I got into solo board games for the least romantic reason possible: scheduling. i wanted to play more, so i stopped waiting for the group chat to align and started playing whatever had a solo mode. Then i bought a few games that were only for solo, because of course i did.
This list combines two tracking buckets:
- the broader “last ~15 months” log
- plus 25 games that were new to me this year
So the goal here isn’t a perfectly curated “top X solo games” list. It’s a real shelf report. Big euros, historical wargames, cozy score-chasers, and a few co-ops i ran multi-handed like a maniac.
How I rate solo modes
When people argue about solo mode quality, they usually mean one of three things:
- Bot overhead: how long am i “playing the game” vs. running an opponent?
- Pressure: is there a clock, a race, or an adversary? or is it pure efficiency math?
- Agency vs. randomness: i don’t mind dice or draws. i just want tools to respond.
Also: i’m pretty sensitive to “solo modes” that feel stapled on. If the solo experience is just “play the multiplayer game and then compare your score to a chart,” i can still have fun… but it needs to be a great puzzle to hold me.
(Quick Kraken Opus housekeeping: if you like board game opinions with a little table-talk energy, you might also like our Vantage Board Game Review. And if you want the opposite of helpful, there’s Hasbro Defies Hegseth: Sells Battleship With Rulebook Included.)
5/5 solo board games i’d replay anytime
These are the games that made me forget i was playing alone.
Atiwa
My favorite Uwe Rosenberg game. Yep, even over the classics. The worker placement is tight, the theme actually matches the actions, and the end-of-round growth choices make the whole thing feel like you’re working with a system, not just strip-mining it. It hits the exact “compact but still epic” spot i want.
A Feast for Odin
“Sprawling” in the best way. Every round gives you more workers, more resources, more options, and somehow it stays fun instead of collapsing under its own weight. The polyomino puzzle even feels weirdly thematic. It’s a huge sandbox that still rewards smart planning.
Mage Knight
A tactical power-fantasy puzzle box. Every combat is about timing and resource preservation, and the finale battles are still the most climactic endgames i’ve hit in solo board gaming. It’s demanding, but it rewards mastery in a way few games do.
Imperium: Classics / Legends / Horizons
Civilization deckbuilder where each faction actually feels like a faction, not just “the red one.” i love that every civ tells a story through its deck, but you don’t feel railroaded into one obvious build. It’s also one of my favorite examples of “solo bot as genuine opponent” without needing a pile of upkeep.
Legacy of Yu
A solo-first euro that actually feels built for solo, not adapted for it. Tight resource conversion, combo building, and a campaign structure that changes as you learn. The big win for me is the binary win condition. It’s tense. It feels like you’re trying to survive, not just optimize.
Navajo Wars
Brutal subject matter, but incredible design. It captures long-term pressure from multiple colonial forces and the slow erosion of a culture, while still giving you agency to respond. It’s heavy, but it’s meaningful in a way most games don’t even attempt.
People Power
My first COIN experience, and it hit hard. The area-majority struggle stays tense, the tradeoffs feel sharp, and every play tells a story. The downside is real: running bots takes time. This is a “clear the table and commit” game. Still a 5/5 for me.
4/5 solo board games that hit the table often
Not perfect for me, but consistently good.
Battles of Napoleonic Europe
Minimalist solo wargaming with a clean AI and a good mix of unpredictability and tactics. It understands that “balanced” isn’t the point in solo. The point is pressure that feels fair and interesting.
Comanchería
This one floats between 4/5 and 5/5 depending on the day. It does a brilliant job modeling Comanche history and survival through mechanics, without turning people into props. i slightly prefer the “changing through eras” arc in Navajo Wars, but Comanchería is still excellent.
Evacuation
(Preliminary rating.) The twist is great: dismantle an engine on a dying planet while building a new one on an unsettled planet. Only some actions matter for points, resources are split across two worlds, and four rounds is not a lot of time. The tension is real. Long-term replayability is the only question mark.
