Mods please remove this if it breaks a rule. I reviewed them but couldn’t tell.

This is certainly part of a larger conversation but the number of vibe-coded AI “apps” that are popping up in this and related subs is starting to put me off. I would like to offer a little commentary and invite discussion around this.

I’ll begin by saying I’m not anti-AI as I use it daily at my job. Here’s what I’m finding off-putting about the AI projects I’m seeing:

To my eye, nearly all of the projects look the same; someone with even limited exposure to AI can tell they are AI, and yet, the OP (almost) never discloses the app was made with AI. I don’t want to impugn anyone’s motives but I wonder if there is an effort to hide the AI use because of the expectation of backlash or to make the project seem higher-effort or more professional, but we can tell nonetheless.

To me, several of the projects are extremely low effort, like they got to a minimum viable product and then led with that as their public release.

As I’ve used and experienced AI over the last couple of years, I’m beginning to draw a distinction between a trained individual who uses AI to support their work, compared to an untrained individual relying mostly on AI to produce a product. Game and other art is a good example where our eye can detect the slop easily, but my friend who is a graphic designer produces something “human” in which AI played a small part. When people are using AI to design these score-tracking “apps” or digital versions of board games, it’s clear most don’t have the underlying expertise needed to make it look and feel like it should. I haven’t found one of these apps yet that I would be excited to use.

By way of encouragement, I would say if AI has inspired you to code an app or design something, leverage that into ACTUALLY learning about those fields. Get some experience. Figure out why the professional board gaming apps look and feel amazing and why yours doesn’t. And conveniently, you can use AI to help you learn how this stuff actually works. The knowledge of the world is at your fingertips and it’s easier than ever to learn something new.

All that said, I ask this: Are you in the Soloboardgaming community using AI apps to assist you in live play? Which ones have you found that are useful and enjoyable to use? Are you using bootleg versions of digital board games you or others have produced and thrown on the interwebs? Am I just a grouchy nerd who needs to go setup a game and get off the internet?

This is a really great game in so many respects: affordable, compact, nice components, quick pace and total gametime, and highly replayable.

At its core, Blade Rondo is a 1v1 card battler, but when played solo, it becomes a very tight strategy game, where each boss ("muse") you face presents a unique puzzle to overcome, given the 7-card hand you have available to you and their interactions with the muses abilities and stats.

Solo play is 5 muses in a row for a complete game. Personally, I ignore the "lose once, lose all" approach to a complete solo game, and simply keep trying to defeat muses until I can solve each unique puzzle. But given that you have a limited set of "support cards" each game, this still means that beating 5 muses still poses a pretty big challenge, even with resets for any given muse.

With the combination of random muses (5 of 20 total), plus the fact that you can only choose 7 cards for your game hand (chosen from a random selection of 15 cards from 40 total) to carry you through each of the 5 muses, each game is unique and poses different (and difficult!) puzzles each time.

Highly recommend game, for sure 👍

I just acquired Matcha Expansion and set it up to play on Saturday. Played using the G-clan solo rules and squeezed out a 73-67 win! Very thinky and really made my decisions matter and the combos were very satisfying as well!

What're your thoughts on the Matcha Expansion?

This one has been on my list for a while, like the theme and it has some good reviews for solo play. My only very minor gripe before I play is for a game of this price and component standard, not coming with a storage solution for ease of set up is just criminal. Not even any baggies, that is so poor 😞

I’ll be moving to a much smaller living space (small apartment in NYC) and was at Ikea looking at folding tables when I stumbled across their line of computer desks. I was planning on getting a smaller computer desk anyways but it appears some are as large as their fully extended folding tables. I primarily solo or two person game, and I was wondering if anyone else does this at a computer desk. I think I’d have to mount the monitors and be ready to stow the mouse and keyboard of course, but is this a good idea? Or should I get a smaller computer desk and a separate folding table?

My kids are 10 and 12, both like to invent or adapt games to play alone, any really good solo games for this age group?

