’t share anything, they can’t use a dice on another players board … nothing. This is as multiplayer solitaire as you can get. If you want an experience where you are working with your friends, chatting, strategizing, working together, … this isn’t the game for you. BUT if you have friends who are “suspicious” of cooperative games, or people who don’t like the cooperative games, this can still work for you!

No one will tell you what to do, as everyone’s head is down and looking at their own board! See above! And no one gets in anyone else’s board in any way!

I made the mistake of getting 3 more “Additional Player Packs” (see above), but what this means is that 3 more people can play! Basically, Luddite can scale to as many people as you want because there is no interaction between players!! I am thinking of trying a 7-Player game of Luddite at RichieCon this year! (I have 4 packs in the base game and 3 packs from additional buys = 7 player boards!)

So, you can view this complete lack of player interaction as a good thing or bad thing, depending on the group you are playing with.

Solo Experience

If this was all there was to Luddite, there’s not much making it stand out, is there? It’s a pretty good roll-and-write game for the solo player, and it’s a pretty good cooperative roll-and-write that scales to any number of players … even if there is no player interaction.

However, if you let it … this game can be an experience! The Graphic Novel that comes with the game tells the story of some people who have been “made redundant” by AI and how they are fighting back!

The Graphic Novel gives you a back-story, then at certain places, tells you what chapter/pages to turn to! See above!

This was more immersive than I expected. If you let it, this game can feel very immersive. For my solo experience, I read the graphic novel that came with the game …

… and each new game is a progression of the story, even if the boards look very similar. See above as I win (solo) chapter 3!

Somehow, it seems for a game named Luddite (Luddite: someone who eschews technology) … that you HAVE to read the physical graphic novel, right?

Cooperative Experience

It turns out, the comic book is also online … in a video! It has voice-acting, and shows the comic progressing! See above!

For the cooperative game, it’s “harder” to enjoy the graphic novel in its physical form … you have to pass it around, or wait for others to read it, or read over people’s shoulders. But, if you go to the Cotswold Group website, they have the entire graphic novel online! (And even a little tutorial)

So, even though it’s seem against the spirit of a gamed named Luddite, the cooperative experience is made so much better by watching the comics-turned-to-videos! Arguably, that experience engulfs you and all your friends into the game! It’s a shared story you are all experiencing!

To be fair, it helps the experience if you can show the video on a big screen or TV: see above. It feels more immersive that way.

House Rule/Hack (Get it? Hack? In a game about Hacking?)

The dice are a shared resource everyone shares in the cooperative game: they are rolled and placed in the middle for everyone to see! But sometimes, in the heat of playing, you may forget which dice you used for which activity. Surprisingly, there’s no place on the sheet to “notate” which dice we used !!

Since you don’t compute your damage until the very end of the game, you can use the Damage section!

This little house rule/hack made it easier to play the game cooperatively, as you could all independently note the dice rolled and how/when/where you used them.

Conclusion

If you let Luddite be an experience that carries you along in its story (either as a graphic novel or comic-turned-video), I think this can be a really fun and immersive experience.

A reductionist might say “Luddite just a roll-and-write” … but at least it’s a good one. I really enjoyed all my plays of this. The base game is pretty straightforward and quick, and it has lots of meaningful decisions.

The cooperative game has literally no interaction between players, which can be a curse or a blessing, depending on the group you are playing with. But, because of that lack of interaction, this game can scale to pretty much any number … as long as you have the boards!

This is a good solo roll-and-write (7/10), and a pretty good cooperative roll-and-write (6.5/10 or 7/10, depending on what you want), but it’s the story and experience that elevates this just enough that I would recommend you try this: 7.5/10.

I still think it’s hilarious that a game called Luddite has such a great online presence. I mean, a game called Luddite should ONLY have the physical version, right?

Appendix: Binding

I normally despise this kind of binding, especially on something you need to hold open! See my review of War Story, Freedom Five, and Forests of Admiron if you don’t believe me! For a graphic novel, it’s “okay” since you are just reading it and holding it open. See below.

Where this binding fails is when you have to read the directions in the back of the book! See below as I try to wedge the book into the edge so it’ll stay open! I hate this kind of binding for rulebooks!

See above as I attempt to hold it open!!! Honestly, the rules should have been in a second standalone book that could be lain flat and open. As a graphic novel, this kind of binding is “fine”. But the rules portion of the graphic novel (in the same book, this really made me grumpy.

One-Hit Heroes: A Solo and Cooperative Review. Insert Funny Phrase Here.

I know, I know. You really want me to make some kind of funny phrase like “One-Hit Heroes is a one-hit wonder” or “One-Hit and it’s out!” But those aren’t really apt descriptions, so insert your own funny phrase above! Let’s look below to see what it’s REALLY like!

One-Hit Heroes is cooperative boss-battling game I backed on Kickstarter back in April 2024. It promised delivery in March 2025, and lo-and-behold, it arrived March 29, 2025! So, it made it! Barely!

I hav to admit I was a little spicy with the delivery, as they literally left it ON THE STREET! See picture above! The package is literally on the street in front of my mailbox! Oi!

Luckily, everything was fine: the box and everything was in perfect shape. (I got two little upgrades with the box; a epilogue box and an extra hero pack: see above).

I was pretty excited for this! This was #6 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2025!

Let’s take a closer look!

Unboxing

This is a medium sized box; see above and below for perspective.

It does have a slightly weird shape; it’s not a Ticket To Ride sized box. However, it’s not too bulky or too awkwardly shaped.

It contains some cards and tokens, as well as three separate “Episodes”. See above.

The components are all pretty high-quality. The cards are NOT linen-finished and are all very shiny. That’s actually my major complaint with the components of the game; when playing, the games seems very “shiny”: the cards, plastic trays, are all “shiny” and can be distracting.

Rulebook

The rulebook is good.

The rulebook feels like it has a weird form factor (look how loooooong and thin it is above) …

… but when you open it up, it fits PERFECTLY on the chair next to me! See above!! The rulebook stays open, it’s easy to read, and there is no pages drooping over the edges! One-Hit Heroes gets an A on the Chair Test! See above!

The Component page is nice; it shows and adds correlative text to everything.

The Set-Up page looks good and is easy to follow, for both the Heroes and the Boss. See above.

It does a great job explaining the player mats!

Overall, the text is big, easy to read, has a legible font, and is annotated with many pictures describing play. There are also parenthetical phrases notated for “extra information”.

The back of the rulebook could have been a little better, but whatever, this was a good rulebook. It explained the game, showed the components and set-up, and was fairly easy to read.

Gameplay

Players work together to take down a boss; a single boss battle takes about 20 minutes (the box is pretty accurate in its time). An “Episode” in the game is 4 to 5 boss battles, which each boss getting harder and harder.

Each player takes and plays one character of the six above. Each deck has 11 cards with very different personalities. Take Sofia, for instance; her story is on the back of her card!

What do her cards look like?

See some of the cards from Sofia above.

Each player grabs a tray (above) for their character and puts the cards into the tray (below).

As the game name implies (One-Hit Heroes), the Heroes can only take one hit before they die! Even more so, if any character dies, all players lose! It’s up to the players to stop from getting hit!

Each character has two items slots for Items that “help” (see above), but arguably the Items are more important for stopping a hit! Players can destroy an item to avoid a hit! (Thematically, the item takes the hit instead of the character).

Items are a coarse way to stop hits; it’s usually better to stay out of way of hits if possible (since you only have two items)! One-Hit Heroes uses a notion of an “Aggro track” for each hero. See the track running left to right at the top of the tray? It’s empty for Will right now.

… but Edric (above) has a track almost full of Aggro! Basically, the fuller the track, the more likely you are to incur the wrath of the boss and take a hit!

This is a boss-battler after all! The Punch-Bot (the very first boss from the very first episode) only attacks when a Heroes’ Aggro is in the “red range”. So, if the players can keep their Aggro low, Punch-Bot won’t even attack!

But, Aggro will go up. Either from bad news cards (like above) …

… or every Attack you do ups your own Aggro! If Sofia uses here Sidearm (above) to so one yellow damage, then does one damage to the Punch-Bot, but takes 1 Aggro! Every attack you do that does damage causes Aggro back to yourself!

Luckily, each player has cards to manage Aggro; some cards (like Taunt above) will move Aggro around, and other cards will just discard it. Every Hero has a different way of dealing with Aggro; some move it around, some discard it, some avoid it as much as possible, and some have cards that help others! Each Hero has a different flavor of cards!

Interestingly, there are two different kinds of damage: yellow and orange (light and heavy damage, respectively).

To take out a boss, you have to do both all yellow and all orange damage. Punch-Bot (above) needs to take 10 light damage and 5 heavy damage to take him out.

If players can defeat the Boss before said boss does one-hit to anyone, the players win! If the boss does one-hit to anyone (and it can’t be blocked or avoided), all players lose! It’s a boss-battler!

Solo Play: Built-In Mode

The box is confusing; it implies there are no solo modes! 2-4 Players means no solo mode, right? Nope! There are actually two solo modes!

The first solo mode is described in the Hero Set-up on page 3 (see above). Basically, the solo mode is that the solo player has to alternate between two Heroes! The solo description (above) is simple and very functional; it’s all you need.

For my first solo game, I played Will and Edric against Punch-Bot from Episode 1! See above!

The game balance in this game is kept by having a Hero go, the Boss go, the next Hero go, and so on. Basically, heroes and the boss alternate, so you can “kinda” have any number of heroes.

From a game balance perspective, I always worry that you need to adjust the hit points for the number of players … but since each Hero has exactly 1 hit point, that’s not really a problem here, is it? Well, it didn’t seem to be: I was able to play all the way through Episode 1 (four boss battles) and I had a great time! It was close; strictly speaking, as I lost a battle at one point, but it’s very easy to reset and play again since the game is only 20 minutes per boss.

This solo mode emphasizes that characters must work together to keep Aggro under control; in order to survive, both players will be doing things to move and discard Aggro.

Solo Mode 2: Do66-0 Pack

The second Solo mode does NOT come with the game; you must purchase the D066-0 Hero Pack (see above).

There is a little discussion of the DO66-0 pack (and a link) in the back of the instruction book.

Basically, the DO66-0 mode is a companion that you play in solo mode INSTEAD of a second Hero.

