Tag: games

Does Adding Zombies Make Everything Better? A Review of Good Dog, Bad Zombie (Solo and Cooperative)

Welcome back to 2026! This is the last of the games on the cusp of 2025/2026! We received Good Dog, Bad Zombie in late December 2025, but we couldn’t get it to the table until January 2026! So, we are considering this a 2026 release for our internal lists!

I have a friend CC who once conjectured that “Adding Zombies to anything makes it better!” He has since recanted this absolute, but it does bring up the question: does adding zombies to a game with cute dogs work?

Good Dog, Bad Zombie (Second Edition) is a cooperative pick-up and deliver game that was on Kickstarter back in May 2024. It  promised delivery in March 2025; it was about 9 months late.    I had backed this because it looked fun, but I didn’t know anything about the first edition of the game.

My copy (with some expansions) arrived in late December, but I couldn’t get it to the table until January 2026.

Let’s take a look!  We’ll only look at the base game.

Components and Gameplay

Good Dog, Bad Zombie comes in a smallish box: see Coke can above for scale.

Each player takes the role of one dog saving the humans!    

Each dog has its own personality and special powers which make it unique.  Interestingly, this special power can only be activated by a certain instant card in the game.

Note that there are a lot of dogs to choose from!  Each player gets a dog standee and a sheet.

This is a pick-up-and-deliver game where dogs have to find the humans and guide them back to Central Bark (yes, you heard me, Central Bark).  See the board above.

The bones on the map indicate clues about where the humans are!  The dogs have to traverse this post-apocalyptic city full of zombies and SNIFF at the locations with bones to find a human!

Once a dog SNIFFS at a Location, “something happens!”   The player reads the card apropos to the location and either makes a choice or has to roll a 20-sided die!

Most of the time, the human appears right where the dog was SNIFFING and then the dogs can guide that human back to Central Bark!! See above as the dog and human (yellow) are just one space away!  Just make sure to keep Humans away from Zombies!

There’s a couple of ways to get the stupid humans to safety at Central Bark!  The dog can BARK at them to move (see the BARK card middle above) or HERD them and move with them (see the HERD cards left and right).  The iconography is very clear … and kinda funny.  The HERD action has a sheep icon and the BARK action has a dog barking; they are very clearly notated.

To get stuff done, each dog has two action per turn.  They can RUN (to move one space), LICK (to get two more cards), SNIFF (to look for a human at a bone) or play a card (which allows them HERD, CHEW, BARK, RUN far, and a few other things).

This is a pick-and-deliver game as dogs have to “pick-up” humans and deliver them to Central Bark!  It’s kinda funny that you can either HERD humans or BARK at humans to move them … which is a little different than most pick-up-and-deliver games!

If a dog DOES deliver a human to Central Bark, the dog gets a thank-you bonus from the humans: see some above.

Of course, there are zombies to slow you down.  The dogs can, thematically CHEW on the zombies to get rid of them, BARK at the zombies to move them away, or HERD them off the cliffs or rivers to get rid of them!   

Unfortunately, every turn brings a new Zombie into town … the players roll the 20-sided die and that’s where a a new Zombie appears!  See the numbered locations above!

The zombies really start piling up later in the game (see above).  Whenever a new zombie appears on a Location with a zombie, that line of zombies all move over one space  towards Central Bark … which may cause a Zombie to move into Central Bark!  Now, of course the dogs can deal with the Zombie on their home turf, but every time that happens … the  dogs to become more feral!

To win Good Dog, Bad Zombie, the doggies need to save 6 humans before the dog pack turns feral!  (See Human track above).   The Feral Track (also above) increases every time a zombie invades Central Bark or startles a dog (appears on a dog)!   Basically, the dogs stop caring about humans if they become feral! 

The components are cute and everything is well-notated.  Some people may not like the art, but I think the dogs in particular are pretty cute and thematic.    The art fits the vibe of the game, which is kinda cute and not-too-horrific zombies.

Rulebook

The rulebook is good.

The rulebook gets an A on The Chair Test: It opens up and stays open on the chair next to me, the fonts are big and readable, and the pages don’t droop over.  It’s very easy to consult this rulebook on the chair next to me.

The Introduction and Components are well-labelled; there are pictures with annotating text for all the components.

The set-up is well-done: it’s across two adjacent pages, so it’s easy to leave the rulebook open while you set this up.  

Everything is well-labelled in the book (even using alternating colors in a table when describing the actions: see above).

And the rulebook ends with a nice Reference page.

I had no problems with this rulebook. There’s no Index, but this game is simple enough to not need one.

Solo Play

So Good Dog, Bad Zombie does have a solo mode: see above!  Congratulations for following Saunders’ Law!  See above for a list of exceptional rules for the solo mode.

Unfortunately, it’s not the way I choose to play this solo.  First of all, it’s not a true solo mode: you would have to have two dogs in play but then they share a hand.   There are a few more exceptions; it’s not a big deal, but I would rather just play this two-handed solo, like a 2-Player game.

One of the purposes of solo play for me is to learn the game game so I can teach the game to my friends. The more exceptions and changing rules there are for the solo game, the less useful the solo mode is for me.  In this case, it’s probably easy enough to use their solo mode, but as it is, it’s just easier for me to play solo as two-handed solo: play two 2 dogs, and alternate between them as if I were playing a 2-Player game.   

I had a fine time playing this solo.  The dogs are cute, the dog cards are cute, and the actions seem very thematic (LICK, SNIFF, RUN, BARK, HERD, CHEW).  I learned the game quickly.  I didn’t need need more than one game to learn this solo … it’s pretty easy to learn.

I don’t know how often I’ll come back to the solo game; it’s pretty random.  That 20-sided that gets rolled at the end of every turn can be brutal and harsh, or just lucky.  A few bad rolls and the game can be over very quickly.    It might be too light for me for a solo game that I revisit.

I could see maybe, maybe, while I am waiting for some friends, playing a quick game of this solo. It is quick: The box says 45-60 minutes; it seems more like 30 minutes in a solo game.

Cooperative Play

My friends jumped right into this game: they loved the cute dogs.  We played a 3-Player and 4-Player game.

The luck turned on us quickly; we started with a simple game, but still just barely won!  That 20-sided die just turned against us!  If we started even a little harder, we probably would have lost.  Again, this is just because we rolled badly when we spawned zombies.

The thing is; we had fun.  It’s such a light and simple game and it’s very cute: it’s easy to pull out and teach.

Each player’s turn is fairly quick and there’s not a lot of Alpha Playering.  The cooperation comes mostly from talking about what the dogs should do (high-level cooperation), as this is mostly a multi-player solitaire game: each player does their own thing.  But there is a HOWL mechanism that allows you to generate cards for other players!  This can be critical for saving those dumb humans!  “I don’t have a HERD or BARK to save my human! Can someone please HOWL so I can maybe get one???”  It’s not a major mechanism, but it does help encourage a little more cooperation.

We all had fun saving the humans.   

Things You May Like

Ease of everything!: The game is quick, it’s easy to set-up, it’s easy to teach, it’s easy to play.  It’s simple enough to get into quickly, but there is some cooperation in either high-level discussions or HOWLs. 

Cute. The dogs components are super cute, especially if you like dogs.

Adding/Subtracting Players: At one point, we just “added” Andrew into our game halfway into it because we just can!  The game is self-balancing (as each player always does some good stuff, then always adds a zombie), so you just add a new player and start playing!  This is a phenomenal attribute for a game!  This means you can play this at a convention, and not worry about adding/subtracting players!

Things That You May Dislike

Some art: Some people may not like the art of the board and think it looks like a 10-year old made it.  I liked it and thought it was thematic and fun, but it may really turn some people off.

Randomness: The game has a high-degree of randomness depending on what that 20-sided rolls every turn.  You may get unlucky and have zombies marching into Central Bark every turn, or you may get lucky and have the zombies always appear pretty far away.  It really depends on how you roll? 

Conclusion

I liked Good Dog, Bad Zombie and so did my friends.  It’s easy to set-up, teach, play, and tear-down.  Even though the game can be a little random, it’s a quick game … so even if you get screwed, it won’t take up your entire night.  And it’s still fun.

The two best scenarios for playing this game are probably:
1) An end-of-the-night or “I-am-brain-fried” game.  You just want a simple game to play with your friends, and even if you are a little tired, this is a great simple game to get out.  It’s cute and fun.

2) Convention Game.  You are playing in a situation where people may come and go quickly.  It’s very easy to add/subtract people from the game.

Overall, we had fun and would play this again.  We’d probably give it a 6.5/10 for solo play, (it’s not as much fun solo) but maybe 7.5/10 for cooperative play.  

If you love love love dogs, this probably drifts to an 8 or 8.5/10; the dogs are pretty darn cute. 

In this case, adding Zombies to the game with cute dogs DID work.

Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative And Solo Games of 2026!

It’s always fun to look ahead and see what might be coming! We’ve backed a bunch of Kickstarters this year, but which ones are we most excited to see?

As we look forward, we also look back to see which games we anticipated, which delivered, which we liked, and which we didn’t! We’ll start with some games from 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 … which believe it or not, some games from 2021 still haven’t delivered!

2021 

  • The only game left from 2021 that hasn’t delivered is Onimaru.  We have received no updates in the last year and few months; it’s pretty clear they took our money and ran away.  This is a sobering reality check! We love Kickstarters and all the great games we can get, but there are charlatans out there who want our money. 
  • This is the only thing from 2021 that hasn’t delivered.  And I don’t think it ever will.

2022

  • Rat Queens to the Slaughter has had some major ups and downs, as the original creator “took back” the project after it was flailing.  We are seeing updates pretty frequently with lots of new art and cards, so I think we will one day see this deliver. One day, maybe even 2026. 
  • This is the only thing from 2022 that hasn’t delivered.

2023

2024

2025

  • Floe + Monsters Unleased: It’s taking a while for this.  I have to admit, I have been a little frustrated that they did more development than I expected for a game that was “supposed to be basically done”.  It still hasn’t delivered, even after promising a June 2025 delivery.
  • Fable Fury:  This delivered sometime in November.  It was a beautiful production, but me and my friends didn’t like the game.  I didn’t do a review because I couldn’t even finish a game with my friends. Beautiful game, great art, wonderful production, but too random.
  • Horror On The Orient Express:  We see lots of activity and updates, but it clearly missed its August 2025 delivery!  I am confident we will see it deliver, maybe 2026.
  • Aetherspire:  This one kind of makes me mad;  I haven’t gotten my copy at the time of this writing (early December 2025), but in late November I saw two copies at my FLGS!  I may see it in December 2025, I may not!  If I had just WAITED, I could have picked this up from FLGS.  The developer apologized online, and I get it, but it is still frustrating since I paid real money to back his Kickstarter, and others see the game first. UPDATE: it arrived Dec 18th.  I don’t know if i can get a review out before the end of the year.  UPDATE UPDATE:  See our review of Aetherspire here!
  • One-Hit Heroes:  One-Hit Heroes delivered to me in early 2025, and it was a hit with everyone I played it with!  See our review here!  It also made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025!
  • Invincible: The Card Game:   This re-theming of Astro Knights into the Invincible universe delivered to use in September 2025!  We liked it; it made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025!  In some ways, it’s the best version of the Astro Knights system (esp. with the Assist keyword)!  Check out our review to see if this might be for you!   Get the main mat, but probably stay away from the player mats.
  • Unstoppable:  This cooperative deck-builder game for 1 to 2 players delivered in early 2025!  Nominally, it’s for 2 people, but it’s really a solo game. This made our Top 10 Solo Games of 2025 and was a real unique treat!  See our review of Unstoppable here!
  • DCeased: A Zombie Game!  This kinda delivered, but not really.  The main delivery, which is full of games, it still in production.  But an early version of DCeased: Gotham City Outbreak went on sale on Amazon!  
  • LA-1: It’s close to being done.   The updates have closed for shipping addresses, and the updates seem to indicate shipping is happening.  I suspect we’ll see this in early 2026.
  • DC Super Heroes United:  This is in the same boat as DCeased.  The main, huge order of games hasn’t delivered, but they did put up one of the games on Amazon: DC Super Heroes Batman Hush.   DC Batman Hush was our favorite game of the year!  See our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025! 

On to our anticipated cooperative games of 2026!