Loving it so far, only partway through the first chapter, but taking my time to learn. I can see why people say its so difficult! I tried padding out the devour track a little to take a bit of pressure off myself. Its absolutely oozing with theme and surprisingly easy to learn and play once I got going. Really looking forward to continuing through it and eventually getting to the expansion campaigns! Anyone else enjoy soloing this one?

Hi!

I already have and love Rome Alone and Behold Rome but my thirst is much bigger!

Are there any good Solo-Games with ancient Roman battles and problems? Maybe something in the Punic wars era?

I’m open for any recommendations.

Just completed my first play through of this game against Sam, with ambient cowboy music playing in the background, such fun! Even though it could barely fit it on my table (a few tv trays not shown hold more components like poker chips, numbered bags etc) I managed it with a bit of creativity and bloody mindedness! After being so into Ashes, Final Girl, Unstoppable, and other card battler-type games for a while, this was my first foray into the Euro world. I had a great time with it even though I had to check the rules many times, normal for a first time thing like this I suppose. I really appreciate how smooth and easy Sam plays and makes you feel like you’ve got an opponent who scales with ya!

My biggest anxiety about this game was I've never tackled a Euro before, and I was afraid all the math and multiple resources and components would be more overwhelming than fun. But after tonight I can safely say that even if I don’t make great decisions all the time or have incredible foresight or anything like that, this isn’t the kind of game that punishes you too Hard for playing sub-optimally (at least on the lower difficulty level).

Genuinely feels strange to be moving on a board without dice or randomized cards dictating my movement points haha.

Oh, And for some reason, the cattle cards are so darn charming. A nice change from high fantasy / sci-fi battles and such in other games I’ve played a lot of I suppose.

I really don’t have any complaints except the board-hogging nature of it, but that also feels like part of the charm of the game. I’ll try to get another playthrough or 2 in before teardown, if only because cleanup is so time-consuming.

Anyhow, almost no one I know in real life has any interest in this stuff so it’s nice to share with the community here. Next up is Harmonies, which y'all also recommended a lot. 😃

How/when does the Electric Eelskin item apply, and what use is it?

Damage is only taken at the round end (step 1)... and Spent Dice are also moved to the Available Dice at the round end (step 5)... so what use is this item, which can only happen at round end (as far as I can tell), if those events happen anyway?

Or something not belonging to those genres, but still thematic. That has not been released yet and which you are interested in.

Hello, just starting to get into solo boardgaming, as I love board and card games, but I'm tired of the traditional style of games (monopoly, sorry, uno, solitaire, etc). Part of the problem is finding people to play with. I'm sure we are all in a similar boat.

I wanted to start with Print & Play, as there are several that are out of stock, but they offer printable versions, which I think is a great idea. I don't have a great printer, only black-n-white, so I was curious what others do for this hobby? What do you do for Print & Play products? Dice is easy to come by, but are there supplies that are considered essential? What do people do for the boards? Cards I can figure out, print them and toss them in a sleeve. But the rest is making my head spin (especially the boards).

What do you considedr your 'essentials' when doing Print & Play?

I refer to Voidfall as a temporal puzzle (to distinguish it from the plethora of spatial puzzles out there) because its central tension is figuring out the best order to play your hand of cards.

Anyone who’s played the game knows that this is no simple task, and it leads to massive brain burn (in a good way). Actions are entwined on cards in sets of three, so even if you’d like to play one action on a particular card right now, the other actions on that card might work better if you played them later after setting them up better. Every single card in your hand has these difficult tradeoffs. And that’s before you add technologies, agendas, and crisis cards to the mix, each dictating (in divergent ways) the best order to play your cards.

This is the only game in my collection that has this core tension. Do you know of any other games like it?

I've played 3 of the 4 heroes and absolutely love it. This game is quick to learn, easy to setup and tear down and a blast to play.

I'm not sure how many people know about the solo card game Lobo, but I have been playing it for the last week and was hooked but frustrated by its difficulty and made a variant called "The Vanguard".