It’s much easier to play with DOGG-0: DO66-0 gets a turn without having to provoke an extra Boss turn. But, he also can’t do much, as he has no cards to play! All he can really do is block and roll the damage dice … no cards.

In fact, it’s so easy to play, you can give DOGG-0 to younger players and have them play with you (that’s what Beginner Mode is).

I got to be honest, I didn’t enjoy DO66-O solo mode that much. DO66-0 does very little on his turn: “about” one damage per turn, depending on what you roll on the damage dice. (He does add new stuff once you start drafting, and that does make him a little better).

I actually think the better use of DO66-0 is to bring in younger kids so at least they can participate; he’s so simple to play and kids can feel like they are helping.

I prefer the base (original) solo mode; it’s two characters and is how the game as meant to be played. The base solo mode emphasizes how important the sharing and cooperation is in the game, especially to mitigate Aggro problems. This DO66-0 solo mode was “fine”, but I probably won’t come back to it.

Cooperative Mode: Casual Gamers

My first experience cooperatively was with some casual gamers: my nieces. We just played through a single boss: a 20-minute game.

The game was easy to explain to non-gamers! They got the gist of the game pretty quickly, but needed a few clarifications.

I think my nieces liked the game and appreciated how short it was. They did want to play again, but we ran out of time (it was like, Spring Break or something).

What I found: One-Hit Heroes is a pretty simple game to explain, even to non-gamers. The hardest part was explaining some of the text on the cards, but even that wasn’t so bad. My nieces like the game and would play again. They also appreciated how simple it was to learn and play.

Cooperative Play: Gamers

Me and a subset of my gaming group played through Episode 1 cooperatively.

One-Hit Heroes has a nice way of eliciting cooperation; you will lose if you don’t. 🙂 Maybe a better way to say that is that the game goes cause conversations to happen: “Uh oh! I am about to die! Can anyone save me? Should we do some stuff before the next villain?”

The cooperation seems to come out fairly organically; and thank goodness everything is open hand with full communications! There’s no “oh, I can’t show you this because of limited communication“. Nope! People talk, people realize they might die, so people cooperate to block, steal Aggro (in a good way!), and try figure out the best way to move forward.

And the ability to see what’s coming ALSO helps! By seeing the bad news coming up, but not actually here yet, seems to encourage discussion and cooperation.

Overall, the Episode 1 went well; we cooperated, we discussed, we planned, we had a good time.

Teresa was a 7/10, Andrew was a 6.5/10 (which is actually quite high for him).

Episodes

A single Boss battle is about 20 minutes. If that’s all this game were, I’d be a little down about it. Luckily, the Episode really fills out the game. An Episode is a series of 4-5 related bosses, with upgrading happening between bosses!

Episode 1 has four bosses: see above. All the bosses are all very different, and have very different arcs as you fight them.

Arguably the best part of this game are the upgrade decks! After you defeat each boss, players get a chance to draft and add two new cards to their deck!

Skip the next few pictures if you don’t want too many spoilers.

Basically, the players “draft” and each get two cards to upgrade their deck! This is basically deck-advancement like we saw in Adventure Tactics (see here): your deck gets better and better between games!

The decks are also labelled at the bottom right so you can separate them back to their original decks.

And after every boss, you get another 2 cards until you finish the episode!

I will say this: the game says to “draft” until you get two cards, but I think it might be more cooperative to just ‘decide as a group’ what you get. This is the House Rule we implemented: let me and my friends choose the paths we want our heroes to take! I understand why “drafting” works, because then you don’t have to worry about arguing over cards, Alpha Players telling people what to take, and so on. But, if you have anything of a reasonable group, I would suggest just choosing as a group the cards you each want. Caveat Emptor. If you have a slightly contentious group (or are playing at a convention where you don’t know anyone), maybe drafting is the better solution.

I’ll say this again: the upgrades are probably one of the funnest parts of the game. Unfortunately, your upgrades don’t travel with you between Episodes: you have to start fresh to a new Episode.

Things I Liked

Upgrades: Upgrading your deck is one of the more satisfying and fun parts of the game!

Arcs: Given how simple this game is, the arcs on the different types of Bosses are all very different! It’s actually quite impressive how differently each boss plays! And fun!

Components: The components are pretty nice and I like art. It’s comic-booky and attractive without being too “cute”.

Simple: This game is easy to teach and easy to learn. I found even casual gamers got into it pretty quickly.

What I Didn’t Like

Too Random: The game can be too random. I lost a few games because of one die roll. It’s not too big of a deal because it’s just 20 minutes per game, but it is frustrating that an entire game can go amiss because of one die roll!

Too shiny: It’s too hard to capture in pictures, but the game is too shiny. The cards aren’t linen-finished, so they tend to have glare, especially in harder light. And the plastic trays also have a lot of glare: I tried to capture some of that in the picture above. I think this game would be a lot better with duller, linen-finished cards and a tray that was less shiny. The glare was distracting enough that we had to point it out.

No Continuations? As cool as the Episodes are, and even thematic within, the game game doesn’t feel super thematic. While there is continuation within an episode as you keep getting upgrades, there’s no hook that keeps you vaulting into the next episode: remember, you lose ALL your upgrades between episodes, so you start fresh. That actually feels a little debilitating! I’d rather the episodes built on each other you felt the deck was YOUR CREATION … as it is, you start anew every episode. There’s no “hook”: your deck resets and you start over. Kind of a bummer? I just spent the episode building my deck … and now it’s gone.

Conclusion

One-Hit Heroes fits well into many groups; casual gamers, gamery gamers, and even solo gamers! The base game is easy to teach and play at 20 minutes, which makes it easy to bring out. My favorite part of the game, though, was upgrading my deck within an Episode! It’s fun to figure out how you want to advance your character!

The game looks great on the table and has a fun table presence!

My only real complaint is that I feel that there’s a theme or overriding reason to keep playing after I finish an Episode. I really like the upgrading my deck between Bosses in an Episode, and it’s sort of frustrating that you just “throw it all away” at the end of an Episode!

As a solo player, I’d probably give this a 7.5 or 8/10. The game is much more fun, I think, as a cooperative experience at an 8.5/10. It would actually give it a little higher score if the dice rolls didn’t make or break so many games! But, since the game is so quick at 20 minutes per game, it’s usually not a big deal.

Neat game. I think you’ll have fun with just about any group you bring it out to.

Top 10 Cooperative Cat Games (Board and Card Games)

Yes, yes. We are really doing this: we are doing a a Top 10 Cooperative Cat Games! To be clear, these are cooperative board or card games that have an upfront and distinct cat theme to them! Some games have cats in them (like Cyber Pet Quest from a few weeks ago), but those games aren’t “cat-centric”. The 10 games below are all cooperative games where the cats are the main focus … and that’s just how the cats like it!

10. Max

Players: 1-8
Ages: 4 to 7 Years old
Time: 10 Minutes
Supports Solo? Yes
Type: Cooperative Roll-And-Move

It’s kind of hard to recommend this, as it’s a game meant for very very young players: the recommended age range for Max is 4-7 years old.

And the production isn’t great: see above.

But, this may be just what you are looking for to give your younger cat lover! It’s a cooperative game for young kids, and that right there makes it worth mentioning! (even if it’s not the most beautiful game in the world)

Trying to save the creatures from Max is a fun little theme that is surprisingly charming. Be aware: this is a roll-and-move game, the production isn’t great, it’s meant for young kids, and the game is very light. But, it’s kind of charming as a cooperative cat game, so it makes our list.

9. Endangered

Players: 1-5
Ages: 10+ Years old
Time: 60 Minutes
Supports Solo? Yes
Type: Cooperative Dice Placement Game

This is a cooperative dice placement where players play in together in multiple realms: diplomacy in the UN, conservation in the jungles, and gaining resources in the real world!

This only made out #9 because just a few scenarios are about cats (Tigers in the base game and Jaguars in the expansion), but they are constantly making more and more expansions all the time! And during those scenarios, the cats take center stage!

This has some really interesting ideas; the cooperative dice-placement mechanic is very well implemented!

Take a look at our review of Endangered to see if this might be for you.

8. Magical Kitties Save The Day!

Players: 2-7
Ages: 6+ Years old
Time: 60-120 Minutes
Supports Solo? Sort of, there’s a solo Adventure that comes with the game to teach it
Type: Cooperative Role Playing Game (RPG)

So, I am in the camp that views RPGs as cooperative games; I view the Dungeon Master/Game Master (DM/GM) as a shepherd for herding cats through an adventure (analogy chosen on purpose). The players are cooperating to get the best outcome for the group, and the GM is just trying to help the players. I know this GM view isn’t shared by everyone, but the vibe of this particular RPG is certainly very cooperative.

magickittiesback

Players plays as cats going on adventures to save the day … that sounds like a cooperative game to me! This is a fun and goofy cooperative game that will require a GM to run it.

The solo comic book that comes with for teaching the game is pretty awesome!

7. Cat Crimes

Players: 1+
Ages: 8 to Adult
Time: 15-30 Minutes
Supports Solo? Yes, solo first! Cooperative by group
Type: Cooperative Logic Puzzles

Cat Crimes is more of a solo logic puzzle than a game per se, but you can play it cooperatively by having all players work together as a group to solve the puzzles!

Player(s) take a challenge card (from Beginner to Expert: see above) and try to solve the puzzle! Who Ruined The Shoes?

Players use the hints on the card to deduce, via logic only, the order of the cats around the table!

Once the cats are placed around the table correctly, that pinpoints the culprit! See above as Duchess ruined the shoes!!

This is a fun little logic game where the cats are cute: the theme helps keep it from taking itself too seriously. But the puzzles are whatever challenge your group is up for!

6. Space Cats Fight Fascism

Players: 2-4
Ages: 13+
Time: 45-60 Minutes
Supports Solo? No (although you can play solo via 2-handed solo)
Type: Cooperative Dice and Card Management Game

This little cat game came out of nowhere for us: it’s from a very small publisher (TESA) and it really doesn’t have a lot of buzz around it.

The components are a little wonky and the art is a little wonky. It’s a pretty small game.