10.  Journeys Afar: The Ketsueki

Platform: Kickstarter Journeys Afar: The Ketsueki
Promised Delivery:  December 2026
Summary:  Welcome to Journeys Afar, where infinite worlds filled with boundless possibilities are connected by a single road: the Ketsueki. Along this path, brave heroes venture forth, each journeying to distant, mysterious lands. On their travels, they explore sites of great importance, acquire powerful items, make offerings to benevolent spirits, sharpen their skills, battle fearsome ronin, and form lasting bonds. But in the end, only one will be remembered as a legend.

Journeys Afar: The Ketsueki is a sandbox game of epic adventure, where the journey matters more than the destination. Each player is a unique hero from a distinct world. Your world defines everything in the game: encounters, quests, threats, upgrades, and special rules that reshape every session into a new experience. As heroes travel across The Ketsueki, they impact the worlds they visit and discover who they truly are.

This is a competitive game, not co-op, but I’ll probably be playing it all solo (there is a solo mode).  Everything I have read about this game makes me feel like it SHOULD be a cooperative game, so maaaaaaaybe I’ll try to get some cooperative house rules going.  This game, as an open world, just looks AMAZING!  I am super excited to get it solo, and you MAY just see some cooperative rules on our site for this game after we give it a solo go!

9. StarDriven: Gateway + Invasion

Platform: Kickstarter StarDriven: Gateway
Promised Delivery:  Jan 2026
Summary:  In StarDriven: Gateway, 1-4 players each control their own starship and crew while determining the fate of distant colonies near an ancient alien gateway. The game can be played competitively, co-operatively, or in solo mode depending on which episode you select at game set-up.

Your objective is to be the most renowned and respected Crew by gaining the most points. You gain points by increasing your reputation with the Council Worlds, promoting your Crew, researching Anomalies, recruiting Freelancers, and completing Missions. All of these brave endeavors will score you points and lead to your victory. Running your starship entails assigning crew to different stations on your ship board, which allows you to assign dice to those stations to activate ship actions. Move and explore space, encounter raiders, face anomalies, and use your crew abilities and skills to fulfill mission requirements and activate their bonuses. Manage your ship’s power, weapons, and shields, and recruit and promote crew members to enhance your ship and achieve objectives to ensure your side prevails

This is #9 on the list because it is only cooperative with the Invasion expansion that comes with the Kickstarter!  Usually a game that has an expansion to make it cooperative isn’t great cooperatively, but we had fantastic luck with Kinfire Council with the Winds of Change expansion making it cooperative!  Honestly, we backed this because we had such a good time with games my Mike Gnade: his Set A Watch series just knocked it out of the park for us (see here, here, here, here, and here)  … so if he is doing this game, I’m in!  The Set A Watch games made so many of our Top 10 lists!  The ultimate was when Doomed Run made our #1 spot on Top 10 Solo Games of 2024!   A co-op game in space by Mike Gnade? I’m in!

8. Honor’s End

Platform: Kickstarter Honor’s End
Promised Delivery:  Sep 2026
Summary:  Honor’s End is a 1–4 player cooperative deckbuilding adventure set in a medieval world overshadowed by a mysterious truth. You can play it as a standalone session or as part of an episodic campaign that gradually unlocks new content and challenges.

Players must band together to overcome escalating threats. By wielding hero, action, and equipment cards, they’ll strike at their foes while fending off dishonor—brought on by danger dice rolled each round by their enemies.

Each knight chooses a path of Valor, Fortitude, or Wisdom, building a deck that shapes their abilities and tactics. Enemies, forged from the traits of Wrath, Deceit, and Despair, create unpredictable and unique battles every time you play.

Victory demands more than raw power. Success lies in balancing honor, clever deckbuilding, and shrewd use of the Temple and Monarch reward tracks. Defeat all three enemy champions to claim victory—or watch your honor slip away.

This is a game where the gameplay sounded interesting despite the art.  I don’t love the art I have seen, but it’s all thematic.  This cooperative campaign deck-builder looks like it will be a lot of fun with some possibly unique gameplay.

7. Exoterra: The Giant Mech

Platform: Kickstarter Exoterra
Promised Delivery:  Aug 2026
Summary: Welcome to the universe of ExoTerra, a sandbox strategy game with tactical planning, deep customization, and enemies who are complex and highly challenging.

ExoTerra is played cooperatively over the course of many sorties in a campaign. Each Player takes on the role of a Pilot in charge of requisitioning equipment, personnel, supplies, and, most importantly, Jackets – massive humanoid weapon systems, to be customized and fielded in battle.

Leveraging a new system of enemy generation, battles should always feel different, even if facing the same enemies. This is accomplished through several factors of enemy customization that force players to assess each situation individually. You can rely on your experience from past battles, but must be able to change your strategy on the fly based on the variables of the mission.

This looks like an amazing Mechs game!    I was on the fence on this one, but it just looks really neat.  And I think the idea of customizing your Mech is what finally sold me.  That and cooperative play!

6. Viking Route

Platform: Kickstarter Viking Route
Promised Delivery:  Oct 2025 (ya, they didn’t make this.  It will be 2026)
Summary: In the co-operative game Viking Route, your heroes sail a magical Drakkar to the World’s Edge and beyond. Influenced by magical ravens sent by Odin to steer your course, and by the winds of Fate, you will face powerful and monstrous creatures out of the Norse mythos to fulfill your quests and prepare you for the final challenge to defeat the greatest enemy of the Gods and prevent Ragnarok!

Viking Route uses a compass-and-magnets movement mechanism first introduced the game The Faceless. The main game piece — the Drakkar — is represented by a compass, and multiple magnets (representing ravens and wind) are manipulated by players to steer the course of their ship.

Magnets and compasses?  In a cooperative game?  Yes please! This game looks really interesting and definitely has a high toy factor!  Let’s hope the game underneath is good as well!

5. Ghostland: The Game

Platform: Kickstarter Ghostland
Promised Delivery:  March 2026
Summary:  Jurassic Park meets Ghosts in this Co-operative boardgame about a theme park gone mad! It’s opening day at Ghostland, a theme park that contains actual ghosts! However, havok has immediately broken loose, and the ghosts are attacking guests left and right. It’s up to you and your friends to stop the ghosts, build Field Generators to contain them, and finally face off against the most sinister ghost in the park, the infamous Rex Garrote!

Each players picks a character that is unique and contains their own stats and abilities to help you not only survive the theme park, but hopefully save the day as well! The game is played in rounds where players move arounds the park, fight ghosts, buy items, or try to build a Recurrence Field Generator.

Once players have successfully built three Recurrence Field Generators they will summon the big bad himself, Rex Garrote, for them to defeat! But if the park’s human population reaches zero, it’s Game Over!

Ghosts in an amusement park?  And a co-op to boot?  Who needs a Scooby-Doo game, because this sounds like it might scratch that it!  This may or may not be a Birthday present for my friend CC!  He loved amusement parks and horror-themed games!  I just hope I don’t like it better than him or I may keep it!

4. Sail: Legacy

Platform: Kickstarter Sail Legacy
Promised Delivery:  August 2026
Summary: Assemble your crew, captain your ship, and take on the high seas in this legacy co-op trick-taker!

In Sail Legacy, you and your best matey will go on an adventure across thirty unique missions. Upgrade your ship, outfit your characters, and tune the deck itself to avoid a watery grave!

Sail Legacy evolves from the core Sail game mechanisms as you cooperatively use “must-follow” trick-taking to take on the unforgiving ocean — and the mythical beasts that call it home. Based on the combination of symbols in the trick, you’ll steer the ship, charge ahead, or fire the cannons. Throughout the game, you’ll tweak your pirate’s asymmetric player powers. Will you have a well-balanced team or specialize in one area?

We really liked the original 2-Player Trick-Taking game Sail; it made it pretty high on our Top 10 Solo and Cooperative Trick-Taking Games!  This one takes that formula and transforms into an Legacy games where maps changes and components may change forever!  It’ such an interesting idea; I am really looking forward to this!

3. Companion Quest

Platform: Kickstarter Companion Quest
Promised Delivery:  Dec 2025 (ya, it’s not making that; we’ll see it in 2026!)
Summary: Companion Quest is a cooperative game for 1-4 players, who take on the role of gnomes, tasked with preventing Gu’Gu from causing chaos. Players will collect magical Energy Cubes (dice), tasty Snacks (resources), and fantastical Companions (abilities) along the way. Each Companion has unique abilities that allow players to manipulate their dice to overcome the challenges they will face.

Complete quests before the Mischief Meter reaches the end of the track and things spiral out of control!

This looks like an epically cute dungeon crawler in a small but beautifully cute package.  The BGG pages lists this as 30 minutes and 10+ ages, so I suspect it will easy to jump into! Sometime you just want a fun and fast and cute dungeon crawler!

2. Abyss Echo: The Forbidden Rite

Platform: Kickstarter Abyss Echo: The Forbidden Rite
Promised Delivery:  April 2026
Summary: Step into the shadowed halls of Miskatonic University, where fate and madness echo behind every closed door.

Abyss Echo: The Forbidden Rite is a deeply immersive narrative game that weaves branching storylines, dice-driven uncertainty, and evocative physical artifacts — blurring the boundary between reader and protagonist. Here, you are both yourself and the 1920s student investigator, their fate and sanity intimately entwined with your own. Guided by cryptic letters, you’ll piece together elusive clues, test the limits of science and reason, and confront choices that might reshape reality itself.

This looks to be Cthulu meets escape room a little bit!  I am usually not huge into Cthulu, but the components look stunning … and I love mystery stories!  Cthulu, mystery, escape: count me in!

1. Doom Guard

Platform: Kickstarter Doom Guard
Promised Delivery:  May 2026
Summary: Doom Guard is a cooperative board game for one to five players, who don the mantle of Earth’s mightiest heroes and villains as they are forced to work together in order to protect Earth from total annihilation!

Defeat the minions of Cthulhu, fight the spread of corruption, and beat back the forces of evil through 45-60 minute scenarios that can be played individually or as part of a complete campaign.

This looks like a really neat super heroes vs Cthulu game!  I like the art and the vibe and I am really excited for this!  I have always wanted super heroes in my Cthulu mythos, and now I have them!  This is a smaller endeavour (“only” $103, 000), so let’s hope it delivers! UPDATE: They delivered the PDFs to backers (Dec 16th?) already! A good sign!

Aetherspire: A Solo and Cooperative Review

Welcome to 2026! This month, we are looking at games that were on the 2025/2026 cusp. This one we received December 18th, but we couldn’t get it played fully until January 2026, so we are counting it for our lists as a 2026 release! Take a look below!

Aetherspire is a cooperative tower-defense, 3-D building game that was on Kickstarter back in October 2024; it promised delivery in October 2025.  There were some miscommunications, and some retail stores had copies (in late  November 2025) before Kickstarter backers (my copy arrived December 18th, 2025).  I admit seeing this in retail before I got my copy made me a little grumpy (since I kickstarted and paid real money to back this), but I guess I am just glad to see this game get out there.

This is a really interesting looking game (“3-D building?? What is that??? That sounds cool!”) that piqued my curiosity in last year’s Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2025!   But because of the late arrival, we couldn’t get it played fully (solo and cooperatively) until 2026, so we are counting it (for our internal purposes) as 2026 release.

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

See Coke Can above for scale.  

There are quite a number of really nice components in this box.

There is QUITE a bit of cardboard to punch out!

Most of the cardboard is for pieces to build 3-D structures on the board!  See above!

There’s also a really nice board where you build!

Overall, these components are pretty great!  (In the previous Kickstarter that failed, the components were even nicer, but they were a little too expensive, which is why this regrouped and relaunched.  To be honest, I am very happy with the quality of the current version).

Gameplay

Each player takes control of one of 15 (!) characters; each character has special powers.

Each character’s power are notated on the sheet (see above). Generally, these special powers allow the character to manipulate tiles, manipulate dice, and/or manipulate spires.  

This is a bag-pulling game; it’s not really bag-building, as bag-building implies players put stuff in there for purposely to change the odds.  Having said that, there are decisions players make during the game that do change the distribution of the pieces … so you could argue this is a bag-building game?  Maybe?

The pieces you put into the bag are dual purpose: they are both the invaders (that clog spaces on your board) and spell-pieces that allow you to use special powers!