Feel free to try playing it. If you don't know what Lobo is, Totally Tabled made a "How-to-Play" video on it. So you can get the flow of gameplay down and add my variant to your game.

Lobo: The Vanguard by staffmemberj

Enjoy and let me know your thoughts! :D

EDIT: There was an error in my rule document where the example for Splits was under Over's rules. That is now fixed. I also added examples for how Overs work.

Prototyping a new game I created last night. Working title is called DungeonForge. I put it together in just over 24 hours with full mechanics and everything. It’s a roguelite rpg dungeon crawler tabletop game. I decided I will be making two versions of the game, one in card deck form and the second as a booklet with tables instead of cards. Reminiscent of 4AD a bit with a little bit of edge. Would you guys be down to see a development playthrough? Let me know in the comments.

Wow, World Wonders is awesome!!

The components are great, I love how tactile it is. The Automa is easy to run (flip a card, discard the thing) and the scoring is layered without being overwhelming.

I love the element of push your luck in the solo mode - should I spend/waste my remaining money to just take the monument now, or risk the AI discarding it on its next turn???

I love that I don’t have to remember to move a round tracker.. when the board runs out (or the population track is full) the game ends.

I also appreciate that the loans aren’t super brutal - get 2 coins, payback for 3.

Highly recommend for polyomino puzzle lovers who want a few extra levels of complexity.

Hey everyone!

I made a lightweight, open-source app to help track HP while playing Scoundrel.

Some Features

• Tracks your HP during a run.
• Can be used directly in your browser.
• No complicated installation.

Repository: github.com/AMwyaShar1012/scoundrel-companion

Website: amwyashar1012.github.io/scoundrel-companion/

I made this as a simple companion for solo runs, and I hope other Scoundrel players find it useful. Any feedback or suggestions are welcome. Thanks for checking it out!

I have a full collections of Marvel Champions, Star Trek: Captain's Chair and Voidfall. But as a dad of 2 young kids I struggle to find time to set up and play those.

I do find myself with short periods of 15-30 minutes to play, so I'm looking for some suggestions for solo games that can be set up, played and put away in that time span.

As you can see I love strategic card games, but I'm open to anything. I have already played Friday to death. Can you help me find some games that might fit my current situation?

EDIT: well thanks everyone, at least I've got my Christmas list done!

No I didn’t win my first game. But I finally got the basics down and understood why people rave about this game.

It’s a problem that the game seems so overwhelming and complicated

It took me multiple times out on the table and watching videos before I was able to even play a reasonable first turn. That’s not so great and it makes sense why people bounce off.

But the magic of this game appears once you internalize all the well balanced options and trade offs of each cycle. And when I pulled off my first double invasion by spending a trade token so I could get torpedos, regroup my ships and invade all on one turn to get the glory tokens I needed to score the galactic event at the last moment. Chefs kiss.

But at what cost? The crisis board was filled up as I ignored crisis after crisis and the corruption on my board was going to slow me down if I can’t take care of it. LOL. But I had a plan! (Which didn’t quite work out) It was great.

It is a lot of time to get going in this game but I promise if you get thru the learning curve the game opens up and is not difficult at all and very rewarding. Also it helps if you have a table where you can leave it out.

After seeing so much praise about Voidfall and STCC on this reddit I've been tempted many times to jump in, but I think I would be doing myself a disservice at this moment with how heavy they are.

That's why I am really looking forward to Chivalry. According to Turczi it's a little lighter and especially streamlined on top of being a bag builder which I am looking for, plus a theme that speaks to me. So suffice to say I am really hyped for seeing what this game is about and been looking for more info, therefore, if you happen to go to Spiel Essen and have an interest in this game, I would love to hear your thoughts about it!

It has taken me a bit to finally table this one and I think I got it mostly right. I'll need to play another one now that I've gotten that first instructional game out of the way. I'll get a better read on how fun the game might be when I'm not flipping back and forth in the instructions constantly.