But this little game is surprisingly fun! It has a Pandemic feel as cats fly around the galaxy trying to stop facism (removing cubes like Pandemic). Space Cats Fight Fascism isn’t really political (despite the name); it’s really just a surprisingly cute cooperative game with its own “vibe”. The cat theme works surprisingly well, considering this game could be just an abstract, but somehow the cats in this game give it its own flavor, its own soul, and its own sense of humor.

5. Cat Rescue

Players: 1-4
Ages: 8+
Time: 15 Minutes
Supports Solo? Yes
Type: Cooperative Tile Placement/Tableau Management Game

Cat Rescue is a very cute game that was on Kickstarter, but it’s actually incredibly hard to find now. I ended up finding the original blister pack version (see above).

Players put some very cute cats in a 4×4 grid (see above and below).

The main mechanic is that you “push” cats along a row or column, trying to push a cat that’s “ready for adoption” (flipped) out of the grid. You continue until you run out of cards and then score how many you saved!

It’s very cute, simple to explain, and easy to play. Cat Rescue is sort of a cross between a tile placement game and a tableau building game. It is hard to find, but there is hope for a reprint.

UPDATE: As of right now, March 30th, 2025, there is a Kickstarter coming in Spring 2025! See information here! Thanks to Lon for pointing this out!

4. Run Run Run!

Players: 1-4
Ages: 8+
Time: 30 Minutes
Supports Solo? Yes, minimal rule changes
Type: Cooperative Tile-Laying Game

This cute game about cats invading an Egyptian tomb is quite fun!

The components in this cooperative tile-laying game are gorgeous! The tiles are thick and easy to read!

The game is easy to teach, easy to play, and plays rather quickly in about 30 minutes! Take a look at our review of Run Run Run! here to see if it might be something you might like!

This game could easily make our Top 10 Cooperative Tile-Laying Games! But that list came out before we played this game …

3. Nekojima

Players: 1-5
Ages: 8+
Time: 15-30 Minutes
Supports Solo? Yes, minimal rule changes
Type: Cooperative Abstract Dexterity Game

Nejokima is a very cute cooperative dexterity game for 1-4 players; this can probably best be described as cooperative Reverse-Jenga! In Nekojima, players work together adding wood blocks on a platform, hoping not to knock anything over! (whereas Jenga has players removing wood blocks from a tower, hoping not to knock anything over)! In both cases, players try not to knock the structure over! See below!

At the end of the day, this is almost an abstract game, but the game leans so heavily into the cat theme (with a cat placemat, the cat tokens, and the “cat always lands on its feet” in the rules), that I think you can call it a cat game.

Take a look at our review of Nekojima to see if this is something you think you might like.

2. Hissy Fit!

Players: 1-4
Ages: 8+
Time: 20 Minutes
Supports Solo? Yes, minimal rule changes
Type: Cooperative Hand Management game

Hissy Fit! is a light little cooperative cat card game (20+ minutes) about trying to get your cat into its carrier! Players move the kitty (above) along (using cards) until it reach the carrier!

Players cooperatively play Human cards (purple) to try to keep the Cat Cards (orange) under control! This is a light, quick game that really encourages cooperation with a simple follow mechanic (allowing other players to play cards even when it’s not their turn)!

The art is absolutely adorable and is quite thematic! The Towel Wrap keeps the cat from scratching you and from moving away! The Robot Vaccuum moves the cat closer to the carrier!

This game is light and adorable and quick and easy to teach: there is a very good chance this will make our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024! UPDATE! It did! See here!

Take a look at our review of Hissy Fit! to see if this is something you might enjoy!

1. Race To The Raft

Players: 1-4
Ages: 8+
Time: 40-60 Minutes
Supports Solo? Yes, with some changes to base game
Type: Cooperative Tile Placement Game

Players need to work together to save the cats (see above) from the burning island (see below)! They need to move the cats to the raft before the fire consumes the island!

This cooperative tile-placement game has players making all sorts of choices cooperatively or solo: which cats to move, which tile stack to draw from, where you place a tile, where to place burning trees, when to move cats! There so many great decisions in this game! This was such a great surprise it made the #3 position on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023! Honestly, it should have been #1, but 2023 was such a strong year for cooperative games!

See our review here of Race To The Raft to see if this cooperative tile-playing game is something you would enjoy! It’s probably the most complex game on this list, but it also has the most choice!

A Cooperative Traitor Game? Wait, What? A Review of Infiltraitors

If you are like me, when you first heard the description of Infiltraitors, you thought, “Wait, What? Is this a cooperative traitor game?”

Look at the back of the box above! “Enemy Spies have infiltrated the Organization! It’s up to you to work together to expose and eliminate all the traitors before it’s too late…” That sounds like a cooperative traitor game, but the next line tells the real story: “Infiltrators is a cooperative deduction game for 2 to 5 players”.

Ah, it’s a deduction game! But it really has a feel of a traitor game like Avalon! Players are going on missions, deducing things about traitors … that sounds like the traitor game, Avalon, right?

I think the game’s title misspelled Infiltraitor on purpose to imply there are traitors in this game. The real spelling should be Infiltrator. I really think they did that on purpose to imply this is a cooperative traitor game … I think they mean it to replace something like Coup or Avalon. Does it?

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing and Gameplay

For a mostly card game, this has a surprising number of cardboard components! It’s also a pretty small box (about the size of Avalon or Coup maybe?) See Coke Can above for perspective.

The bullets are a limited resource for how many “guesses” you have to find the traitors! The gun is just a silly gimmick!

When you are ready to Eliminate a Traitor, you must physically pick up the Gun and a Bullet and “make a guess” what the traitor is (I used what instead of who … you’ll see why)! I think the idea is that you must be very clear that you are making a guess, and picking up that gun makes it very clear to everyone! If you are right, you eliminate that traitor and you are closer to winning! If you are wrong, … well, you have wasted a bullet … hopefully you have enough bullets left to take out the remaining traitors!

As clues come out to identify the traitors, players mark off the Clue Boards: see above. There will be one clue board per suspect.

The rest of the game is in the cards. There are (up to) 5 different suits, each with numbers 1-15.

There are a number of Suspects (face-down cards), depending on the Mission and number of players. The player’s job: use clues to find the identity of all the Suspects before you run out of bullets! If it isn’t clear, you are “eliminating” the infiltrators with bullets!

There are 20 missions described in the rulebook; they get harder and harder. (No state is saved between Missions; each Mission is a brand new game). The first mission, a tutorial, describes how the game works: see above!

Some number of cards are taken from the deck and turned FACE DOWN: these are the Suspects the players must cooperatively identify. (The first Mission has only 2 Suspects: see above).

One player becomes “responsible” for a suspect and will reveal information about the suspect as the game goes on.

Each player will have a hand of cards and use those to help reveal information about a Suspect.

To Eliminate a suspect, the players must guess the color and rank of the face-down Suspect!

How do you guess the Suspect’s color and rank? A player will place a card down; if the color matches OR the rank matches the number or factors or multiples, then it’s considered a match! All matches are turned up-and-down! The lack of a match turns the card sideways. See above as the guess yellow 10 is turned up-and-down! It’s a match! But does it match the color? Or maybe it matches the rank exactly? Or it’s a multiple of 2 or 5 or 10? This is where the deduction kicks in! You have to use the cards you have to try to slowly deduce what the Suspect is!

It takes a little getting used to matching the multiples and factors, but luckily every card in the game lists ALL the factors and multiples it uses! So, it seems harder than it is; once you get used to it, it flows quickly!

To be clear, one player knows who the suspect is, and all the other players are giving clues (placing cards) to help deduce! Nominally, each player tends to take responsibility for one or more Suspects, but it’s dynamic! Players can choose when to take a Suspect and become “responsible” for it as the game flows.

If you eliminate all Suspects, you win! If you run out of bullets, you lose! The Infiltraitors win!

Solo Game

There is no solo game! See above: this is only for 2-5 Players! However, this would be an interesting game to apply The Changing Perspectives idea to! See a link here for The Changing Perspectives Idea! Since all information is public (the clues are all public: there’s no implications or subtle innuendo), you can make deductions solely based on the information presented.

I leave this an exercise to the reader: I think you can play this solo if you want to! Much like Shipwreck Arcana (see review here), this is a deduction game where you can pretend to play both sides, using only public information for deduction. If you get to a point where you have to randomly choose something (you are out of cards, and only one one bullet left), you can always roll a dice to decide the outcome.

Cooperative Game

As a cooperative game, this went over pretty well. The first time we played, we played through the first three missions and had a blast!

It’s sort of ridiculous how much fun the gun and bullets were! It sort of drew us into the game!

The first few missions are pretty straight forward, just getting a little harder each time. You use more suits (which makes the color harder to guess) and more ranks (making the rank harder to guess).

This game came out two weeks in a row! For a little card game, it was surprisingly popular in my game groups! See above and below!

The cooperation worked really well; people would say “I know how to get that suspect! You work on the other one!” The fact that there are multiple suspects in play really also worked well—players could choose where to spend effort, both individually and cooperatively.

The Sticking Point

The game doesn’t quite explain matching rank very well … and it’s the most important part of the game! There are two basic interpretations, which the example (in the rulebook) DOES clarify. Consider the following example: Do these two cards below “match”? (Obviously, they don’t match in color, but what about rank?)

Interpretation 1: If the lists of numbers on both cards has some number in common, they match! Under that interpretation, the two cards above match! (6 has 2,3,6,12; 9 has 3,9: Both have a 3! They match!). (((TO BE CLEAR, this is the WRONG interpretation!!!!)))
Interpretation 2: If the hidden card (on the right, say the 9) LISTS the other card, it’s a match! In this case, it’s NOT a match, as 6 is NOT in the list of number on 9: (3, 9). They DO NOT match!

If you go in with Interpretation 2, that seems to be the rule as clarified by the rulebook (see above). It took us a few games to “get” this rule. This is possibly the biggest bugaboo that may make people dislike the game … if you can’t get this rule about matching!! I think the best way to “explain” the match rule is via Interpretation 2 of the rules above:

“The Suspect card will list all the cards that it matches“.

With that simple explanation, the match rule goes from baroque to simple. And I think it will open it up to players who might be “scared away” by discussion of factors/multiples and math!!