At the start of each player’s turn, he/she get 3 pieces that go into the spell area above.  Discarding combinations of the pieces allow the players to cast spells to help them!  See above!!!  The spell is the important thing here (Lava Bomb destroys invaders!), but again the pieces do go back into the bag, so what pieces you use for spells has at least some bag-building implications.

During the end of every turn, using the same bag, the invaders are pulled and placed on the pieces in the middle!  The invaders clog spaces so you can’t build!  

As the game unfurls, you are trying to build spires of height 4 (for each element).  You use puple pillars to build bases for the next levels: see above.

The purple dice are “generally” how you build purple pillars!  Note above as the player can build three pillars on water spaces, and one pillar on an ice space!  There are other powers and spells to build pillars, but generally the purple dice build the purple pillars.  

At the start of every player’s turn, they get to roll 5 dice, and they help determine what the player can build/do that turn!

A completed structure of height 4 (where all levels are the same element) allows the player to build a spire!  See above!  Once all four spires have been built, players win!

If there are no empty spaces for the invaders to occupy, then they tear down the walls and attack the gooey center!  If all the purple (circular) pieces in the middle are removed, players lose!

A winning game looks like the above!  3-D towers built with 4 spires!  Pretty cool!

Along the way, during the bad news phase, the spirits of the elements are awoken.

Each one of these has special powers which makes it harder to build the spires.  But building a full spire will KILL the appropriate spirit, so some of the game may be deciding which one to go after!

There are other ways to lose, but usually you will lose when too many invaders come out and there’s no place for them to go!  (If you wait too many turns, you run out of time and just lose: see above).

Even if you don’t win, a “nearly-completed” gane looks pretty cool!  See above!

Rulebook

The rulebook is good.  

The font is pretty big and readable, the rulebook stays open next to me on the chair, but there is a little bit of droopage over the edges, so this gets about a B+ on the Chair test.

The Components are well-documented with pictures and annotating text.

The set-up is perfect: it spans two adjacent pages, stays open, and marks where everything goes.

There’s no index, but there is a glossary (see above), and we found that to be good enough.

The rules end with a nice Icon reference.  See above.

Generally, this was a good rulebook.  There were a few questions on some edge-cases on rules (see our BGG post here), but the designer seems pretty engaged and answered our questions over there pretty quickly.

Overall, nice job.

Building vs. Dexterity

The rulebook makes it VERY clear this is not a dexterity game.   See above.  In all my plays of the game, I never really had any problem knocking stuff over.  (EDIT: update, yes, in our cooperative game we had an “oops” moment, but it was easy to rebuild).  But I like this acknowledgement!  This game is about building cool towers!

Solo Mode

Yes!  This rulebook does a GREAT JOB of acknowledging how the solo mode works! See above!  Thank you for following Saunders’ Law!  The game is true solo, were the solo player operates one character and pretty much plays the game just like normal (no real changes).   I applaud this solo mode!

Over the course of a week, I played about 3 solo games with different characters. The purple guy!  See above!

The blue guy!

…and the red guy!

Strictly speaking, I didn’t win any of my games!  I cheated in my middle game just to see what the endgame looked like (and it was a minor cheat, but it was still a cheat).

This game is hard.  You have to balance the randomness of the dice with the number of invaders points and the scarcity of spell components.  Every decision you make has some repercussion: if you kill some invaders with a spell, then the spell components go back into the bag … which kills the invaders, but changes the distribution in the bag!  If you build too much too soon, you may build so that the invaders have no place to land and they end up breaking down the walls!

I have, over the course of my plays, developed some strategies.  There is some strategy, but also a lot of tactics, as you have to play the dice as they are given.

The randomness can be a little frustrating sometimes, but usually there are just enough mechanisms to deal that randomness (you always get a free re-roll every turn, your special powers can do stuff to  “useless” dice, and the spells can help.  Having said that, the game can sometimes feel just a touch too random.  At the end of day, if you roll poorly, you will lose.

But I liked the way all the systems of the game worked together; they all interacted in interesting ways.  I had fun playing.

As a solo gamer, it’s easy to get this out and start playing.  The amount of maintenance per turn isn’t too bad, and the game moves along as quickly as the solo player likes.   The only “bad part” is how much work it is to clean up the game at the end; there are a lot of components that need to be separated!

Cooperative Play

Cooperative play went over very well!

Using a minor house rule (see below), we were able to win a game!  It was very satisfying.  

In the cooperative game, there’s no real mechanisms to encourage cooperation.  Each player’s turn is very multi-player solitaire!  A player rolls the dice and decides how to use the dice and the spells and deal with the invaders.    A lot of people I know really like this style of cooperative game, as it’s much harder to have an Alpha Player ruin the game … since I can only use my own powers and my own dice.  (Typically, none of the special powers of your character can be used outside of your turn).   So, it might seem this game isn’t particularly cooperative.

Even though the game has no mechanisms to encourage cooperation, a lot of “high-level” cooperation occurs!  Which invaders do we deal with?  Which spells do we use?  How do I use rerolls?  What Spires do we complete?   It’s all high-level discussions.

My friends and I, who cooperate very well, had a great time playing this.  We talked a lot about high-level strategy and interacted/discussed/cooperated quite a bit.

I also think this would be an excellent game to play at a convention!  Since you may not know other players very well at conventions, a multi-player solitaire game is a good choice.  It’s harder for Alpha Players to show their ugly head, and each player can execute their own turn, but still conversing with other players!

House Rule: Re-rolls Must Roll Something Different!

There is a very frustrating thing with using re-rolls as a mitigation mechanic: if you re-roll and roll EXACTLY THE SAME THING.  As a house rule, we suggest that, if you roll the same thing on a re-roll, you can re-roll until you get something different.

Some Component Issues

My board had trouble laying flat; I had to use a Board Butler (see above) to make sure the board stayed flat.  I feel like this is a bigger deal in this game because you are building a 3-D structure and the board NEEDS to be flat and stable.  After my third game, it was a little better and I didn’t need the board butler. 

The spires didn’t seem very “stable”.  See as the green spire just kinda opens up, but the white spire stays very compact.  I suspect a little glue might fix this issue.  It’s not a big deal, but it was annoying to try to move the spires around when they sometimes kind of open up or fall apart.  Again, I think a little bit of glue will fix this, so it’s not a big deal.

Randomness

There’s a lot of ways to mitigate randomness in this game, and there are a lot great decision points;  I really like all the places where you can make choices.  For example, at the start of every turn, you get one building piece (you choose the pile), but you can still swap away if you get something you don’t want!  I also like that you essentially have a re-roll every turn! (But see our House Rule above).  I also like that the spell pieces are also the invaders!  It’s cool that you have to think about how the invaders and spell pieces distribute into the bag! All your choices seem important.

At the very end of the day, though, this is still a dice game.  If you roll poorly and there are no mitigations left, you will lose.  It’s not a big deal because generally there’s enough mitigation so that you don’t have this feeling too often.  Be aware: occasionally, you will be grumpy when you roll badly.   You have to decide if that’s too much for you.  The good news is that the game is pretty quick.  I think 45 minutes estimate might be too little shy; my games were more like 60 to 90 minutes.

Conclusion

Aetherspire is a really neat tower-defense and 3-D building game.  I liked it and my friends like it.

The structures you build are very cool and look great!  It’s fun to be part of that process! See above!  It’s a very kinesthetic and interactive experience!

The game can be just a little random, but there are enough mitigation methods (plus our House Rule) that it’s not usually a problem.  At the end of the day, this is still a dice game that can still stab you in the eye.

My friends and I had a great time playing this! It looks good, it’s fun to build, and there’s enough choices that you always feel like you can do something!

Me and my friends all agree in this one: 8/10 for cooperative mode! It was so much fun!  8/10 for both solo and cooperative mode … although the cooperative might have been a little higher if there just a few more mechanisms for cooperation: the cooperative mode is pretty much multiplayer solitaire with a few high-level discussions of strategy … but that may be what you want at a convention … or to avoid the dreaded Alpha Player.

Side Note: This probably would have made my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025 if I had gotten it a little bit earlier … be on the lookout for this on my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2026!

Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Game Expansions of 2025!

Welcome to the end of 2025!  There were some great games that came out, but also some great expansions that really contributed to the world of cooperative games!  As usual, we qualify our expansions are one of three types:

  1. Stand-Alone Expansion: Some games you thought might be on the Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2025 might have just ended up on this list because they are stand-alone games that can be played without a base game, but at the end of the day they also expand a base game!
  2. Makes The Game Cooperative: Some expansions take a competitive base game and make the game fully cooperative with the expansion! We saw a number of these type of expansions on the Top 10 Games That Can Be Played Fully Cooperatively!
  3. More Content: Some expansions just add more content (more cards, etc.) to the base cooperative game!

We also continue with the newer characterization: Does It Require Another Expansion? 

Honorable Mention: Origin Story

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative
Solo Mode: Well, you could play the 3-character co-op mode as a solo player, but there’s already a 3-character solo mode in there.
Requires Another Expansion?  No

This is an odd duck … because it’s not a real “official” expansion.  This is a homebrew set of rules to make the really wonderful game Origin Story into a cooperative game!  See link here for rules.

We played Origin Story, admired how well it works, especially with the powers, strategizing a limit of 5 rounds … and the artwork is amazing. While playing, we couldn’t help to think “Being a Super Hero game, is there a way to play cooperatively?” We fervently decided a new mode of gameplay should be added: a cooperative mode! Over a month or so, we developed some simple rules to make an optional cooperative mode for Origin Story. These rules probably need a little more play-testing, but frankly, we all enjoyed the game in a whole new way with this cooperative mode. Now, as well as playing the current mode to be the best Super Hero and win, all the Super Heroes can now work together to save the planet in a cooperative mode!

A Super Hero game should be cooperative: see this free set of rules here.

10. Marvel Champions: Agents of SHIELD

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: No new solo mode, just the original
Requires Another Expansion?  No

More than any other game on this list, I play this with my buddy Junkerman (see above).   He loves Marvel Champions, even more than me!  (So much so, that he has his own blog about it: see Aspect Expressions Blog here!)   Marvel Champions is a game where you get the expansions because they offer you characters or some kind of adventure!

In this case, we get Maria Hill and Nick Fury as characters, running them through an adventure of 5 Scenarios as Agents of SHIELD!

I think what sold me more than anything else was the fact that Nick Fury gets a Flying Car!  Once I saw Nick Fury had that, you couldn’t stop me from playing him!  A Flying Car!! Agents of SHIELD is just more content in the Marvel Champions universe; good stuff.

9. Thunderstone Quest: Twilight Souls/The All-Consuming Horde

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Needs The Barricades Mode Expansion for solo
Requires Another Expansion?  Yes: To play solo or cooperatively, you need The Barricades Mode Expansion 

If Junkerman is my Marvel Champions buddy, then Nathan and Caroline are my Thunderstone Quest buddies!   I have played most of the recent Thunderstone Quest expansions with them!  See above as we finish The All-Consuming Hive, having rescued peoples from a living dungeon!

It’s kind of gotten ridiculous how many Quests there are (see above).  But, these expansions still offered something new and expanded the game and made it more fun!

It’s gotten a little ridiculous (I know I have already said that), but I still like to play Thunderstone Quest solo or cooperatively (see above as a I play Twilight Souls solo).  You can still use these two new expansions in the base competitive game, but if you want to play solo or cooperatively, don’t forget that you need the Barricades Mode expansion!

8. Flock Together: Birds of a Feather Eggspansion

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: No new solo mode, just the original
Requires Another Expansion?  No

This is the easiest type of expansion to recommend; it just adds more of everything you already like to the game!  This eggspansion (be prepared for lots of Chicken puns) adds some new cards, some new players boards (so you can play up to 6) … but, most importantly, it adds 6 new predators with 6 new chicken puns (see above) … Chew Bawka?  Oi!

… and 6 new player chickens (with even more chicken puns)!  If you liked the base cooperative game Flock Together (see our original review here), this is just more stuff of the stuff you already like!  You like Chicken Puns, right?  See our review of the expansion here!

7. Skytear Horde: Campaigns

Expansion Type: More Content, Standalone Expansion
Solo Mode: No new solo mode, just the original
Requires Another Expansion?  No

I never know whether this series should go on my Top 10 Solo Games of 2025 or my Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2025!  This year, because I was able to get it played cooperatively in a some good sessions, I am counting is a cooperative (standalone) expansion!