Nusfjord
It makes you feel smart in layers. Find building synergies, run into action limits, then learn how to break those limits in clever ways. The campaign structure forcing different engines across consecutive games is a great push.
Resafa
A tight trading game where every action matters and the systems interlock so you can’t ignore anything. It’s flexible enough to let you specialize, but strict enough that planning actually matters. It’s one of those games where you finish and immediately see what you’d do differently next time.
Fields of Arle
Cozy, self-directed farming with a real sense of place. There’s no adversary besides your own desire to do better, and sometimes that’s exactly what i want solo. It’s a comfort game that still has bite.
Hadrian’s Wall
Combo heaven. It’s all about building momentum and triggering chains that feel satisfying without being brainless. It’s also one of the few flip-and-writes that makes me want to play again immediately after finishing.
Raiders of Scythia
Worker placement with one worker is such a clean constraint. The solo opponent is easy to run, and the tension comes from timing: build up, raid, and don’t let the bot steal the best targets.
3/5 solo board games that were good, but not sticky
These are solid. i’d play them again. i just don’t feel pulled back as often.
Scholars of the South Tigris (+ Body of Books)
Great puzzle. Lots of layered systems. My issue with the base game was that my approach felt similar between plays. The expansion helps a lot by adding more engine-building tools and more room for self-expression. Still a little “math puzzle wearing a theme,” but a better version of itself.
The Anarchy
Hadrian’s Wall 2, with more emphasis on attacking and defending. The combo engine is still satisfying, but attacker randomness can swing how many resources you spend defending, which changes your whole tempo. That can clash with the campaign’s stricter requirements. Still fun, but i’d recommend Hadrian’s Wall first.
Cascadia
Simple, clean tile laying. The shifting market keeps you flexible, and the puzzle is approachable. i like it. I just prefer slightly meatier versions of this vibe.
Epona
Don’t let the cover fool you. It’s a quick, meaty tableau puzzle where scoring depends on symbol adjacency, and the challenge is maximizing the whole layout instead of one big combo. It’s snappy and satisfying.
Nature
Fun “evolve your animals” gameplay and great art that sells creature personality. The limited card pool is the worry. I can see it going stale without an expansion mixed in.
Red Dust Rebellion
COIN-like tension in a well-realized sci-fi setting, but it’s a beast to run. The extra length and complexity didn’t pay off for me compared to People Power, and the AI can struggle with the 1v1v2 shape.
Rome: Fate of an Empire
“Mage Knight in ancient Rome” is a dangerous comparison. It’s decent, but deckbuilding felt less expressive and i hit more dud turns than i want in a big solo adventure puzzle. i ended up selling it.
Shadow Tactics
Surprisingly decent videogame adaptation. Your actions are deterministic, enemy actions are random, and enemies act after you, so you get one guaranteed success each round. The downside is mental load: solo feels like piloting three characters, because you are.
Skara Brae
Great minimalist resource efficiency puzzle. The drafting and flexible turn order are the best parts, and those are exactly what solo loses, so it lands as “nice” instead of “must keep.”
Spectacular
Tile + dice drafting with a satisfying scoring web. I don’t love the personal missions in solo, since you see fewer options and missions can be restrictive or feel impossible.
Tekhenu
Excellent optimization puzzle, easy bot, and plenty of uncertainty without feeling unfair. The theme feels distant, though, so it becomes “point maximalization: the game.” i respect it more than i love it.
Barracks Emperors
A clever trick-taking system where cards belong to everyone after play. The solo mode feels like the table is ganging up on you without being unfair. I still think it would shine more with actual humans.
Carcassonne: The Mist
Co-op/solo Carcassonne with ghost pressure that creates good push-your-luck tension. It loses some of the classic “gotcha” moments that make standard Carcassonne sing, and the campaign is shorter than i expected.
Darwin’s Journey
A solo bot that creates real “multiplayer-like” tension because you can predict its behavior and plan around it. Fun, but it leans tactical, and my overall approach doesn’t change much between plays.