Traitor Experience

After bringing this out at a second game night and playing through the game with a new group, we were able to solidify our thoughts: This feels like a traitor/social deduction game like Coup or Avalon because you are trying to deduce the identity of the traitor! That feeling of trying to deduce “Who is the Traitor?” is really captured by this game … without being a traitor game!

I don’t really like traitor games. They have the Disparity of Experience problem (see here) where people who have played more than you will have a distinct advantage. And I don’t want to lie, yell, scream, accuse with my friends. I just want to work with them and have fun! If you like the process of trying to find the traitor, that deduction process, I think Infiltraitors really captures that feeling! Granted, Infiltraitors replaces social deduction (which has its own flavor of play) with plain deduction, but I think Infiltraitors does a pretty good job of replicating that social deduction feeling in a purely cooperative game.

Conclusion

Does Infiltraitors (a fully cooperative game that’s nominally about traitors) replace Coup or Avalon (games with traitors?) Infiltraitors does a pretty job replicating the experience of finding traitors! It may not quite your cup of tea, as it replaces social deduction with plain deduction, but if you like the idea of finding traitors but don’t like all the social baggage of traitor games, Infiltraitors might be right for you!

I think me and my groups would give this an 8.5/10! We enjoyed it! It was easy to get out, easy to play a few games, and it was a fun experience working together!

BUT, if you pull this out, be very very clear explaining the match rule to new players or you might scare them away! The talk of factors and multiples may scare them away! Don’t explain it that way, and don’t even bring it up! Just explain the Suspect card lists all the numbers it matches; easy-peasy.

If you are looking for a game to replace Coup or Avalon, this might a really good possibility. It still feels like you are hunting traitors, but replaces the social deduction framework with a deduction framework, and it does so in a fully cooperative game.

A Comparison of Three Methods For Flattening Your Board Games

What do the three games above have in common?

If you said “They are all cooperative games“, well, you are mostly correct! (Comic Hunters isn’t cooperative by default, but there is an expansion that makes it cooperative! See here). This is a place where we talk about cooperative games, so that’s a good guess. But there’s something else they all have in common: none of their boards sit flat! See above and below!

You can really see it on Comic Hunters (above): that board just does NOT want to lay flat!

It’s weird, we never thought too much about boards not being flat enough, but we encountered this problem a number of times in the last few years: Comic Hunters, Plum Island Horror, and Dice Throne: Missions! These games really emphasized that sometimes a game board needs some flattening.

We’ll take a look at three different (cooperative) games and three different solutions to this problem! The games of interest all have boards that don’t lay flat! And they are all different sizes! See above!

Plum Island Horror: Very large 8-fold board
Dice Throne: Missions: Medium size 3-fold laminated sheets
Comic Hunters: smaller 3-fold board

Solution 1: Board Butler

The Board Butler is a product specifically designed for the problem of boards-that-don’t-lay-flat. I have seen advertisements on BGG, so I knew this existed. I ordered it from their web site and it arrived within a week. It was like $19.99 + taxes and some shipping (but for some reason I got free shipping).

These are basically little plastic piece you put at the edges to force the board flat.

See Comic Hunters with The Board Butler above. It only needs 4 of the 6 pieces.

It works pretty well and it was easy to put on: no issues on Comic Hunters.

The Board Butler pieces are small enough that I need 4 pieces for the Dice Throne:Missions board: one at each edge.

See above. The clear nature makes them relatively uninvasive.

They work well and keep the board flat. Arguably they could obscure the text at the very bottom, but they don’t seem to.

Finally, let’s look at Plum Island Horror!

For Plum Island Horror, we have to use all 6 of the pieces, which means I can’t put them on the long ends. This doesn’t strictly need another 2 pieces, but it might have been nice.

The Board Butler pieces work well: they hold the board down, and they don’t get in the way.

Basically, The Board Butler worked pretty well on all three games. The weakest was Dice Throne: Missions because the Missions boards are thin laminated boards, so they didn’t fit as tight. They fit securely (but not too tight) on Comic Hunters and Plum Island Horror.

Solution 2: Report Binding Bar

These Report Binding Bars are those little plastic sliders you put onto plastic report sheets. See above and below.

I found a thread on BoardGameGeek that recommended these: see thread here. You can order them here: I got 30 of them for $13.99 plus taxes and shipping. See above.

On Comic Hunters, they work great! They are actually being long enough to cover both edges!

The only real complaint is that they are tight. I was “worried” that by sliding them on, that they would TEAR the board! They did not, but I was also very careful! If you go with this solution, you may want to use your finger to “force” the bar open so it’s less tight:

See above as I jam my finger in there to “loosen” it up.

On Dice Throne: Missions, these are the best by far! They hold the board tight, and they even cover both edges with one piece! See above! I only needed 2 of the 30 pieces to hold this board together!

These just slip on easily (no chance of tearing since the boards are laminated) and hold the boards stiff and flat.

Finally, we use these for Plum Island Horror. We need 4 of them to hold the board down: see above. Again, like Comic Hunters, these were a little scary to use because it “felt like” they might tear the board as I put them on. So, I was very careful.

In all three cases, these held the board down and flat very tightly. They were the cheapest by far, at 30 for $13.99, so you could easily share the cost with friends. You probably only need to 6 each! Even with with Plum Island Horror, you could get by with only 4!!

UPDATE: After sliding these on again and again and again on the Dice Throne: Missions boards, they started to show “slide marks”. That is worrisome.

Solution 3: Giant Plastic Overlay

From the same thread on BGG where we got the Report Binding Bar, we also found a link for these giant pieces of plastic you can just “plop” on the board and force it down! See Amazon link here! You get TWO pieces, but it’s $37.99 plus shipping and tax.

You just put it over your board game and “smoosh” it flat!

It turns out it also has a pocket, so if your game fits, you can just put the board inside! See above as Comic Hunters fits!

It works, it keeps Comic Hunters flat, but the plastic overlay is a bit distracting. It’s especially shiny.

The Dice Throne: Missions boards fit in almost perfectly and look good and flat. See above.

Plum Island Horror is WAAAY to big for a single overlay. Luckily, when you order this, you get TWO sheets. Two sheets work:

The problem is you CANNOT fit this board inside the envelope (see above) , so they simply have to lay two of them on top. Since the Plum Island Horror board is so “hefty”, even this solution had trouble keeping the board flat.

In general, this was the worst solution. It was the hardest to see, because it was so reflective, and it was by far the most expensive. And, for the largest board, it required TWO Sheets.

The only advantage of this solution is that you can WRITE ON THE PLASTIC with a dry-erase marker!! See above. If you want to “annotate” your boards, at least you can do that with the overlays.

Conclusion

Which solution you gravitate towards depends on what you want! The cheapest by far was the Report Binding Bar: it worked on all three boards well, except that it was tight on the thicker boards. You could order 30 of them and split them between your friends for $13.99! The best overall solution was The Board Butler; it worked on all boards well, even if it wasn’t “quite as tight” for the Dice Throne Missions board. The Board Butler was high-quality and I never felt like it was too tight. The Overlay was probably the weakest solution: it was the most expensive (as you needed two overlays for larger boards like Plum Island Horror), it was very reflective, and it is harder to store! The Overlay, however, did had the unique advantage that you could write on it if you needed to!

If I were only getting something to fix the Dice Throne: Missions boards, I might get the Report Binding Bars. If I wanted something more general, I would get the Board Butler. If I wanted to annotate my board with dry-erase markers or keep water off it, I might consider the overlay to help keep my board flat. It’s up to you.

UPDATE: After seeing the Report Binding Bars starts to leave skid marks on the Dice Throne: Missions board, I think I strongly prefer the Board Butler over the binding bar, even for Missions.

Santorini: Pantheon Collector’s Edition and Riddle Of The Sphinx Review, Mostly the Solo and Cooperative Experiences

Santorini: Pantheon Collector’s Edition and Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx both arrived at my door February 28th, just in time for weekend!

These were originally on Kickstarter back in April 2023, and promised delivery May 2024: so it’s not quite a year late, but it is pretty late. At least it finally made up! I have been waiting a while for this game: it was #8 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024!

I was very excited for Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx (which we’ll just call Riddle of the Sphinx from now on), as it promised to take the base game Santorini and make it into a solo and cooperative experience!

However, Riddle of the Sphinx is an expansion: you must have one of the Santorini base games to play it (for some of the components). This particular Kickstarter offered up the “deluxe” Santorini: Pantheon Collector’s Edition, so that’s the one I backed.

I ended up playing pretty much all weekend, so let’s see how that unraveled! Was this worth the wait?

Day 1: The Game Arrives and Santorini Gets Played!

February 28th, 2025: The package arrives with both games!

The acrylic tokens bag opened up and spread them everywhere … make sure you pick up all yours!

You can’t play Riddle of the Sphinx until you know how to play the base game of Santorini. So, that’s where we started.

This edition has quite a bit of extra stuff.

The white blocks and domes are the key components to the game: these are what gets built on the main board. Those little white blocks have quite the toy feeling!

These blocks are the main pieces that will be shared with Riddle of the Sphinx.

There’s some neat bags with lots of components. A lot of these aren’t necessary for the main game.

But the workers (in the blue bag) are important; they are what moves around the map.

The purple bag has a lot of stuff … that I don’t think you will need until you play a LOT of Santorini and want more content.

The most important piece for the main game is the board (packed upside down).

It looks gorgeous!

There’s even a lazy susan for it to rotate on!

There are some God Cards here (God Cards give each player special powers). We need these cards for the base game, but we will NOT need them for Riddle of the Sphinx.

This is a really nice production. It just looks gorgeous. I probably spent too much money to get the deluxe Pantheon Collector’s Edition, but it looks nice.

The rules are hidden on the bottom of the box!

Normally, I would give rules that take up the whole box an F on the Chair Test, but since the rules are ALL ON ONE SIDE, I am going to give this an A! The rules lay out and are easy to consult!!

These rules are succinct and terse, but still pretty darn clear. The game can be described in one page!

There’s a really nice little “first game set-up” which takes you through your first step or two of Santorini with Demeter vs. Artemis!

As you play your first game (I played Me vs Me), you get a sense how everything works. And the buildings that pop-up look really cool! See above!

At the end of my first game, I felt like I understood the mechanisms! This was a simple abstract strategy game that looks really cool! I see why Santorini has survived in the board game zeitgeist for so long! It’s easy to play, easy to describe, easy to learn, but has tons of interesting and strategic decisions. This is a neat game.