This expansion is mostly just new cards!  If you like Skytear Horde (see our original review here), this just gives you more cards … more content … for this cooperative tower defense game.  

There is a campaign book in here that is both good and bad.  It’s not particularly well-written, but once you get how the campaign modes work, I think they add a lot to the base Skytear Horde game!   See our review here where we discuss the good and bad of Skytear Horde: Campaigns!

In fact, I conjecture that this campaign mode could be a phenomenal way to teach the game!  I taught my friends the game using the campaign mode, and they really responded well to this!  Basically, the game comes out piecemeal in campaign mode, making it easier to digest.  For this to work, however, you really need someone who knows the game  to teach this mode.  Check out or review of Skytear Horde: Campaigns if you want more information!

6. Leviathan Wilds: Deepvale Expansion

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: No new solo mode, just the original
Requires Another Expansion?  No

This really is just a more stuff you already like expansion!  If you liked the original game of Leviathan Wilds (see out review here of a game that made our #3 on Top 10 Cooperarive Games of 2024), this just gives you more of the stuff you like!

There’s 7 new Leviathans, and oof, they seem creepier than the original Leviathans! And of course, rage decks for each Leviathan.

We also get a new climber!  The Edge!  

This is really just more stuff for Leviathan Wilds! Nothing groundbreaking!  (Ha, pun intended).  See our review of Leviathan Wilds: Deepvale Expansion to see if you might want to pick up this expansion!

5. Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative
Solo Mode: Yes
Requires Another Expansion?  No 

More than any expansion that came out this year, this expansion is a puzzle.  It doesn’t even require THAT much from the base game Santorini; mostly just the building pieces and some minis!  It’s also a very different kind of game than the original Santorini!

I played it both solo and cooperatively.  It’s much easier to play this solo; each scenario is just a puzzle you are trying to solve!  The puzzles are about placing city pieces out, using god powers, and trying to get more city pieces (as city pieces are scarce)!

I was able to get some cooperative games played, and as long as everyone promises to NOT be an Alpha Player, they can work well!   This expansion isn’t for everyone, as not everyone is going to like the very puzzly scenarios The Riddle of the Sphinx presents!  But if a puzzle building game using the pieces of Santorini sounds fun to you, check out our review of Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx to see if this might be an expansion you enjoy!

4. Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Expansion Type: Stand-Alone Expansion, Makes The Game Cooperative
Solo Mode: Yes
Requires Another Expansion?  No, but you can play with any Unmatched set.

Of course, we had to eat pizza before we played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Unmatched Adventures.

Our favorite part of this expansion is that it adds two more scenarios to the Unmatched Adventures system!  Recall that we loved Unmatched Adventures (see review here), but our main complaint was that the box only came with two scenarios … now we have two more! 

I am not personally a TMNT fan, but I really enjoyed the new heroes and villains.  My friend Jon (above), who is a huge TMNT fan, really liked the game.  I think knowing the IP might move this game to a 10/10 for some people: it really does capture a lot of TMNT feel (with the sewers being a fun way to travel around the city)!  See our review here to see if this is something you might like!

3. Dice Throne Adventures: Unchained

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative, More Content
Solo Mode: Yes (true solo)
Requires Another Expansion?  Yes: this is an expansion for Dice Throne Adventures (and I am also assuming  you have one of the base Dice Throne character boxes)

Firstly, this is an expansion that just adds more stuff: more Minions, more Loot, and another boss to fight in Dice Throne Adventures!  And yes, this is an expansion to an expansion!  The original Dice Throne Adventures (which Unchained expands) took the base Dice Throne game and made it solo and cooperative!

But this expansion fixes three major problems!  Firstly, there we no solo one-shots in the original Dice Throne Adventures!  Unchained allows the solo player to play a one-off little solo Adventure!  Unchained adds the Minion Rush solo mode (see above), which allows the solo player to take a new character and try it out in a limited little adventure!

Secondly, Dice Throne Adventures had the problem that the adventure is way too long and too involved.  Unchained fixes Dice Throne Adventures by adding a one-shot cooperative adventure, which is a condensed little Minion dash/Boss battle!  There’s 6 new maps (see one above) that allow the cooperative players to go through a little adventure in one game session!

Finally, Unchained fixes the “slow upgrade” problem of Dice Throne Adventures! It seems to take forever to upgrade your cards in Dice Throne Adventures, but in the new Minion Rush and One-Shot Adventures, you get a new One-Shot Loot chart!  See above! And this time, Loot goes directly into your hand, so you feel the effects of upgrading quickly!

Overall, I think Unchained is an essential upgrade for Dice Throne Adventures!  See our review here to see if you agree!

2. Marvel Dice Throne Missions

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative
Solo Mode: Yes (true solo)
Requires Another Expansion?  No (but I am assuming  you have one of the base Dice Throne character boxes)

This expansion takes the base Dice Throne and adds two-sided Missions to the game.   These missions are usually more exploration on first side (with mini fights against minions) and then fight the big bad boss on the other side (see Doctor Octopus).   You can also choose to do longer campaigns with a notion of experience points to help you upgrade.

This game supports true solo so you can take your favorite Dice Throne character through as many missions as you want!  You might have noticed that the Missions are VERY Marvel character specific (it is called Marvel Missions), but there’s no reason you couldn’t take any Dice Throne characters on these missions!

I enjoyed the heck out of this as a solo game (especially with Wolverine), but my friends bounced off the cooperative game! I think the mistake there was in NOT letting them  try out their hero in a quick head-to-head mode; I think that would have made all the difference!  See our review of Marvel Dice Throne Missions here! In the end, I personally loved it, so it had to made near the top of the list!!

1. Kinfire Council: Winds of Change

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative, More Content
Solo Mode: Yes (two-handed, with special rules*)
Requires Another Expansion?  No (but you might want the Kinfire Council upgrade kit with wooden bits, see far right)

Kinfire Council is a pretty cool worker placement game … that I would never want to play in its original form.  Wait, Why? It’s rife with back-stabbing, traitoring, and some indirect take-that!  The Councilors may side with the city or may side with the Cult trying to take over the city! The base game is all about intrigue within the city!   But, as part of the original Kickstarter, Kinfire Council also had the Winds of Change expansion which took out the base back-stabby/traitory traits, replacing them with both a solo and a cooperative mode!

With the Winds of Change expansion, players are city Councillors trying to stop the Cult from ruining their city!  Along the way, they vote, upgrade spaces, upgrade workers, arrest cultists, stop threats, build a tower for inspiration, and so many other things!  To be fair, the expansion doesn’t change the gameplay THAT much (there is a really neat base worker placement scheme here), but the cooperative mode made me and my friends feel that much more engaged!  “This is our city, darn it!  We’re not going to let the Cultists take over!! “

I was very surprised just how much I liked this game with the expansion!  Me and all my friends all liked it too!   We played over multiple game sessions over multiple game nights with multiple groups; it was so fun! We even added a little House Rule to make the game more fun, more cooperative, and more interactive!  See our review of Kinfire Council + Winds of Change to see what our House Rule is, and if this is something you might like!

I am kind of surprised this made my #1 expansion! It’s gone up in my estimation every time I have played it! It’s just that … I want to play it more! I am so excited by this, I am going to go out of my way to teach it at Dice Tower West this March! We’ll be playing the cooperative version with my House Rules if you want to play! I just loved how interactive the cooperative version was!!

Top 10 Solo Board and Card Games of 2025!

What makes a good solo game? I find them many times when I start playing solo games to learn games cooperatively for my friends. If a game starts to enchant me and I can’t stop playing it solo … there’s something to it! Most of the games on this list were games I played solo to teach my friends … but then I kept playing! Some of these games will end up on either my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025, but some of them may end up on my Top Cooperative Expansions of 2025, but one things for sure … they are all great solo!

My tastes are a little funny; see if you agree or disagree.

For more great solo games, see last year’s list: Top 10 Solo Games of 2024!

Honorable Mention. Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templar (Reforged)

This is a solo game I played quit a bit in 2025, but it can’t “officially” make this list for a number of reasons.  For one, it’s a video game!  Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templar is a point-and-click solo adventure video game … (See our discussion of point-and-click adventure games here in Top 10 Point-And-Click Adventure Board Games here)! This game is sometimes what I want when I want to play solo: it’s an all-consuming adventure game with story and exploration! 

My physical copy arrived about November 2025, so I can still count it as 2025 (even though my digital copy arrived in 2024, so that’s another reason).   I know, it doesn’t really belong on this list, but these point-and-click adventure video games totally scratch my solo game itch sometimes!  And I spent a fair amount of time playing it solo in 2025!

10. Wroth

What a strange journey Wroth was!  This is a solo, competitive, and cooperative area control/area majority game, which is a real interesting mix of game modes!   Unfortunately, the solo play is hard to get to because you have to learn the base competitive game BEFORE you can play the solo/cooperative mode!

Along the way, I discovered I actually liked the competitive game but disliked the cooperative game!   And somewhat paradoxically (because the solo game is the cooperative game), the solo game ended up being a really fun puzzle!  After almost selling the game (because I disliked the cooperative mode so much), it was the solo mode that prompted me to keep this game.

Wroth also has one of my favorite covers of the year!   Check out our journey with Wroth to see if this is a solo game you might like! 

9. Earthborne Rangers: Legacy of the Ancestors

This is an odd entry for a few reasons!  Firstly, this was the expansion for the original Earthborne Rangers that was part of the first, original Kickstarter!  Even though I ordered this expansion many moons ago (from the first Kickstarter: see our review here), this expansion didn’t arrive until 2025 (and even BGG says it’s a 2025 release date)!

This probably should go in my Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2025, instead of here in my solo list … but the thing is, I only ever played it solo!  Even though you can play 1-4 players with Earthborne Rangers, I think one or two players is the best count for Earthborne Rangers! In this case, one player was best! 

In some ways, the abundance of storybook games (see our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025) just reminded me what a great exploration and storybook game this is!  I got to relive the fun of exploring in this system  in this exploration and story-filled game! I got the explore … The Arcology!

8. Storyfold: Wildwoods

Storyfold: Wildwoods is both a perfect entry and an odd entry to this list.  Why is that?

In name, this is a solo game only!  It’s about a little girl and her animal companion roaming and exploring a dark and depressing forest.  There is a little bit of worker placement, a little bit of dice, and little bit of story, and a lot of dark experience!  It’s a solo game!

I ended up playing this solo game as a two-player game, as team solo!  In other words, me an my friend Teresa operated the solo game as a team, with both of us working the solo position!  We would operate the single position, but discuss tactics and strategy together.  I argue that this is still a solo game, but you can just choose to be on team solo together!  See our review of Storyfold: Wildwoods to see if you agree!

7. Santorini + Riddle of the Sphinx

Riddle of the Sphinx is an expansion that makes the  Santorini base game solo and cooperative.  

Of all the games on our list this year, this is the most thinky puzzle-like game; you have to figure out how to build and acquire resources in an environment of scarcity.  The gods offer special bonuses and resources as you burn through them.  

This game stayed on my solo table until I had to go to Dice Tower West! Although I enjoyed the cooperative game as well, I think this really engaged my solo gamer brain, and I loved moving the characters around to try to solve the building puzzle in an optimal way!  Take a look at our review of Riddle of the Sphinx to see if this is something you might enjoy!

6. Unstoppable

Unstoppable is nominally a solo game or 2-player cooperative game … but almost all my plays were solo!  Honestly, it feels more like a solo game than a 2-Player game anyways?  Honestly, that co-operative mode does feel a little pasted on; I mean, you can’t even share money…

 This is a deck-building game with some card-crafting going on!  Cards slip into sleeves and upgrade your cards, all while you are still trying to build a deck!  

There’s some really interesting mechanisms going on in here, as the things you battle flip and give you good stuff!  Overall, I got to play through all the scenarios in the base box and really enjoyed this deck-builder.   One question you may want to ask yourself: would you prefer Unstoppable or Astro Knights (both deck-building games)?  See our review for more discussion!

5. War Story

This was such a unique adventure to play through solo.  This is all about being part of the French Resistance in World War II, and it’s pretty brutal.  You shoot Nazis, see most of your team die, and try to survive a wartime environment.