Evergreen
Pleasant long-term planning puzzle. As a beat-your-own-score game with predictable blocking, it can lose tension, but it’s still a nice solo sit-down.
For Northwood!
Fast solo trick-taking that nails the core question of “how many tricks can i realistically take here?” It’s good. I just usually want heavier when i sit down for solo.
Gentes
Cool time system, decent worker placement, but solo feels like multiplayer with the interaction removed. It ends right when i’m getting invested.
Sammu-Ramat
Firefighting pressure with a rare Neo-Assyrian theme. I like the character choices and planning. Difficulty variance swings more than i want depending on event spreads.
Stardew Valley
A tense race wearing cozy clothes. The decision-making is real because you’re always prioritizing, but dice and draws can swing a lot, and the theme-to-actions connection isn’t always clean.
2/5 solo board games where the solo mode fought me
Not “bad games.” Just not solo experiences i want to repeat.
Behold: Rome
Imperium is one of my favorite solo games because you always have too much you want to do. Behold: Rome often felt like being one card or one resource short over and over. Some players love that kind of friction. For me it became frustrating.
Critter Kitchen
Feels like a tacked-on solo mode and a lot of the advanced stuff doesn’t matter. The multiplayer chaos is the point of the design, and solo drains that energy.
The Clever series (That’s Pretty Clever + sequels)
Clean roll-and-write combo engines. They’re fine. They just don’t have enough theme or weight to keep me coming back solo.
A Place for All My Books
Decent puzzle, swingy objectives, and a theme i actively disliked. It’s overwhelmingly about buying and stacking books, not enjoying them. That rubbed me the wrong way.
Big 5: Safari Tour
Nice idea (show tourists animals instead of curing disease), but decisions felt obvious and outcomes leaned hard on random events.
Marvel United
Fun co-op with great table talk. Solo removes the best part and leaves you staring at randomness and trying to convince yourself you’re having a conversation.
Railroad Ink Challenge
Slightly improved solo experience over a multiplayer game with minimal interaction, but it didn’t deliver the combo satisfaction i want from roll-and-writes.
Scythe
Solo turns it into a sharper, more aggressive contest and loses the subtle map politics and opponent-reading that make multiplayer work. i’d rather play it digitally.
Tiny Epic Dinosaurs
Good concept, decent worker placement, but the bot can randomly remove key spaces in a way that feels annoying more than challenging.
Tiny Epic Galaxies
Light dice-driven planet colonizing. Works fine. Just lighter than what i want for a solo session.
Wingspan
I like it multiplayer. Solo, it leans even harder into “multiplayer solitaire,” and the objective race doesn’t land as exciting for me.
1/5 solo board games i’m done with
These are the ones i actively disliked solo.
Magic Maze
Multiplayer is frantic fun because of limited communication. Solo turns it into you flipping tiles nonstop looking for the action you need. The tension becomes stress.
Mice & Mystics
Long stretches of dice rolling with minimal decision-making. The story didn’t hook me, and after a lot of time i lost to a timer. i was done.
Mythic Battles: Pantheon
Cool minis skirmish game, but the solo mode feels pasted on. The bluffing and interaction that make skirmish games sing just don’t survive.
This War of Mine
Heavy theme, but progress felt too obfuscated. When it becomes “maybe you’ll randomly find the one thing you need,” i stop feeling attached to the story.
Tiny Epic Kingdoms
The bot swings between random and exploitable, and neither is interesting.
Tiny Epic Pirates
More fun multiplayer than Kingdoms, but the solo bot still felt too easy to game.
What i learned after all these solo plays
A few patterns are loud at this point:
- i like solo modes that create pressure without turning the bot into a second job.
- i forgive randomness when i have tools to respond.
- solo-first designs and strong automa systems land better for me than solo add-ons.
- theme matters more in solo than i expected. when there’s no social energy at the table, the game has to carry its own atmosphere.
If you’ve got a solo game you swear by, tell me. i’m always looking for the next one that makes a quiet night at the table feel like an event.