For the record, I do want to mention that it’s not too hard to pack everything back into the box … there’s a little graphic on the side that shows how to do that!

So, I was able to play and learn the base game! I look forward to learning Riddle of the Sphinx tomorrow!

Day 2: Unboxing and First Games of Riddle of the Sphinx

First thing Saturday morning, March 1st, I woke up and was excited to get to Riddle of the Sphinx!

It turns the competitive base game of Santorini into a co-op and solo game!

Riddle of the Sphinx has a weird form factor: see above.

It’s a very wide box that opens like a book: see above (with Coke can for perspective).

The Acrylic tokens replace the cardboard tokens.

Off to the left are the bridges, figures, dice, and cards. I am glad I took a picture of this, because when I went back to repack the game, I had to consult my pictures!

The rulebook … is huge. Not from a length perspective, but huge as in “the form factor of this book is very wide and very tall!“

This rulebook completely fails the Chair Test as it droops over the edge and makes it very hard to consult on the chair next to me. See above.

The standard workaround for rulebooks this big is to put them across TWO CHAIRS, with the spine in the middle. (We first discovered this “workaround” when we looked at Batman: Gotham City Chronicles: see here). This makes it so can consult the rulebook on the chairs next to you. Sigh: this rulebook has a terrible form factor! It’s far too engulfing!

The weird thing is, you almost don’t need the rulebook???? The Book of Riddles (which we’ll discuss below) has an EXCELLENT tutorial built in!

The Book of Riddles (see above) is the main component of this expansion. There are 22 “riddles” in here which the player(s) must solve!

The Book of Riddles throws you into the first game with some pretty pictures and flavor text …

A quick note: we’ll be playing solo, which means we have some weird special rules. We have to have a figure called the “Wanderer” whose sole purpose is to make sure we never do the same action twice in a row!

The Wanderer is the middle guy (we’ll see the Sphinx and other dude later).

Using the Wanderer, the solo player selects an action each turn (one of the four above), but can never choose the same action twice in a row.

The first Scenario is Sunshine and Seashores: see above!

The opposite side of the page has a painfully precise (in a good way) description of how to play the first riddle! This is a complete, step-by-step run-through of a winning game so you can see how all the rules work together! This tutorial is a fantastic way to learn how Riddles work!

The only thing you “really” need from the original Santorini box are the blocks and the workers. That’s it! See above! All that other stuff you saw as I unboxed Santorini: Pantheon Collector’s Edition? Completely useless here!

In fact, I made the mistake of thinking we needed the original board (above right) when I played my first game! Nope!

Riddle of the Sphinx has its own God Cards: see Base Gods above and Friendly Gods below!

There’s even a notion of Blessings that comes out in later games!

The Gods are a little different here; you kind of use them up and throw them away!!

The Gods give you powers, but if you complete their quest (at the bottom of the card), you (usually) get a new piece you can build. Why is that so important?

Riddle of the Sphinx is a game about scarcity. You don’t have all the pieces you need to build your towers and edifices, so you have to earn them as you play. By having Gods complete their quests, you get new pieces so you can build as you need to.

The coins on the map describe what you need to build: see above as I need to build a level 1 building underneath the coin to get it!

And then I do!

The coin goes to the top (or bottom) of the page to denote you have “finished” that subgoal. Usually, you need to get all Gold coins to complete the Riddle, and all the Silver coins give you extra help/bonuses.

See above as we build everything, as we try to understand how to solve a Riddle! It’s all about building towers when pieces are scarce! You have to earn the pieces to build what you need!

I need to be clear here; this tutorial is great! I jumped right in and was able to start playing right away! The tutorial held my hand for the first game, and then threw me into my second game. And I was felt so comfortable jumping in after that!

See above for an example of how good that Tutorial is!

After the Tutorial is Riddle 1! As I jumped into Riddle 1, they added some new rules: The Sphinx’s game!

The Sphinx’s Game allows you to roll the dice and “hopefully” get one of the gems! If you get a gem, you get free piece to build! If you fail (because the gem is gone), you lose a worker!

Just like our Tutorial, the game board does a real good job describing set-up on the same page as the Riddle itself. It’s interesting, I don’t think I ever looked in the rulebook for any rules in the first few games: almost everything I needed was presented in the set-ups of the various riddles.

Look how great this looks: see above.

At the end of Day 1, I unboxed Riddle of the Sphinx and played through two scenarios solo; this gave me the sense of how everything worked.

This is a puzzle; you have to figure out when to build, when to recruit god powers, when to finish a god quest (so you can get more pieces), and when to finish the Riddle (which usually means building a tower on a gold piece place!).

Day 2: Campaign and More Play

So, Riddle of the Sphinx is kind of a campaign game. Included in the rulebook are two pages per campaign: The Adventure Map and the Constellation Tree.

The Adventure Map has you “mark” off bubbles on how well you did when you finished a puzzle. (There are multiple conditions you can satisfy, see below).

See above as there are Silver, Gold, and Heroic (above) conditions you can satisfy. Godlike not pictured.

The bubbles you mark off in the Adventure Map corresponds to how many bubbles you can mark off in the Constellation Tree! See above! Basically, the Constellation Tree unlocks what are called Friendly Gods! The more Friendly Gods you have, the more control you have when you attempt a puzzle (remember, God powers are pivotal to doing the riddles, especially if the powers are useful).

Rather than sully my pristine books, I went to make a copy of the two pages … well, it’s too big for my copier, but you CAN just print them directly from Roxley’s web site. So, to play a campaign, you need both pages (see above). After every Riddle, you mark off how many achievements you did! And then you can “maybe” unlock a Friendly God or two!

I used a pencil (see above): Warning! You should probably use a red marker or something VERY distinct. It’s REALLY HARD to tell what you marked with a pencil. Can you tell above? Even zoomed in, I can barely read it! Learn my mistake, use a more “colorful” writing implement so you can see the marks.

So, the first part of my Sunday was getting the Campaign maps marked up for my first few games, when I headed into more puzzles!

At one point, the Sphinx even made an appearance!

By the end of Day 3, I had played 6 Riddles and started my way into a solo campaign.

This is a puzzle; make no mistake about it. It’s more puzzle than game. I loved it. You may not.

Cooperative Play

So, this is different week: I am at Dice Tower West and not with my normal gaming group. I brought Riddle of the Sphinx with me to play it cooperatively with “some people”. My core game group and I have a base level of trust and respect, so cooperative games are easy for us to jump into. Sometimes, it’s a little harder to jump into a cooperative game with people you don’t know. How did that go for us with Riddle of the Sphinx?

I met a real nice fellow named Charles. He and I had a very frank discussion about the Alpha Player problem before we started the game. I worry, since this is more of a puzzle than a game, that Riddle of the Sphinx might drift towards having Alpha Players take over.

From our very frank discussion, we made it clear that we would be supporting each other but still occasionally having suggestions: no Alpha Playering. I admit, I had never thought of this solution to the Alpha Player problem: just talk about it and agree to not do Alpha Player each other. And you know what? That worked fine!

Charles and I started from scratch and played the first 4 riddles (plus tutorial) in about 2 hours. We had a good time and got some riddles done. (Since I had played solo previously, I was able to shepherd the game and make it much faster to teach and learn).

Two observations came up during co-op play:
1) Even though this is a puzzle (which tends to attract the Alpha Player more), because we have God Powers (i.e., assymetric powers: Charles had Asklepios, see above, and he was pivotal!), it’s harder to Alpha the other players because all the God Powers are very different. It’s not impossible, but it does make it harder to keep track if each player is cycling through God Powers fairly quickly.

2) You can solve the game without burning your brain(s). In a convention environment, you just want to have fun and play. If you “ignore” the silver goals and just concentrate on “winning” a game, you can just do the gold goals, and the game isn’t too hard. It becomes a lot harder if you want to do ALL the silver goals! You can adjust the level of difficulty of the game as you are playing! You can choose to just go for the win, OR you can choose to get as many objectives as you want! The former is a more “light-and-fun” mode, whereas the latter is a more “brain-burny” mode.

So yes, because this is more of a puzzle, it could have easily turned into an Alpha Player experience. But, between diverting the Alpha Player with a frank discussion, and having the asymmetric God Powers, the Alpha Player Problem wasn’t a problem.

The puzzle was fun cooperatively.

Curse and Blessing

One of things that blew me away was how easily I was able to learn the game as I wen by reading the little blurbs on the board: see above as a Riddle 3 game introduces “Blessings” and “Friendly Gods” to the base game. I mean, this was absolutely a fantastic way to learn the rules. New rules are explained AS THEY COME out, and it makes sense.

… until I turned the page and started working on the next puzzle. “Wait, what were the rules for Blessings again?” Once I had set-up the next puzzle, I couldn’t go back and re-read that rule. Frustratingly, the rulebook sometimes didn’t have this same text. How do I look up that rule again? I did go to BoardGameGeek a few times, and I did Google some things.

This way of learning is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it’s so easy to jump right in, and the rules are on the page themselves! It’s a curse because you can’t go back and re-read those rules once you’ve set-up the next puzzle.

The rulebook probably should have replicated the on-page instructions from the Adventure book in the rulebook (or somewhere). The same text I used the learn the rule would help me solidify the rules in my head. If you feel like you CAN’T go back, it’s frustrating. Imagine in a classroom:

“Teacher, could you explain the Blessings rule again? I didn’t quite get it.”
“No, that’s on a blackboard in another classroom.”

I found the rulebook, especially for the Riddle of the Sphinx to not be great at helping me find rules and disambiguations. See next section for another example!

Occupied/Unoccupied

One rule that particularly seemed frustrating was the occupied rule. You can’t build a piece on a space that’s occupied. Or move onto a space that’s occupied. In the base game, the only things that can occupy spaces are workers/figures or blocks/domes. Is a coin or a blessing on a space considered occupied? Physically, yes!! That coin or blessing coin is physically occupying the space, so it prevents me from moving there, right? Intellectually, I think the idea is that the coins/blessings are just goal markers, so they are NOT occupying, just notating!!

It wasn’t until 100% clear until Riddle 5, when one of the workers actually started on a space with the Coin (bottom left, blue worker), that coins don’t block you. It’s pretty clear you can move through coins, I think, if you can start on a coin.