Even crazier, all of this happens in a Choose Your Own Adventure book situation!  This is a game where your choices really do matter; everything you do affects the final outcome and how well your team does!  Do you show mercy on the Nazi your captured?  How do you silence the little boy so he doesn’t alert the authorities?  Everything you do matters!

The game comes with 3 adventure books, as a full adventure unwinds over three big sessions (and each session affects the others)!  After playing all the way through solo, I was emotionally exhausted but strangely fulfilled!  Take a look at our review of War Story: Occupied France to see if this unique experience is up your alley!

(This is a game that has a 2024 release date on BGG, but try as hard as we could, we couldn’t get it until 2025, so we count it as 2025)

4. Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

I ended up enjoying the solo mode for this much more than I expected!  For a cooperative trick-taking game that has a lot of similarities to The Crew, its one big difference is that it has a solo mode!  And it’s very very good!   If you love Lord of the Rings, this is an easy recommendation.  Even if you only “like” Lord of the Rings, it’s still a great solo game!

Over the course of several weeks, I ended up playing solo through all 18 chapters!  Each chapter has a nominal play-time of 20 minutes … but if you fail a chapter, you have to keep playing it until you win!

The production on this game is amazing, the solo game is amazing, it’s quite thematic, and the 18-Chapter campaign was so much fun!  It’s easy to get this to the table … as even though I was a little sick, it was engaging enough to forget I was sick for a week.   I made it through all 18 chapters solo, and it was a blast.

See here for our review of Lord Of The Rings, The Fellowship of the Rings: The Trick-Taking Game to see if this something that might appeal to your inner solo gamer!

(This is a game that has a 2024 release date on BGG, but try as hard as we could, we couldn’t get it until 2025, so we count it as 2025)

3.  DC Super Heroes United: Batman Hush

DC Super Heroes United: Batman Hush is a great game for both cooperative and solo.  In the end, though, I probably played it a lot more solo than I did cooperatively!  In fact, I couldn’t stop playing it solo!

I ended playing just about every combination of heroes and villains from this base box, as a solo game!  Now, you have to understand that I strongly prefer playing Marvel and DC United solo as 2-Player multi-handed, where I operate two characters and alternate between them as if it were a 2-Player cooperative game.   I find the “official” solo mode of the United games just too contorted.

It was such a blast to play DC heroes like Batman and Robin together solo!  See above.

I couldn’t stop playing this solo!  I kept trying more and more!  I even started pulling out some Marvel United and combining DC United and Marvel United together!  See above at Batman hangs out in Stark Labs! I got such a giggle imagining Bruce Wayne critiquing Tony Stark’s tech!

See our review of DC Super Heroes: Batman Hush to see if this is something you might like as a solo player.    This probably would have been out #1 solo game of 2025, but the next two games offered such unique solo experiences, they had to be just above it!

2. Arydia

It was very hard to choose between #1 and #2 on this list; either of them could have been #1!  I also feel bad not putting Arydia  in our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025!  In the end though, I only played this solo, but I had a heck of a great time!

Arydia is a huge adventuring/dungeon crawler game with tons of content: maps and cards!  See above!  And the components are just fantastic!

This game, with its unique map(s) system(s) and combat stayed on my table for a straight week as I couldn’t stop playing playing!  I wanted to see what would come next in this world!

This is an adventure-laden dungeon crawl that reminded me a lot of the old computer game  Ultima IV: it had combat, little maps, big maps, and a big adventure!   I had such a wonderful time playing this solo!  Check out our solo review of Arydia to see if this is something you might like!

1. Star Trek: Captain’s Chair

At the end of the day, I slightly prefer space over fantasy, so I think that’s why Star Trek: The Captain’s Chair ended being the #1 solo game of 2025 for me!

This is such a neat deck-building game, but calling it JUST a deck-building game seems to be an insult!  There’s so much to this game that it actually almost took me the whole year to absorb it, get it to the table, and play it!  Make no mistake, this is a big and complicated game with lots of rules!  The rulebook is very very good, but I joke that it feels like a legal document!

One major feature of the game is that there are two solo modes: the Cadet Training Mode (see rules above) aka easy mode, and the normal solo game aka hard mode!    The easy mode gives you a chance to learn the systems of the game in a simplified scenario! 

The Cadet Training Mode also a great way to learn a new Captain’s Deck!  Another great feature of this game is that every Captain in the game (see above) has a unique play style that is encapsulated in a different Captain’s deck!  Sisko is different than Picard who is different from Koloth!  See the six different Captains above!

In the end, it’s the normal solo mode (which has its own rulebook!) that makes this game a wonderful challenge.  An AI runs another captain playing against you; see above as I play Picard facing off against AI Koloth!  This solo mode is challenging and interesting and has a ton of variety as each Captain is so different!

This is a large, sprawling, solo game with ships warping to planets, planets being taken over, landing parties landing, crew members beaming to ships, crew members on duty, drafting new people, cargo, allies, and ships on your way to being the better Captain!

It’s hard to recommend this game for many reasons: the base game is actually competitive (the solo modes are add-ons), the game is pretty complicated with a legalese rulebook, and apparently it’s sold out everywhere as I write this!  Despite all that, I had a heck of a time playing Star Trek: Captain’s Chair as a solo player! It was such a unique experience that it had to be my #1 solo game of 2025.  See our review here to see if this might be something you enjoy!

Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2025!

Welcome to the end of 2025! This is our top 10 games that were from 2025*! The best of the best!

This was a slightly weird year for cooperative games, if only because it’s not 100% clear when some of our favorite games came out! Some of the games on our list were “officially” released in 2024, but as a real playing customer, we couldn’t get them until 2025. This is also a reminder that we here at CO-OP Gestalt pay for every single game we get as a real consumer! We receive absolutely no consideration of any kind from Publishers for free review copies of games or expedited delivery or anything like that! We just play cooperative games because we love them so much that we want to share them!

Some games you might think would be on this list might have made our Top 10 Solo Card and Board Games of 2025 or our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2025!

There’s some great cooperative games that came out this year, let’s take a look!

Honorable Mention: Tales From The Red Dragon Inn

Plays Solo:  Yes (two-handed or with a special companion)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 13+
Length: 90-120 minutes

So, this is an example of game that we picked up on the second Kickstarter; it really did officially come out in 2023, but the second Kickstarter delivered to us in 2025.  So, we are counting this unofficially as a Honorable Mention for 2025 … because it’s so good!  

This is dungeon crawler game that is fun and quirky, but it has a well thought out combat system!  

Despite it having a Variable Turn Order system (we have so many opinions on Variable Turn Order), this game is a fun dungeon crawler.  We joked that this should be called Lighthaven!  It’s like Gloomhaven in many ways, but so much more light-hearted!  Take a look at our review to see if this is a game you might like!

10. The Dark Quarter

Plays Solo:  Yes (operate two characters)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 18+
Length: 120+ minutes

This is more of a story than a game; I was originally hoping for more of a detective game set in voodoo-laden New Orleans, but this is more of an adult crime novel set in a voodoo-esque New Orleans. 

This is a game with lots of plot points that unfurl like an adult crime thriller on HBO or Netflix or Apple TV.  As you going through the game, you are enjoying the story as it happens, and you get to make some choices along the way.  Rather than watching an HBO crime drama, you are part of it!

An App runs this; this is one of four Storybook games in our Top 10 this year!  This is less interactive and more about coming along for the story!  The Dark Quarter  also very very 18+ with adult language and adult content.  If you want to immerse yourself in a crime story in New Orleans, there is nothing else like it! Just be aware that it’s very story-driven, but maybe not too much game. Take a look at our review to see if you might like it.  My friends and I enjoyed the experience, but others didn’t, which is why this is only #10.

9. Wandering Galaxy

Plays Solo:  Yes (very special mode: true solo, but has two sidekicks)
Player Count: 1 to 6
Ages: 14+
Length: 60+ minutes

This is the third in the series of storybook app games from Plaid Hat: the first two being Forgotten Waters (which made #8 on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2020) and Freelancers (which made the #4 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022).  These are all silly games where players go through an adventure together!

This particular silly adventure is set in space!! An app (website) controls your progress through the story, as it offers voice-acting as it reads little vignettes aloud!  This is a space-based game where players roam the galaxy in search of adventure, using some worker placement and deck-building along the way.

This is a very cooperative game, as players must operate many positions of a star ship together (like the crew of the Star Trek Enterprise with helm, weapons, … etc!)   This is one of four Storybook games that made our Top 10 list this year!  This one concentrates on the humor and the voice-acting of the app to tell the story!  See our review to see if Wandering Galaxies is a game you might like!

(This was also a game where we got the physical copy very very late in December 2024, but the app didn’t “really” work until 2025, so we count this as a 2025 game)

8. Vantage

Plays Solo:  Yes (true solo)
Player Count: 1 to 6
Ages: 14+
Length: 120-180 minutes

Vantage is one of the four storybook games on our Top 10 this year!  It’s a very divisive game, which is why it’s lower on the list! Some people love it and some people hate it!! Why?  Vantage weaves in and out of different definitions: Is it a storybook game? Is it an exploration game? Is it an adventure game? Is it a campaign game?  Take a look at our review of Vantage here (What Vantage Is and Isn’t) to see if this is something you might like.

At the end of the day, me and my friends had fun exploring this game world with it’s beautiful art and very different worlds.   The solo experience is good, but I believe this is a better shared experience as a fully cooperative game, as players read to each other and explore with each other.  This is a gorgeous and well-produced game that you may love too!

7. One-Hit Heroes

Plays Solo:  Officially no (see the cover), but there are two solo modes in rulebook
Player Count: 2 to 4
Ages: 10+
Length: 20 minutes

This game made our list this year because it felt like I could bring it out to both gamers and non-gamers, and both sets seemed to enjoy it!   This is a simpler game that only last 20 minutes (but you can keep playing if you like the little campaign); it’s all about battling some bad guys together!  It’s major premise is that if you take one hit, you die (much like real life)!  So, you have to work together to keep out to harms way!

I was able to play the game with my nieces, and they had fun!  They aren’t really gamers, but they were good sports who enjoyed the experience!

This is a light, bright, fun and somewhat innovative cooperative game.   I am glad to have some lighter, simpler games to teach my gamer and non-gamer friends and family.  See our full review here of One-Hit Heroes to see if you might like it!

6. Secrets of Zorro

Plays Solo:  Yes (true solo)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 10+
Length: 45-60 minutes

The Secrets of Zorro is the surprise hit of the year for my groups!   We played it over several weeks of game nights because it was such a fun and thematic cooperative worker placement game!

The cooperative worker placement works so well in this game as you move to places for upgrades, visit the local tavern to get rumours and tactical info, visit the blacksmith for stuff, visit your home for “stuff our Dadleft us”, and just try to get ready for the craziness of the night mode!

This is a game that embraces Player Selected Turn Order (one of my favorite mechanisms)!  It is a thematic and interactive romp through the mythos of Zorro!  Check out our review of the Secrets of Zorro to see if this is a game you might like (we also suggest you have House Rule that makes the game more fun and more thematic and more cooperative).  This is a Hidden Gem!

5. The Lord of The Rings, Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

Plays Solo:  Yes (very different solo mode)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 10+
Length: 20 minutes (per episode)

As we head into the top 5 games, realize that any of these could have been our #1 game!

This little cooperative trick-taking game took all my gaming groups by storm!  My friends in Las Cruces played though the whole campaign!  Me and my friends played it over and over and over at Dice Tower West!  My friends in Tucson loved it!  Everybody who played this loved it!

Everyone seems to agree that this is a very thematic game, with characters from The Fellowship of the Rings having specific thematic goals to meet as you play.  The game unfolds over many episodes, and each episode is a piece of the story of The Fellowship of the Rings!  I was told by my friends (who love Lord of the Rings) how thematic the story and episodes were!

This made the #2 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Trick-Taking Games, and it is a fantastic game!  It is very easy to get into and everyone I played this with seemed to love it!  Check out our review here to see if this is a game you might like!  

(This is also a game that BGG lists as 2024, as I think it was released in Germany first; but I tried like crazy to get a copy and could only get one delivered to me in 2025 in the USA!)