The rules for Riddle of the Sphinx, and especially Santorini, are brief and succinct. But I think they omit some clarity. A few more sentences here and there would have helped. This particularly issue seemed vexing, and I felt like I was “cheating” if I moved through/onto a Coin. “It’s physically blocking me … should be it a game blocker too?” I think that it is NOT a blocker but a notation … it could have been clearer.

Things to Watch Out For

Magnetic Clasp Not Secure: The binding holding the Riddle of the Sphinx box closed is a magnetic clasp. It did’t feel very secure; I would recommend a rubber band or something to hold it more secure. See above for my rubber band solution.

Use Bright Marker: When you mark bubbles on the Constellation Tree or the Adventure Map, don’t use a pencil like I did (see above). Use a sharpie or red marker or something that really stands out.

Print out: Rather than sully your Adventure book, just print out a copy of the Adventure Map and Constellation Tree from your printer. See above. Not only do you keep your original books pristine, the copies from your printer will be on paper that you can actually write on (the paper from the original is very slick).

Conclusion

Riddle of the Sphinx is clearly more puzzle than game. There are elements of randomness that make it more gamey (which base gods do you get, do you risk rolling a die, etc), but in general: this a puzzle. You need to know that before going in; you may love the idea of a solo or cooperative puzzle using the base rules of Santorini! You may hear that it’s a puzzle to solve and run screaming. Do what you will.

The solo game worked really well; it’s easy to come back to because the rules are pretty straight forward, and it’s easy to save in campaign mode. You can play as much or as little of the campaign as you want.

The cooperative game can succumb to the Alpha Player problem if you aren’t a little careful; Riddle of the Sphinx is a puzzle after all is said and done, and puzzles tend to bring out that Alpha Player. We suggest having a frank discussion about the Alpha Player problem (it worked for us), or just play with a group you already trust and respect. The rapid cycling of asymmetric God Powers did help alleviate the Alpha Player problem a little.

I would absolutely play Riddle of the Sphinx again as a solo game; it’s like an 8.5 or 9 out of 10 for me. It was really fun, and the components were great. The cooperative game, I would play again, because you can adjust the difficulty as you play. I would, however, be very cautious of the Alpha Player issues before I suggested Riddle of the Sphinx to a group, just because, as a puzzle, it’s too easy to fall into the Alpha Player trap. That trap make it a little harder to get out as a cooperative game, so maybe it’s a 7.5 or 8/10 for a cooperative game. It’s fun, it’s adjustable, but you have to be a little careful.

Good game.

Dice Throne Missions and Dice Throne X-Men! A Solo and Cooperative Review!

Follow me, dear reader, as I invest three days of my life into unboxing, sleevening, tokening, and playing the new X-Men Dice Throne and Missions! Watch as I play solo (me vs. me solo and true solo) and cooperatively (with a group of 4), but encounter some unexpected things along the way! Hopefully my journey will inform you if this is something that would be for you!

Dice Throne: X-Men and Marvel Dice Throne: Missions (and a whole bunch of stuff) arrived at my house at 12:30 pm on Monday, February 20th, 2025. I was very excited to get this Kickstarter, so I happened to note the time when it arrived! This was #2 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024! And it was “only” 7 months late! (promising arrival in August 2024)! But what is this giant thingee?

The first big box in here is the Dice Throne: X-Men box; you each play a member of the X-Men! This is a dice-chucking game with a Yahtzee-type re-roll mechanic: you roll dice, trying to roll a straight or full house or 5-of-a-kind (stuff like that) to activate your super powers! These powers, when activated, nominally do damage or other crazy things to your opponents. This is a fully competitive game where the heroes beat each other up: think of the X-Men Danger Room! You are training in the Danger Room! (That’s why heroes fight heroes, ya, that’s it: don’t ask too many questions about why heroes are fighting heroes….just enjoy the game)

But why are we talking about a competitive game on this solo and cooperative blog? Because the second big thing that came with this was Marvel Dice Throne Missions! Marvel Dice Throne Missions (we’ll call it Missions from now on) is an expansion that takes the competitive Dice Throne system and makes the game both solo and cooperative!

The next three days of my life were consumed by the Dice Throne stuff above. The Dice Throne: X-Men box and Missions box are very closely tied together, as you need a set of heroes to play the Missions! Although you can use any of the Dice Throne heroes (including the original Season 1, Season 2 (see review here) , and Marvel heroes (see review here)), we are going to look at Dice Throne: X-Men and Missions together!!! … because that’s how we played it …

Let’s go back in time and see how three days unfolded ….

Day 1: Unboxings and First Plays

Day 1 was a long day: I got the box at 12:30pm and pretty much unboxed, sleevended, tokened (yes, that’s a word … now), and played non-stop until 8 at night! There was so more unboxing and sleevening and tokening than I expected …

What arrived at my house was a giant box! See Coke Can above for perspective.

The crazy thing was that this was a box in a box in a box in a box situation! See above!

On top of the Dice Throne: X-Men box (above) were all the acrylic tokens and some of the figures (right).

Day 1: The Figurines Unboxing

You don’t need the figurines for plain Dice Throne.

The figures are only for the cooperative expansions Dice Throne Adventures or Missions, as figures for the board … you don’t need these figures at all to play competitive plain Dice Throne! See all eight figures above in the package … and below on a Missions board.

Because the original Marvel Dice Throne did NOT have an option for figures, they included that option here in this Kickstarter! See above for the Marvel Dice Throne figures and below for their standee equivalents!

To be clear; the X-Men Dice Throne (and Marvel Dice Throne) come with cardboard standees so you don’t need to buy the figures (see below for X-Men Dice Throne punchouts, including the standees).

If you are on the fence for buying the figures, remember: they aren’t strictly needed! You can just use the standees and “probably” buy the figures at a later date if you are so inclined.

Day 1: Acrylics and Sleevening

Another upgrade I got were the Acrylic tokens; again these aren’t necessary.

The acrylic token upgrades packs are for Marvel Dice Throne, X-Men Marvel Dice Throne, and Missions—These just replace the cardboard tokens.

Again, the games include all the tokens you need, so these acrylic tokens aren’t necessary. I really thought they made the game pop a little more, so I liked them.

I also picked up the premium sleeves: see below.

Again, strictly not necessary. But very nice!

After ooggling the figures, basically, I spent the next 2 or so hours putting the acrylic tokens and sleeves into the X-Men Dice Throne character boxes!

Whew! Look at all those tokens above!! See below for all 6 characters sleeved and … tokened? (yes, it is a word now: I’ve used it twice).

Yes, this was a long and tedious 2 hours. But the characters looks great!

Oh yes, and Deadpool wants you to know he is an expansion! He is a character you can play (he also came with this Kickstarter, but he is a separate expansion you have to pay extra for). I went ahead and unboxed, sleeved, and tokened him too. See above.

Day 1: First Play

As a reminder, you “probably” don’t want to jump into Missions (cooperative) if you haven’t played the base Dice Throne (competitive)! See the warning above from the Missions rulebook.

I love Dice Throne, but it has been a while since I played. So I decided to do a Me vs. Me solo game, and play against myself! This was mostly to remind myself of the rules and see the new characters! Those of you out there are thinking that I will “pander” and play Wolverine vs. Deadpool. Nope!

I ended up playing Wolverine vs Cyclops. Me vs Me!

Basically, I’d literally switch seats when I had to play the other character: I always like this swapping because it really feels like you are playing both sides well!

It was an interesting match: Wolverine won, but just barely. Cyclops looks like he will do best in a cooperative game, as his abilities have some emphasis on helping other players! He has leadership cards and support tokens/abilities that help others! Wolverine just heals and does damage … as you’d expect.

This game was reasonably quick, maybe a hour? It went by pretty quickly and I got to learn about Wolverine and Cyclops.

Day 1: Missions Unboxing

Yes, we are still in Day 1. I told you this was a long day! But a good day! I finally got to unpack Missions!

The most AMAZING thing is all the little mission books that come with the game!! Holy cow!! See how many there are? I put a Coke can next to them for perspective!

My only real complaint with the missions is that they are hard to keep open! We’ll see that more later.

There’s some Momentum dials (this is a new mechanism in the game: each character gets a dial), Allies (another new mechanism: these must be bought with Momentum), and some other tokens.

The Momentum is a major new mechanism in the game; you can actually level-up your Momentum card (as you play more games)!

I mean, this looks great! See above!

At the top is a tray for tokens: see above.

There are a lot cardboard tokens in Missions … but I ended up replacing them with the acrylic tokens. This took about the next hour of my life.

At first, putting tokens in the token tray looks VERY DAUNTING. And it is. Until you notice the side of the box!!! See above!! The side of the box shows you how to put the token into the tray!

Sounds like an easy job? Oof. This was the most tedious thing I did on Day 1.

I basically had to separate out the tokens into piles and start putting them into the box, all while trying to match the picture on the side of the box!!

I mean, it does look cool when you are done … see above.

Finally, I sleeved the Alllies: these sleeves were extra (I had to pay for them).

But they look pretty cool.

Day 1: The rulebook

There are a few things I have to say about the rulebook.

It completely fails the Chair Test: it droops over the edge of the chair and almost falls off!

I ended up using the workaround I discovered in my review of Batman: Gotham City Chronicles! You need two chairs to hold the rulebook, with the spine in the middle!

The rulebook was generally good otherwise: it had a good components page (see above).

It had a good two-page spread for set-up: I got going right away.

The rulebook had a big, readable font, useful pictures, and even little parenthetical text to emphasize issues.

The best part was that the back cover had a list of all the statuses on the back. This was generally a good list of statuses and their effects, but we did have some questions as we played… some of the status descriptions needed more clarification.

This was generally a good rulebook, but I hated the form factor. It seems like the worst form factor I have seen in a while. I actually had to change chairs in my cooperative game so I could sit somewhere where I could set-up the the two chairs to see the rulebook! The rulebook is huge and there is no almost no way it’ll fit on the table.

Day 1: Set-up for Solo play

I know, it’s hard to believe we are still in Day 1. I had just finished dinner, and I am still setting up my first Mission!

Missions have two sides; the front side is generally fighting some henchmen … (see above) …

… and the back side is Boss Fight (Scarlet Witch in this case.. see above)!

To win the mission, you need to complete both sides! See above as I start setting up side one of the mission … and get grumpy that it won’t stay flat …

I chose Wolverine to go on the solo mission: see above! Note that the rulebook suggests the mission above to start on … so that’s the one I am playing!! This is true solo play; I will be playing one character as I take on the Henchmen … on side 1 of the mission.

Day 1: Side One of the Mission

I was approaching the end of my Dice Throne Day (yes, I am still in Day 1!!!), as I got a chance to try out solo play with Missions on side 1 of my first mission.

Momentum is a huge new mechanism in the game: you are rewarded with Momentum when you take out a henchman or something in the game! It’s kind of like experience points, but it’s a little more dynamic in that you can spend it anytime! You can spend Momentum to give you range (typically, you can only attack things next to you) or to buy Allies.

The Allies give you extra abilities/powers that make the game more interesting. They typically can be used for a “minor” ability without discarding, or for a “major” ability if you discard it (see Nick Fury above).

What I liked was that when you “cleared” a bad guy, you put down a clear token (see above) to note that he was dispatched! And the token reminds you of the 2 Momentum you get for killing … I mean clearing him!

Another major mechanism is the Crisis Clock: at the end of each round, the hands of the clock move 1 per player and may invoke some harsh penalties (depending on the mission).

There’s other things going on, but that’s generally most of it! See above as I cleared the board and made my way towards fighting Doc Ock! …. but that would have to wait for tomorrow … it’s been a long day!

Day 2: More Missions

I had to work most of Tuesday, but after I got home, I was consumed with playing more Missions!
Note! When you flip the mission to the other side, you keep you character’s Hit Points, Momentum, and everything the way it was! While you reset BETWEEN missions, you DO NOT reset when you FLIP the mission!

The Boss Fight side of the Mission 1 basically just has you straight up fight the big boss! And the Crisis Clock is much more damaging!

You are in harms way as you actively are right next to the Boss! See above! No moving away!

One interesting note; there are tokens that, if you end your turn there, you get a bonus. So, you can get the +2 token if you go to space 3 above. But if the space has the red tokens underneath, you always get those … but only AFTER The bad guys attacks you! And there is a cost for moving to a space with red tokens … the boss typically does more damage (crit) to you!

In the end, I defeated Doc Ock pretty handily; I think my Ally made this much easier.

I went into the Boss Fight with 15 Momentum and basically kept the crisis track completely under control using Nick Fury.

After you defeat a Mission, the player gets “Perk Points”! These are another thing that are kind of like experience points! You use them to make your character better. You may spend some Perk Points to start the next mission with a little more momentum, or have a focus fire, or other things!

There are 6 levels of difficulty in the game; they are marked on top of the mission sheet you choose. See below.

You reallllly don’t want to try harder missions until you have some Perk Points from previous missions! So, while this isn’t a campaign “per se”, the game encourages you to keep playing and get Perk Points so you can handle more difficult missions!

You could always cheat and just give yourself a bunch of Perk Points to level up yourself ….

I moved on to a harder mission: level 2!

You can really see the Mission board problem above …

Sauron’s Hunger was my second mission … and I had a blast!

Wolverine went after the tree so he could get the Perfect Reward (see above) and more Perk Points at the end of the game!

The second side of the Mission was another Boss Fight: see above!

This one was a little harder, but I expected it to be for a level 2!

In the end, I was able to win and finish another Mission! It was definitely a little harder. I had two missions under my belt, and I looked forward to another!

Day 3: Cooperative Play

With two days of solo play and set-up experience, I felt ready to teach my friends! We ended with a 2-hour Mission fighting Doc Ock again!

This was a 4-Player cooperative game.

I took Cyclops because I wanted to test his Leadership abilities. Sara and Teresa took their favorite characters: Ororo and Rogue (respectively). Sam doesn’t know the X-Men as well, but he knows Wolverine.

Although we beat the first side of the mission, we lost to Doc Ock as he killed two of my players.

Solo Play

The solo play was a hoot to me! I kept wanting to do more Missions and get more Perk Points!! What are some of the other missions that lay ahead?? Wolverine is probably a better character to play solo; he is good at damage and he can heal himself. I worry that Cyclops or other heroes might struggle with hit points a little.

I had fun, I was engaged, and I felt like all my rolls mattered!

I was able to push my luck (and I usually hate dice games), but usually there is a good roll or card that can help you get “something good” on your turn. With Wolverine especially, even if you didn’t have a good roll, the lesser abilities typically healed him, so something good always happened.

Over the course of two days, I had fun. I was engaged, and I saw how important Allies are (especially their Exhaust ability) and how Momentum worked. These are both new things to the Missions mode and they really made me feel like I always had more options.

I would give the Missions solo mode an 8.5/10. It was great. It may be that you have to choose a hero that works well with solo; I am not sure Cyclops would have done as well.

Even the me vs me solo mode was fun! Not quite an 8.5/10, maybe 7.5/10, but that was a fun way to play solo too!

Cooperative Mode

This was a surprise for me: my friends didn’t enjoy cooperative Missions very much. And they (mostly) love the X-Men!!!

Although there is simultaneous play keeping everyone involved (you only serialize your turns when you do damage; all other times, every one is rolling and re-rolling and playing cards simulaneously), no one felt like there was a lot of cooperation. As Sara said, “it feels like Dice Throne is not a cooperative mode and this feels a little forced.”

I even played Cyclops to try to elicit more cooperation: I’d always say “Hey! I’ve got some support tokens! Use me! I can help you reroll or get CP if you need it!” … and I think my players used me once. And I tried really hard to get them to use me!!

You might think that “Well, your players don’t like co-ops, or they just don’t like to co-operate” and that is patently untrue! I play co-ops all the time with this group!! And they cooperate very well together! For some reason, this just didn’t work. And Sara even said, “Eh, you can cooperate, but there are many other co-ops I’d rather play.”

I actually have a theory about this! When we played King of Monster Island a while ago (see review here), we liked the King of Monster Island game, but it also seemed to not promote cooperation as much!! Why? It also has the familiar Yahtzee re-roll mechanism (roll 3 times, keep the ones you want) just like Dice Throne Missions!! And while that mechanism is very engaging, people seem to become TOO engaged in that to the point they don’t cooperate! It’s a weird thing to say, but too much engagement on your own stuff lessens the cooperation! And I think that’s what happened here: we all got so caught up in our own characters, we forgot to cooperate!

Maybe this problem would go away after repeated plays, but you have to want to continue playing! And I am sad to say my group mostly doesn’t really want to play this again.

Having said that, maybe if you have a group that really likes cooperative multiplayer solitaire games (no Alpha Player), maybe this is something your group might enjoy! There doesn’t seem to be a lot of cooperation, just a bunch of heroes beating up stuff and rolling dice! Maybe that would appeal to your group!

Reactions

Rich: I liked the game solo a lot! 8.5/10: I was engaged and I liked my decisions. Cooperative was probably a 7/10? I still liked it but there wasn’t much cooperation.

Teresa: I got to play Rogue! And I had fun! 7/10

Sara: I don’t know, I just didn’t think it was great. There wasn’t much cooperation, and even though I love Storm, it wasn’t that interesting to play her. There are a lot of other cooperative games I’d rather play. The cooperative mode just feels tacked on. It was okay. 6/10

Sam: It was okay. 6/10.
Sam actually had a very full write-up on his cooperative experience, which he emailed to me! I will reproduce that at the end of this review, after the Conclusion. Read that for another perspective!

Conclusion

I expected X-Men Dice Throne and Missions to go over like gang-busters! And while it did for me (for the solo mode especially), my group wasn’t that impressed with it.

The game has gorgeous components, even if you choose not to upgrade everything. My only real complaint was the Mission mats frequently has trouble staying flat. This looks like a comic book world on the table, with its colorful villains, colorful heroes, and gorgeous dice and cards.

I think the cooperative mode didn’t go as well because people tended to be too focused on their own mat and their own rerolls … and this self-focus seemed to actually discourage cooperation! I thought that my group, who love the X-Men, would adore this! And they did not.

As a solo game, I am very comfortable giving this an 8.5/10. I will play again, and I look forward to getting more Perk Points to try harder and harder missions!

As a cooperative game, it feels like the game lands at a 6.5/10. Although Teresa and I would play it again as a co-op, I don’t think Sam and really Sara would. For more details, see Sam’s Perspective below.

So, that’s my journey: Three Days of Dice Throne! I loved it! My friends … not so much. Your group may still love the cooperative Missions especially if they love co-ops that are more multiplayer solitaire.

Sam’s Perspective

Overall score: 6 – would play again if everybody else wanted to but X-Men as Wolverine combined with the Missions mode isn’t something I’d necessarily request or suggest (I could see it being 7-7.5 with avengers)

TLDR version:

I feel like this is turning into a scathing review and that’s not my intended tone. This particular combination of theming (X-Men aren’t really my thing) and components (flat printed enemies against hero minis didn’t really feel like we were fighting bad guys) just didn’t land for me.

The essay:

Because I’m an uncultured swine :), I’m not familiar with X-Men or their lore or anything other than the Deadpool movies (1 and 2) and being able to pick wolverine out of a lineup. Therefore, the characters didn’t really speak to me and I was unable to appreciate the references/accents/etc. Because of the movies, Doc Oc is also linked as a spiderman villain in my mind.

I feel like I could have used a “sparring match” or two of the competitive version to get used to my character before taking him against the villains cooperatively.

The components felt a bit jarring – minis for us vs enemies printed on the map just felt like I was standing around and taking swings at air. I feel like I would have felt more immersed if the bad guys were also minis (even though they didn’t move) or if we were flat tokens in the same plane as our opponents.

I can’t quite put my finger on it but the movement and momentum mechanics also felt a little bit off to me.

I remember enjoying the original dice throne (though I missed out on the adventures and the original marvel set) probably because it was a set of generic archetypes I could get into – the rogue, paladin, gunslinger, monk, pirate, etc.

I think I would also have enjoyed this more with the “original”marvel characters (avengers) even without having as much time to get into how my character works. Wolverine might also have been too simple – basically 9 variations on “get angry, hit hard, heal” depending on what you rolled. It didn’t really feel like I had much to set up and pull off, just wander around and try to roll good combinations so I could swing really hard at the air where an enemy was.