4. Tales of the Arthurian Knights 

Plays Solo:  Yes (very different solo mode)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 12+
Length: 45 minutes per player

This is the fourth and final storybook game on this list.  This was far and away my friends’ favorite game of the year!  They liked it so much they went out and bought their own copy almost immediately!  

This is a game all about exploring the world of Camelot (and yes, it can be a silly place with lots of Monty Python references) while reading flowery text from the Book of Tales!  See above!  Of all the Storybooks on this list, this is the more prosy!  This would easily make our Top 10 Cooperative Storybook Games!

It’s hard to believe that this is actually a competitive game FIRST, and that the cooperative and solo modes are actually add-on modes!  Regardless, the only way me and my friends play this Storybook game is solo and cooperatively!  And it works so well!  My friend Teresa actually borrowed my copy to play at her Mom’s birthday party and they adored it!  Take a look at our review of Tales of Arthurian Knights to see if this is something you might like.

(This is also one of those games that BGG lists as 2024 but we tried like crazy to get a copy, and we could only get one delivered in 2025, so we call this a 2025 game!)

3. Invincible: The Card Game

Plays Solo:  Yes (true solo and two-handed solo)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 14+
Length: 60 minutes (well, it’s 2x that)

Invincible: The Card Game (not the confused with other Invincible games) is a re-implementation of Astro Knights (the cooperative Deck-Building game: see here and here).  Does this re-theming and re-implementation work?  Absolutely!

Cooperatively, everyone gets to take the role of a Superhero in this very thematic deck–building game!  This is also the best iteration of the Astro Knights system, partly because it add the Assist keyword which really brought out extra cooperation as we played!! 

See our review of Invincible: The Card Game to see if this is something you might like!  Oh yes!  And you can even mix this with Astro Knights if you wish! 

2. Ham Helsing

Plays Solo:  Yes (true solo and two-handed solo)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 10+
Length: 60-90 minutes 

I really did not expect Ham Helsing to be so high on my list, but this game was so much fun!  Ham Helsing is a comic-book universe (of which I knew nothing about until I played this game)!  The art and cards in this game follow the style of the original artist Rich Moyer, and I gotta say, it works!  This is basically a cooperative boss-battler game where each player takes the role of a character from Ham Helsing!

This is a card-crafting game where you can upgrade your cards by adding clear plastic to them!  See above!  This is definitely a gimmick, but it’s a gimmick that works!  It’s fun to upgrade and choose your little cards and slide them into the sleeves!

Between the clear cards, the cute art, and the acrylic standees, this game’s production is gorgeous!  There is also a sense of humor that underlies all of this, giving it an air of extra fun!  Take a look at our review of Ham Helsing to see if this is a game you might like!  We loved it!

1. DC Super Heroes United: Hush

Plays Solo:  Yes (so many ways, but just play two-handed)
Player Count: 1 to 4 (5, depending on the mode)
Ages: 14+
Length: 30 minutes (well, usually longer)

As I wait for my kickstarter of the original DC Super Heroes United (which was #1 on our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2025) to deliver (which looks like it won’t deliver until 2026), CMON gave us an early sneak peek of the system with DC Super Heroes United: Batman Rush.   Surprisingly, I had never read Batman: Hush (a well regarded Batman story by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee), so this gave me a reason to finally pick up and read it!  It was great!  


DC United: Hush is a beautiful game; it is basically the next small evolution of the Marvel United system that we love so much!

The game contains equipment (one of the newer additions to the game system, which does make the game feel like you have a little more choice), plus a few new kinds of cards. It’s the next (and probably best) evolution of this system!

But most importantly, it add DC heroes like Batman and Robin and DC Villains like Hush and Joker and Harley Quinn!

This game was on my table for weeks as I played through all the combinations of heroes and villains both solo and cooperatively!  My friends and I played cooperatively, and this system just works so well as a group game!  People can choose the heroes they want!  And re-use symbols!

One of the best parts of this game is now you can play with DC and Marvel universes together!!  I got such a giggle when Batman and Robin were on SHIELD HQ battling Marvel’s Taskmaster! See above!

This game was on my table for weeks and I still want to keep playing it. I knew it when I got it, and I know it now as I write this: DC Super Heroes United: Batman Hush is my game of the year, not only for being a great game, but also introducing me to the Batman: Hush story!

Origin Story: Adding a Cooperative Mode

Origin Story is a competitive trick-taking game for 1-4 Players. It has a Super Hero theme, as people grow into their Hero forms over 5 rounds. At its core, it is a trick-taking game: Players gain tricks for victory points, gain powers for special abilities, and emerge slowly over time. The player with the most Victory Points after 5 rounds wins.

We played Origin Story, admired how well it works, especially with the powers, strategizing a limit of 5 rounds and the artwork is amazing. While playing, we couldn’t help to think “Being a Super Hero game, is there a way to play cooperatively?” We fervently decided a new mode of gameplay should be added; a cooperative mode! Over a month or so, we developed some simple rules to make an optional cooperative mode for Origin Story. These rules probably need a little more play-testing, but frankly, we all enjoyed the game in a whole new way with this cooperative mode. Now, as well as playing the current mode to be the best Super Hero and win, all the Super Heroes can now work together to save the planet in a cooperative mode!

Communication

We loved the cooperative trick-taking game  Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game! It inspired us to make these rules!  See our review here!   It just works so well as a cooperative trick-taking game!  Just like LOTR, the Origin Story cooperative game keeps the basic limited communication rules; you can’t ever talk about what’s in your hand.

About the only rule in LOTR that we didn’t like was that you couldn’t really consult each other about which characters to take; there’s not SUPPOSED to be any conversation about who takes which character, because it might give away info about your hand.  It doesn’t really give away that much, and we really enjoyed the discussions and interactions that happened, so we inserted a house rule saying we COULD discuss the characters in the LOTR trick-taking game.

So, in Origin Story Cooperative Rules, players are allowed to discuss who should go into Hero mode and Secret Identity mode; you may have full conversations.   The Origin Story cooperative game encourages a little more discussion than the competitive mode, but to be clear; you still can’t communicate what’s in your hand (unless you are forced to by a power).

Ruleset

We really liked the idea that a  Super Hero game should be cooperative.

See rules below. The current version is 1.0.0. As we get feedback, we may update this.

Version 1.0.1: Some disambiguation, added notion of notating travel with markers
Version 1.0.2: Added note, making sure each player takes control of a marker

OriginStoryCooperativeMode-1.0.2Download

Star Trek: Captain’s Chair. My Solo Game of the Year.

Star Trek: Captain’s Chair is a solo and 2-Player head-to-head game in the Star Trek universe (from publisher Wizkids).  I bought my copy online sometime in early 2025 (I don’t even remember when; March? April?), but the game was so daunting that I was scared to open it up.

Look above to see a full solo game set-up!  Gulp!

I literally spent almost a year learning this game!  See above as I JUST set-up the game, to get a sense of it!  I ran out of time, so I had to tear it down before I even played it!  In fact, I think I set-up the game at least three times before I actually played it!

What is this thing and why is it so daunting?  To call it JUST a deck-building game with Victory Points seems to do the game an injustice, but at its core, it really is a deck-building game; if you get the highest score you “win”.

Let’s take a closer look.

Unboxing and Gameplay

The Captain’s Chair is about a half-sized box. See can of Coke above for scale.

Each player takes the role of one of six Captains from Star Trek: see the Captains above.  And NO Captain Kirk is not in this set;  you have to get one of the Expansions (due out sometime in Q4 last time I looked).

The Captains each have their own little deck hubby hole in the box.  See above.

There is a metric ton of cardboard in this box.  

Most of the cardboard is is tokens and the 6 player boards for the 6 captains.  See above. 

To be fair, I think you WILL have to throw away the Punchout Skeletons to fit everything in the box (what are Punchout Skeletons?  See here).  It hurt me a little to throw these away, but the game just barely fits in the box, and all the Punchout Skeletons do is puff up the box.  So, you will have to throw away them … see a video of me doing it here …

https://www.youtube.com/live/aMSZ3QDeQYM?si=4z8aaQzBlCOyjh8V&t=1073

Like I said, this is, at its core, a deck-building game.  So, you have all sorts of cards that you can buy/accumulate into your deck!  See above all the Common cards: Allies, Cargo, Persons, Ships, Incidents, Locations, and Encounters!  These are “generally” the plain cards you will acquire to build your deck.

But there are lot more very thematic rules than just “build a deck!!” You can acquire ships, and warp them around!

Very thematically, you take control of a Location if you have enough landing parties and/or ships there!

Each Captain has their own very special deck of cards, which only THEY may use!  These cards in the Captain’s deck represents their “style”.  So, even though a Captain can buy/acquire Common cards, a Captain’s deck is a thing unto itself; it slowly unveils itself.  The Captain’s deck (see above) start with Available cards, slowly adds Reserve cards (as the deck cycles), then you can develop Development cards as you see fit!   

Captain Picard, for example, is all about getting Allies!  His Mission (each captain has a base mission which shapes his play-style) is to beam 3 Allies onto a ship!  See above.

Koloth the Klingon has a very different play-style; he is all about getting Ships into play and controlling planets! 

The game also has the notion of the Duty Officer; if you play one, it will allow you some extra activities.

For example (see above), if Ryker is your Duty Officer, he can use one of his Activations (as well as his Play if needed).   There is this notion of “deploy” which allows you to put ships, duty personnel, and other things into play so you get that extra Activation possibility on your turn!

If you deploy the Enterprise-D above, you can use it’s Activations!  (Right now, Picard is fulfilling his Mission of getting 3 Allies beamed aboard!)

There’s also an interesting notion of “play”.  For example, the Set A Course card above has two choices for how to play; you can either use one of your 3 Actions (represented by the blue isolinear chips) to play for the “major” action, or you can just play the card as-is for the lesser play ability (but it doesn’t take one of your 3 Actions).

You can take Control of Locations (see above).

As you play, you need to advance your Specialty tracks.  There’s many ways to advance your Specialty track as you play (it’s all on the cards), but the higher the Tracks are, the bigger the multiples for end-scoring.  See above as Picard has advanced Research (blue) to space 4 (for a multiply of x2), Influence (yellow) to space 3 (for a multiple of x2), and Military to space 0 (for just x1).  

At the end of the game, you look at the bottom right of the cards and they will get you victory points! Right now, Picard would get 3 cards times 2 =6 Victory Points for the Research, and  5 cards times 2=10 Victory Points for Influence.

Of course, some cards just give straight Victory Points.  See above.

Whosoever has the most Victory Points wins!

The gameflow is controlled by the 27 Stardate cards (see above).  Depending on what mode you play (solo easy, solo hard, 2-Player), these cards control how the game unfurls.  They usually just act as a timer (you put Victory Points on the card and when the Victory Points run out, you move to the next cards until the game is over), but they also keep the game flowing by wiping the market occasionally and wiping the Neutral Zone of uninteresting planets.

Over the course of the game, your Captain will warp ships, launch away parties, try to take control of Locations in the Neutral Zone, acquire Tech or Allies or People or Ships or Encounters to meet their Missions in an ultimate attempt to get the most Glory (what we have been calling Victory Points)!

Honestly, there are still plenty of subsystems and rules we didn’t talk about; there is so much to this game!  There is alternate way to lose via a “Burn” if you get too many incidents, there are special Encounters which feel like cool Star Trek vignettes, and many other cool things that if you know Star Trek, you’ll say “That’s very Thematic!”

Rulebook

This is one of the best rulebooks I have read in a while.

First of all, the rulebook gets an A on the Chair Test!

The rulebook opens up, stays flat, and is easy to consult.  The Font is very readable, but they somehow mix the thematic font of Star Trek for headings with a readable font for rule text, and it works.  There’s tons of pictures scattered in with the text, there’s tons of examples!  The rulebook also uses color and italics well!  Seriously, maybe this is an A+ on the Chair test!

The Components pages are great; pictures are notated.

The Set-Up (even though it spans 4 pages) still is done well …

With both a Common Set-up (above above) and a per-player set-up (above).

The rulebook ends with a good summary of symbols.

About the ONLY thing this rulebook does wrong is that it doesn’t have an index.  It has a table of contents and a Keywords in Detail section, but for a game this complicated, an Index is essential.

Other than the lack of an Index, this is almost a perfect rulebook.  I have to be honest, the rulebook almost reads like a legal document (because there are so many rules and systems), but everything is in there and well-explained.