Top 10 Cooperative Light/Party Games of 2024!

What’s a party game? A party game is usually a casual game you can pull out with a fairly large group of friends and jump right into! Many, if not most, of the cooperative party games we see are Cooperative Guessing games, where the players collectively guess something based on clues from a clue-giver!

Surprisingly, the year of 2024 produced quite a number of cooperative party games! That’s right; cooperative party games! And most are Cooperative Guessing games! We saw some really good party games on the Top 10 Cooperative Party Games list … and here’s 10 more below just from 2024!

10. Word Traveller

Player Count: 2-5
Ages: 10+
Time: 30-45 Minutes
Type: Cooperative Guessing

Like many of the games on this year’s list, this is a Cooperative Guessing game! In this game, a clue-giver will give word clues to “guide” the others around the board, trying to get to a destination on the board!

This feels a lot like the cooperative word guessing games Mystic Paths or Landmarks (see below), as you use words to imply directions to travel. What makes this a little different is that the words you choose refer to tourist spots in the maps! There are 4 maps in the game for London, Paris, New York City, and Tokyo! See below for the map of London!

This is a real unique game and has some really neat idea in the crowded cooperative word guessing genre!

9. Landmarks

Player Count: 2-10
Ages: 10+
Time: 20 Minutes
Type: Cooperative Guessing

Landmarks is a cooperative word guessing game where one player gives word clues, trying to guide the rest of the playing (cooperatively guessing) to water, treasure, and finally the exit! This game is very similar to a game called Mystic Paths where players are moving across a map of hexes.

There’s also elements of Codenames in here, as the clue-giver has a hidden map as he tries to guide the players around the map!

We have played this game with several groups, and it seemed to go over pretty well! It takes a few plays to get the sense and spirit of the game, but once you do, it is fun. Some people didn’t love this (because sometimes it was just too vague or the map is wonky), which is why it’s lower on this list. The components are quite nice (with the cloth map and dry-erase hexes), and it was generally fun!

8. Adventure Party

Player Count: 3-8
Ages: 10+
Time: 20-60 Minutes
Type: Cooperative Guessing

This looks like a role-playing adventure game (see picture above), but it’s actually a role-playing game PARTY game! It even says that on the cover!

It’s quite silly as a game; a player will have to do an activity and then roll a 20-sided die (secretly) behind their character shield (see above). The Berserker has to open the door; what does a “19” mean? The player then roll-plays what they do (based on the number they roll) and the other player have to “guess” what the roll was on based on what they roll played! It’s a silly game that just gets sillier as you play it!

In fact, it’s so simple to play this that the directions for how to play are summarized very well on the back of the box! See above. My friends and I had fun playing, pardon me, ROLL-PLAYING this silly adventure party game.

7. Message From The Stars

Player Count: 2-8+
Ages: 11+
Time: 45 Minutes
Type: Cooperative Guessing

So, this is another cooperative word guessing game, but it has elements of math and it is quite thinky. I love this game because it’s so unique and interesting, but some people just bounced off it because of its weird blend of math and wordplay.

Players plays as two teams; a team of aliens trying to communicate with a team of humans! Teams communicate single words to each other to establish some ideas! What letters you use in your words matters, as well as what concepts/words you are trying to communicate! It’s great fun with lots of deduction … if you grok the game.

This is a great game that can play 2-8+ people, and you can pull it out casually … once everyone knows how to play. The biggest problem is that it takes some brainwork and time to figure out this game. This is probably the most thinky game on this list, and why some people might not classify this as a party game .. which is why this is only #7 on this list, despite how good a game it is. See our review of Message From The Stars here to see if you might enjoy this! (Remember, Codenames is classified as a party game, and it’s quite thinky too!)

6. Expressions

Player Count: 2-5
Ages: 14+
Time: 15 Minutes
Type: Cooperative Guessing

Many of the games on this list as cooperative word guessing games; this is a number guessing game! This has a lot of deduction as players can either guess a card a player might be holding (like cooperative go-fish) or give a clue (which feels a little like The Crew).

This is basically a cooperative go-fish game with elements of deduction/clue-giving (ala The Crew). It’s probably the second most thinky game on this list (after Message From The Stars). But this is easy to pull out, quick to explain, and quick to play at only 15 minutes! It does take a few times to get the hang of it, but people seem to want to play again!

5. Da Da Da

Player Count: 2+
Ages: 8+
Time: 15-30 Minutes
Type: Cooperative Classification/Guessing

This is an odd duck of a game. Players take a bunch of black and white pictures and collectively classify them using only a few words, like “DA” and “BLUMP”. Basically, the group is coming up with a language for describing shared traits using a few very simple words. These few words are the ONLY communication that players are allowed!

In the first part of the game, the players collectively classify all the pictures together using only those few words (like “DA” and “BLUMP”) as they point and move pictures. In the second part of the game, new pictures are introduced and the players have to try and figure out, using only the new language of those few words, the new thing. As long as you have a group that doesn’t annoyingly repeat the weird little words ad naseum, this is a fun game … it’s almost a linguistics experiment!

It sounds like it can’t work, but my group really enjoyed it! This is one you might want to try before you pick it up; some people will be annoyed by it, some people won’t get it, but some people will love it! Our groups loved it! Maybe yours will too!

4. Link City

Player Count: 2-6
Ages: 8+
Time: 30 Minutes
Type: Cooperative Guessing/Classification

This is a game that I didn’t like as much as everyone else, but it was such a hit for everyone else, I had to put this on the list! One player (the Mayor) puts city Locations out, and the other players have to guess where he would place them based on the locality to other Locations in the game!

The Mayor rotates every turn, so a new player has to decide what Locations go where! It’s all about building the municipality, but with some real silly decisions!

My friend Kurt loves this game and we’ve played it a number of times when he has come to visit! If this sounds like fun, I suggest you give it a try! A bunch of people I know and like really like this game!

3. Spotlight

Player Count: 1-5
Ages: 6+
Time: 15 Minutes
Type: Cooperative Searching

This is such a neat game! It’s a very simply premise as players search a shaded picture for certain figures, counting them up! Each player needs to find them independently on their own sheet! If they find “enough” together, they can stay ahead and win!

The sheer fun of this game is the clever sheets that are have darkened plastic. When you place a white surface underneath, the picture comes apparent! See the “fully darkened” picture above … and the picture with a white spotlight below!

There is no batteries or magic technology here; it’s just a white surface underneath making the plastic easily viewable!

This game has worked really well in so many situations! I have played with little kids (like 5 years old) and older adults, and big kids, and even though this “looks like a kid’s game”, people really love the Spotlight mechanism! It’s just so cool!

2. Wilmot’s Warehouse

Player Count: 2-6+
Ages: 8+
Time: 30 Minutes
Type: Cooperative Memory/Cooperative Guessing

Wait, this is a cooperative memory match game? Yes, and it works surprisingly well! This is probably Sara’s favorite game of all the games on this list!

Players draw tiles from a bag and cooperatively “come up with a story” for the shape and place it in the warehouse.

After placing a bunch of tiles down, players must try to cooperatively remember what tile was what by trying to match other tiles to it! It’s wacky and the stories people come up are really funny! It’s surprisingly goofy, but it’s really easy to explain and jump into! See our review here to see see why Wilmot’s Warehouse is much better than you expect!

1. That Escalated Quickly

Player Count: 2-8
Ages: 10+
Time: 15 Minutes
Type: Cooperative Guessing

This was a bit of surprise as our #1 choice for the best cooperative party games of 2024, but it just kept coming to the table all this year! And we all loved it! Players get asked a silly question like: “What do you tell a vampire to get him to turn you?” (See back cover above for more questions) And then everyone gets 1 (or 2) cards from 1-10, and everyone has to answer that question so that 1 is least likely to get turned, and 10 is most likely! But without revealing their number! (Much like Adventure Party from earlier)

The guesser has to take all the answers and sort them from lowest to highest .. if they get them all in order, it counts as a point! (You can have upto one mistake)

Like all good party games, the points don’t matter, and you just keep playing, not really caring if you win or not! This is a mass market party game from The Exploding Kittens people; I picked it up at Target, so it’s really easy to find! Check it out! Hopefully you will enjoy it as much as we did!

A place to talk about cooperative board and card games!

Unboxing

Rulesheet Not a Rulebook

Gameplay

Solo Play

More Solitaire Than Sherlock

Two Player Game

House Rule for Two Players

Conclusion

Unboxing

Rulebook

Gameplay

Solo Play

Cooperative

Urgency

Kind of a Big Mess

Portals

Save Game

Too Many Rules?

Reactions

Conclusion

Solo Experience

Cooperative Experience

House Rule/Hack (Get it? Hack? In a game about Hacking?)

Conclusion

Appendix: Binding

Unboxing

Rulebook

Gameplay

Solo Play: Built-In Mode

Solo Mode 2: Do66-0 Pack

Cooperative Mode: Casual Gamers

Cooperative Play: Gamers

Episodes

Things I Liked

What I Didn’t Like

Conclusion

10. Max

9. Endangered

8. Magical Kitties Save The Day!

7. Cat Crimes

6. Space Cats Fight Fascism

5. Cat Rescue

4. Run Run Run!

3. Nekojima

2. Hissy Fit!

1. Race To The Raft

Unboxing and Gameplay

Solo Game

Cooperative Game

The Sticking Point

Traitor Experience

Conclusion

Solution 1: Board Butler

Solution 2: Report Binding Bar

Solution 3: Giant Plastic Overlay

Conclusion

Day 1: The Game Arrives and Santorini Gets Played!

Day 2: Unboxing and First Games of Riddle of the Sphinx

Day 2: Campaign and More Play

Cooperative Play

Curse and Blessing

Occupied/Unoccupied

Things to Watch Out For

Conclusion

Day 1: Unboxings and First Plays

Day 1: The Figurines Unboxing

Day 1: Acrylics and Sleevening

Day 1: First Play

Day 1: Missions Unboxing

Day 1: The rulebook

Day 1: Set-up for Solo play

Day 1: Side One of the Mission

Day 2: More Missions

Day 3: Cooperative Play

Solo Play

Cooperative Mode

Reactions

Conclusion

Sam’s Perspective