Ways To Play

So, there are three major ways to play The Captain’s Chair (four if you count the unofficial cooperative mode, which we’ll discuss in the Appendix).  The “main mode” is the 2-Player head-to-head mode; this is the way Star Trek: The Captain’s Chair is meant to be played—Captain vs. Captain.   Even though this is a thinky and complex deck-building game with Victory Points, there is some take-that in the 2-Player game, as you can do things to mess up your opposing Captain.  Honestly, it really depends on the Captain(s) you choose; Koloth will have a very different play-style than Picard, who will have a different play-style than Sisko.

For solo play, there are two solo modes built-in:  The Cadet Training Mode, aka The Easy Mode and the Official Solo Mode aka the Hard Mode.   That’s what’s so great about this game; you can choose the mode that fits you!

The Cadet Training Mode

The Cadet Training Mode is probably the best way to learn the game!  Honestly, I can’t imagine jumping into the head-to-head game without learning the easy solo mode first.  See above for the rules for this mode on page 28 of the rulebook.

My first game (strictly my third game, since I set it up 2 times before I ever played!) was The Cadet Training Mode! See above.

The basic idea is that you are fighting an opponent that has “1 of everything”; you are fighting a faceless and nameless opponent.  

Basically, you are just playing turn after turn by yourself and trying to discover how all the mechanisms of the game work.    You don’t operate another Captain or anything like that.  There are enough systems in the game where you “affect” the other Captain, so when you would do that, it’s just a faceless, nameless opponent who has “one of everything”.   For example, how many landing parties does the faceless, nameless opponent have on the planets above?  One each!

This solo mode flows pretty well.  You don’t feel the glaring stare of your opponent as you learn the game; you just try stuff out to see how everything works.

My first solo game scored 69, so apparently I didn’t know how to play just yet.

 My second solo game was much better as I got a 121.  

This solo mode is the way to learn the systems of the game without the immediacy of an overwhelming opponent.  Recall, we suggested that Kinfire Council + Winds of Change sorta has an easy solo mode and a complex solo mode!

The rulebook even suggests this is a great way to learn the deck of a new Captain!  Recall that each Captain has a VERY different play-style, so this is a great way to take the new deck through its paces!

As you can see from my two scores (69 then 121), after my second game on Cadet Training Mode, it was getting too easy.  This  solo mode is a great way to learn the game, but it wouldn’t be much of a challenge now that I know the deck.  I need a new challenge.

Starfleet Command Training Program

The Hard solo mode has its own rulebook!  See above!  This rulebook, called the Starfleet Command Training Program, outlines how to play Star Trek: The Captain’s Chair in a truly complex and challenging solo mode!  This rulebook is also very daunting (at 20 pages), but it’s really not that bad (the second half talks about different modes and a 5-year mission).

One major change is that you have a different set of Starfleet cards to control the pulse of the game. See above.  

The real difference is that you are fighting a real Captain!  See above as Koloth and Picard battle!

You operate one Captain “normally” like you did previously; see as Picard gets set-up normally.

The Captain you are battling has a  very different set-up!  You still use the deck of the other Captain, but now an AI will control how that Captain operates!

There are two Control cards for each AI Captain; these are the AI cards that control what the Captain does on his turn!  Depending on what card you draw, the directions on these AI cards tell you what to do!  (Things at the top of the card take precedence over things lower on the card if there’s any question).

Basically, play alternates between the two captains; the solo player will take his turn normally, but then the solo players uses the AI to operate the other Captain!

See that big number 2 on the Starfleet card above?  That tells you how many cards the AI Captain will get to draw and resolve on his turn!

So, Koloth above draws two cards from his deck and consults the AI cards to see what those cards do!

As the game goes on, it gets pretty complicated!  Koloth is all about getting ships out, and you can see that his AI respects that .. and (see above) as he has so many ships and worlds under control in the later game!

Solo Captain and AI Captain alternate until the game end is triggered by the Star Fleet cards! Whosoever has the most victory points, wins! (If you want to be funny: I Captain goes, then AI Captain goes!)

Just like before, you count the Victory Points to see who wins.

To be clear, this is a pretty complicated AI.   There’s lots of things you have to look up as you play! Where do you send ships? Landing parties?  There’s also a notion of most valuable to me and most valuable to you that controls preferences of cards.  Sometimes determining which cards the AI prefers is pretty exhausting.  I found that it feels like the solo rules do a pretty good job of covering all bases and preferences, but it can feel hairy the first few times you try it.

This is NOT a quick one hour solo game.  This is probably at least a 2 hour game, especially your first few times.    You will find your head buried in the solo rulebook as you try to remember/discover/rank what actions/cards the AI prefers.  It gets easier as you play, but it is very daunting.

I want to be clear that I like this solo mode, but it is not easy.  

Legalese

These rulebooks are very very very good, but I kind of feel like a lawyer when I am playing.  What do I mean by that?  I have to study the rulebook to make sure I have a handle on everything; I want to say I spent a good hour (or more!) reading the rulebook the first time!!!  There are very specific rules to handle just about every exceptional case, but you have to understand how to apply the rules like a lawyer might have to understand how to apply the law.

This might sound like a negative, and for some people it will absolutely be a negative; those people will hate this game: “it’s too complicated, it’s too much, there are too many rules”.  You know if that is true for you.

But if you like a system where things are very well-specified and you don’t mind burying your head in the rulebook a lot, then this is a great game.

Theme

This game feels very thematic.  If you like Star Trek, you will see and feel the theme in this game.  We’ve said that this is a deck-building game, but all the other supporting systems of this game make it feel like Star Trek: duty officers, warping ships, developing cards, acquiring Allies, Cargo, Ships, sending out landing parties, taking control of planets … it feels very Star Trek.   This is arguably the most thematic Star Trek game I have played?

Conclusion

Star Trek: The Captain’s Chair is a daunting beast of a game.  The rulebook feels like legal document, there are many complex systems within the game, and the rules are complicated.  Yet, this is probably the most thematic Star Trek game I have played!  Each Captain’s deck matches their play-style, making them different and interesting to play!  The actions and cards feel like they are right out of Star Trek!  This feels like a love letter to Star Trek.

As a solo gamer, I love that there are two solo modes built in!  The easy solo mode provides an onramp to learn a new Captain’s deck (because they are all so different)!  The complex solo mode provides challenges for the future!  There are 30 different ways to permute the Captains in the complex solo mode (6*5=30 because order matters; which is the AI and which is the player). This gives plenty of ways to try different permutations for quite a bit of variety!  I also happen to know that at least 2 more expansions are planned, so there’s more content coming!

Sure, there’s a 2-Player head-to-head mode … which I may never play.  As a solo gamer, I am very happy with what this is. 

Be aware that this is big complex game with lots of rules and a legal document for  rulebook.  If that doesn’t scare you away and you love Star Trek, I think you will love this game.  I do. 9/10.  I think this would be a 10/10 if it had a good cooperative mode; I really want to be Picard and Sisko fighting the Borg! Or the Dominion!  So, the Appendix below …

Appendix

There is an unofficial cooperative mode: see link here.

   

Prepping for the Standardized Test: A Review of A Carnivore Did It!

A Carnivore Did It! is a cooperative and solo game of logical deduction where players only use logic to discover the solution  (as opposed to social deduction, where players deduce using very human tells).  I ordered this directly from the Horrible Guild website and it arrived late October 2025

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing and Gameplay

This is a pretty small package: see Can of Coke above for perspective.

This is a game where you have to deduce (via logic) “who is the culprit” (or in later games, “who are the culprits“)?   There are from 3 to 7 suspects, depending on the case. See above.

There are 2000 cases (!) in the game; see the cases on 20 cards above (100 cases per card).

Each card has 50 cases per side.

Using a little card overlay above,  you choose a case with its solution.

The line describes the “statements” needed for the case .. see above for case #1.  We need statements 31, 2 and 10.

There are 50 statement cards with different true/false statements: see above.

And the solution is in exposed by the red acetate on the back side (see above, slight spoiler, except its so hard to read, it doesn’t matter).

The case is specified by the numbers: the numbers choose “statements” each suspect will make.  See above for statements 31, 2, and 10.

These statement are attached to the suspects (in order) so that each statement has a statement which is either true or false.

At the top of the case card, it tells you How many suspects you need (3), how many Culprits are there (1 mask), and how many LIES are being told (the red X1).  All the cases on this card share these characteristics.

Then, using the fact that there is EXACTLY 1 lie (or 2 truths, or whatever the card says), you have to deduce who’s lying, and who’s telling the truth.  The statements veracity or falsehood will indicate who the culprit is!   Fun fact; the suspect lying MAY NOT be the actual suspect. People just lie sometimes!

This is a pretty compact little logical deduction game.  The components are fine, except for one thing: see below.

Solo Mode

This is a Solo Team type of game; all players must work together to come up with the final answer of who did it.  So the solo mode is implicit; the solo player works together with himself to solve the puzzle!

I gotta be honest; A Carnivore Did It!  feels like the logic puzzles you find on standardized tests like the GRE and PSAT and SAT (although it’s been a long time since I took those); you use logic to figure out the culprit.  So, playing this solo somehow gave me vibes of doing a standardized test, but without the #2 pencil and little bubbles.

To be fair, I LIKE the logic puzzle this presents.  But, if you don’t really like these logic puzzles because it DOES remind of standardized tests, you will hate this solo.  You may still like it cooperatively (see below).

Cooperative Play

The cooperative play went as expected.  Sometimes you get lost in each others thoughts, as they try to explain their reasoning.

It was VERY important to come up with a systematic system to eliminate/verify statements, especially in the cooperative game!  We ended up using the Trouble and Rare tokens from Kinfire Council to be False and True (respectively). See above.  Without these tokens, I think it’s too easy to get lost in each other’s logic.  Or just to get lost.  If we were sure of a statement’s veracity/falsehood, we would add the token to the RIGHT side of the card.  During hypothesis phase, we’d out a token on the LEFT side of the card to show “it’s just a hypothesis”.

Somehow, it’s a little less daunting to play with someone else, because it forces you to be more systematic.  Even better, If you are flailing, then you can defer to your friend.

Cooperative was a little more fun than solo, even if we had to argue/prove a little bit more.

Issues

Trouble Reading: I really had trouble reading the solution.  I had to zoom in with my phone (see above) and I still could barely read the answer.

In fact, we tried using the little red acetate from Cantaloop to see if it worked better!

It worked “a little better”, but it was still hard to read!

No Explanation:  So, I/We have been able to reason out all the puzzles we’ve have seen … so far.  But what if you are wrong?  You have no place to go to see a solution.  I wish they had a web page you could go to to see the solution for each one.  But there is NO explicit solution in the rulebook at all.  All you get is an answer … the game does not “show its work”.

Clumsy and Frail;  You have to slip the little decoder on the cards.  This felt fraught with peril; I was very afraid it might break over time or maybe you accidentally tear it when you slide it down the card.

Stuff I Liked

Lots of cases: Yes, 2000 cases!

Very Clear Presentation!  The rulebook even does a good job of discussing when things would still be true or false, to help answer some of the “well, what do they mean by THAT“.  The and/or questions … they have a little section to help discuss that. Still, the AND/OR stuff can be confusing.

Conclusion

You probably already know right away whether you will like this game or not.  If you love logic puzzles, I think this game will really resonate with you.  A Carnivore Did It! reminds us a lot of the simpler logic deduction game Cat Crimes (see our Top 10 Cooperative Cat Games here).

If you liked the simpler Cat Crimes, then A Carnivore Did It! is the next step up in complexity (especially when you have 7 suspects and multiple culprits)!  The later cases (see one above) can be pretty challenging (but still doable).

If you don’t like logic puzzles, you will probably hate this as a solo game; it probably feels too much like a standardized test.  Even if you don’t like logic puzzles, you may still like this cooperatively; sometimes it’s fun to be a fly on the wall and all of a sudden start participating and getting involved when you see the solution unfolding!  Or you may hate it and feel stupid and just draw away.  Only you know you.

This would probably get a higher rating if there weren’t a few component issues.  This should be probably be a solid 7.5/10 or even better, but the fact the little acetate reader is really hard to use, hard to read, and possibly fragile, I worry. I also wish they had they shown their work for solutions.  So, this might be a 6.5 or 7/10 instead.  Or maybe it won’t bother you, and this is exactly what you wanted: “I can read the solution, and I don’t need them to show their work … I can figure it out myself!”  If that’s the case, you may love this game and embrace it with aplomb …  for an 8/10 game.

Dice Throne Outcasts + Dice Throne Adventures Unchained. Part II of II.

Join us for the second part of our review as we look closer at the Dice Throne Adventures Unchained Expansion. Part I showed us the terrifyingly thematic Halloween characters of Dice Throne Outcasts, and now we look at the new solo and cooperative modes of Unchained!

If Dice Throne Outcasts provides the core characters for head-to-head play, then Dice Throne Adventures Unchained gives us more ways to play solo and cooperatively!

We have to 100% clear here; Dice Throne Adventures Unchained is an expansion for Dice Throne Adventures! See above! We really liked the Dice Throne Adventures Expansion (see review here), so when we saw there would be more content, we were excited!  So, in order to use this new Unchained expansion, unfortunately, you do need the Dice Throne Adventures box.  That’s right, Unchained is an expansion for an expansion! 

And to further muddy the waters, you need at least one of several boxes of characters to play.  We’ve been playing with Outcasts and have been loving it, but there’s also Marvel Dice Throne (see review here), X-Men Dice Throne (see review here), and Seasons I and II of Dice Throne (see review here).

In other words, to play Unchained, you also need a core box as well as the Dice Throne Adventures box!

So, if that hasn’t scared you to running away screaming  (“Really? Three boxes total?”), we can look objectively to see if it is worth getting the Unchained Expansion!  I will tempt you by saying that we have two new solo modes AND a new cooperative mode!

Unboxing

The Unchained box is small, but it has quite a bit of stuff.  See Can of Coke above for scale.

The coolest thing is the new Loot cards which can be mixed in with the original Dice Throne Adventures. Loot is just upgrades as you play! See above.  The Legendary cards are even foil! Oooooohh!!

The most fun new rule of the game is that Loot is added instantly to your hand when you get it!  So, there’s a new Loot table for instantly adding stuff! 

There’s also a whole bunch of new Minions (levels 1-4, sorry I-IV).

There’s a new Boss!  The Vault Witch!  

As a boss, she has her own deck (and sleeves)! See above!

In the base Dice Throne Adventures, you can choose to fight the Vault Witch instead of a normal boss, by collecting the Witch Keys: see above.  This allows you to vary the bosses a little in the original Dice Throne Adventures game.

There’s also 3 new sheets (double-sided) for 6 new one-shot scenarios!  

Overall, this looks great and totally fits the feel of Dice Throne, especially the Outcasts set!

Rulebook

The rulebook is a tiny thing.

This rulebook probably gets a B- on the Chair Test. It does stay open and stays flat, and the font is big and readable, and it has lots of good pictures and annotations … but it’s still just a little small.

The components page works well: see above.  

Like all Dice Throne rulebooks, they do a good job labeling pictures and having a good sized font.

Generally, this rulebook was fine.  It even finishes with some useful stuff on the back cover.

Solo Mode: Minion Rush

The game comes with a new solo mode called Minion Rush!  See rules above! 

As you might guess, you just go and fight a bunch of minions (no bosses allowed!).  These new rules span 2.5 pages in the rulebook: see above.

At the end of the Minion Rush (after you die, … and you will die), you get Points for every Minion you killed!  (Harder Minions are obviously worth more). See above as I get 27 points for killing all-but-one minion!

I tried to set-up a Minion Rush using only the new Minions  (see above)… but you don’t quite have enough Minions in the Unchained expansion to do this … you gotta get some from the main box.

I was actually incredibly disappointed you couldn’t JUST play Minion Rush with the Unchained expansion: you need 13 Minions, and the Unchained expansion only comes with 12 Minions!  D’oh!  It sounds stupid, but I thought it would have been nice to need almost nothing from Dice Throne Adventures.  To be clear; for Minion Rush, you STILL NEED Dice Throne Adventures. 

In the end, I played Minion Rush with mostly Unchained Minions!  See above!

It was reasonably fast and fun to play, like 1.5 hours?  You just beat-up Minions!

You have to choose a path to follow … once you start following a path to the left or right, you have to keep going on that path!

As you go, you get upgrades!  And these upgrades persist! See above!  Yay! But so does damage and poison!  Boo!  Basically, it feels like a Dungeon delve!

Minion Rush is a fun way to play solo without too much set-up.  This is another great way to learn the characters!  If you don’t want to me play the Me vs Me solo mode (like we saw in Part I of our review), then Minion Rush is a fun solo mode without too much commitment.  

I used to the solo mode Minion Rush to learn the Raveness character!  See above!

“But Rich!” … I hear you asking. “Why do I need special rules for the Minion Rush??  It feels like I could just play the Dice Throne Adventures and use these rules? Do I really need Unchained to do this?”  

You are ALMOST right.  You need two major things from Dice Throne Adventures: the status tokens (and the back of the Dice Throne Adventures rulebook), but arguably more important thing you need is … the new Loot Chart.

New Loot Zoot Suit

Arguably, the best new rule in Unchained is that you get IMMEDIATELY get Loot into your hand when kill a Minion!  See above for the One-Shot Loot chart!  One of the complaints of the original Dice Throne Adventures was that your deck upgrades went very slowly … you might only get a few Loot as you play per session.  And you might not see it very much!

The new One-Shot Loot chart (if you roll well) immediately puts Loot into your hand.  So, as you kill a bunch of Minions in Minion Rush, your hand is getting better, and better immediately!

So, the new One-Shot Loot chart is paramount to making this Minion Rush work! 

“But Rich”, I hear you say, “Can’t you just make a copy of the One-Shot Loot Chart and play Minion Rush without Unchained?”  No, because you still need the status tokens and rulebook from Dice Throne Adventures.  Why don’t you just support Roxley and quit trying to cheap-out?  They’ve made a great game for you to play … besides, Unchained comes also with new Minions, new Boss, new Loot, and … a new co-op mode!

New Cooperative Mode!

That’s right, people!  There’s a new cooperative mode in Unchained!  Whaaaat?

The One-Shot Adventure is a new cooperative Adventure!  See rules above. 

One-Shot Adventure: Solo Mode!

Technically, the One-Shot Adventure is also a new solo mode, as you can play that One-Shot Adventure by yourself!

This new One-Shot Adventure addresses the problem many people had with the original Dice Throne Adventures … it was too long!  Dice Throne Adventures required an investment in a long, on-going adventure, and there kinda wasn’t a way to just play a one-off!  Now you can!

There are three One-Shot maps (dual-sided), (see one above) and they basically represent a “condensed” Adventure where you fight some Minions on the way to fighting a BOSS!  The map above represents you “going through a dungeon”!  Along the way, you fight Minions, find treasure, find healing, and try to get to the BOSS  at the bottom!!

I played a One-Shot Adventure (see above) solo to see how it worked!    When you play the One-Shot Adventure, you have to embrace needing Dice Throne Adventures, some characters (from Outcasts, but really any), and the Unchained expansion! 

To help myself keep things separate, I actually physically separated the Dice Throne Adventure components on the left side of the table (see above) …

.. and the Unchained and Outcasts components to the right side of the table! 

This helped me keep track of what goes where!

I really enjoyed this solo; it felt like it took all the complexity of Dice Throne Adventures and compressed it into a bite-sized adventure I could play in about 1.5 to 2 hours!

With the One-Shot, you get to fight BOTH a lot of Minions AND a Boss in a smaller time frame.

I really enjoyed this “new” solo mode.  Of course, like we said in the Minion Rush, part of the reason the One-Shot Adventure works so well is that we have the One-Shot Loot chart and immediately get Loot so we immediately feel more powerful as we play!  See above as I already have some great Ghost Equipment out and upgrade cards to fight the new big bad!

The new boss is cool; I have to say I defeated her pretty readily in my One-Shot Adventure, but she was still fun to play.

Again, The One-Shot Loot chart makes this new cooperative work so well.

One-Shot Adventure: Cooperative Mode … Prequel

One big mistake I think we made in playing Dice Throne Missions was NOT playing a quick head-to-head game to learn the characters.  (You might remember my friends were frustrated when playing Missions: see review here).   When confronted with all the new rules of the cooperative modes, I think it’s too easy to get lost.  So, before we jumped into a cooperative game of Unchained (the One-Shot Adventure), I asked my friends to play a quick Head-to-head game.

I recommend this to you and your groups as well.  Don’t just jump into Unchained.  There’s a lot of rules.  Let your players get comfortable with the basic rules and characters they want to play BEFORE you jump in.

Playing a quick head-to-head game first was absolutely the right thing to do;  I know it from both the positive side (my friends above said they were very glad we did a quick pre-game) and the negative side (when my other friends felt frustrated in Missions).

One-Shot Adventures: Cooperative Mode!

So, I shepherded my players into a One-Shot  Adventure!  They generally had fun, although we saw a few problems: 
1) Four players may be too many.  Even though the game moved fast, some times you felt like it took too long to get to your turn.
2) Because it takes some turns to get some of the characters flowing, sometimes having the next player fight the minion slows down your progression.  Both Raveness and the Headless Horsemen suffered from that a little; both of them require a “commitment” to an opponent to see a result.  If the opponent is killed by another fellow player, you feel a little frustrated as you couldn’t “get your character going”.

Both of these problem are solved, I think, by simply limiting the number of players. My friends had fun playing cooperatively, but I think Robert (Headless Horseman) and Becca (Raveness) were a little frustrated getting their characters going.

The other thing to be aware of, (and note that I am not calling this a problem), is that the game isn’t particularly cooperative. It’s pretty much multi-player solitaire as you all just take your turn and try to kill Minions/Bosses. Occasionally, you might help each other with cards that give re-rolls, (“I really need a re-roll! Can someone get me a re-roll?” ), or you might get rid of a status (“Please get rid of this poison!”) If you like cooperative games that are mostly multi-player solitaire with a sprinkling of cooperation, this is a perfect game for you. If you are looking for a more cooperative experience, Dice Throne Mission might be a better choice? (I say this because characters like Cyclops are made for cooperation).

Conclusion

It’s hard to recommend  an expansion for an expansion (remember, Unchained is an expansion for Dice Throne Adventures), but I think Unchained crosses that threshold!  I actually think this is an essential expansion; Unchained fixes two major complaints about Dice Throne Adventures!   

The first complaint about Dice Throne Adventures was that the upgrade path was too slow; it took forever to see new Loot cards in your hand!  The major fix in Unchained is the new One-Shot Loot chart and rules that make you upgrade SO MUCH faster!   You feel powerful quickly, and that’s a great feeling!

The second major complaint about Dice Throne Adventures was that there was too much commitment needed to play it; it took too long  to play the long adventure! Now, with the One-Shot Adventures, you can play cooperatively in one session, fighting both Minions and a Boss!  No need for the long game!

There’s even a new solo mode with the Minion Rush, which makes it a little easier to learn characters!

There are few things to be cognizant of: you probably shouldn’t play the new cooperative mode with the full four players if you can help it.  My friends still enjoyed it, but I think it would have been more fun at a smaller player count.  Two, maybe three players is probably best.

You should also be aware that the new cooperative modes aren’t super-cooperative.  There are occasions for cooperation, but generally the game is multi-player solitaire. It’s not a bad thing, you just need to be aware of what this is.

I also STRONGLY suggest you make sure your players are familiar with the characters before they play; play a head-to-head 20 minute game before ramping up into the One-Shot Adventure, or your players might get mired in rules and frustration.

Finally, would I recommend Dice Throne Missions over Dice Throne Adventures + Unchained for the solo/cooperative game?  It depends on what you want!  Dice Throne Missions has short adventures (two sessions), and simultaneous dice-rolling which moves the game quicker.  Missions is much more super-heroey, and Unchained is more dungeon-delvey!  If you want the One-Shot Adventures so you can just jump in-and-out, then I think Dice Throne Adventures + Unchained is the better choice.  If you just want short-little adventures, the super-hero theme of Missions may call to you! Honestly, they are both good choices! 

I think Unchained is an essential expansion and makes Dice Throne Adventures that much better.  It adds new Minions, new Loot, new Boss, new solo modes, new cooperative modes, but most importantly, fixes some major problems of Dice Throne Adventures.  9/10.