The utilitarian pleasures of playing board games by yourself

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/utilitarian-pleasures-playing-board-games-by-yourself

by exanimo_sai • 6 years ago

61 51 6 years ago

qaid• 6 years ago

As an only child, I used to spend my summers playing board games by myself. It started with monopoly (which my babysitter introduced me to) and carried over to chess and beyond.

For many of the games, I ended up assigning one player to be “me” and different personalities to “the other players,” who each had different styles. I also tried my best to stop “myself” from cheating by forgetting what cards “everyone else” had. After all, games are not fun when someone is cheating.

Thankfully, my days of playing board games by myself is long over. However, I still have a tendency to take a long time to calculate my next move since I’m always trying to factor in what everyone else is doing.

thex10• 6 years ago

Another only child here. Solitaire, a Game Boy, and later Minesweeper, Hearts, and Freecell were some of my single-player entertainment. It never occurred to me to play a board game by myself; major props to your young imagination!

cableshaft2• 6 years ago

Never occurred to me to play a board game solo as a kid either, and I used to bring my NES controller and a Super Mario Brothers 3 Strategy Guide full of maps to my grandmother's to pretend to play through the game.

But I design board games now, and boy do I ever play my own games against myself now. I'll play up to 4 players solo for playtesting purposes, no problem. So far the only types of games that it's seemed pretty impossible to do this with are social deduction and party games.

galfarragem2• 6 years ago

I'm also an only child and I'm thankful that I was raised in an area with plenty of kids. I never missed having real siblings. (Future) Parents of this world remember this when choosing a place to live, specially nowadays that only childs are becoming the norm.

spugody• 6 years ago

Aside from being in that area, did you wish you had a sibling growing up? Selfishly my partner and I want to stick with a single child but for his sake we are thinking of having another.

sharksauce• 6 years ago

I figured a bunch of only children would reply here.

I spent 4-5 years playing Avalon Hill wargames alone (Panzer Blitz, Squad Leader, 1776, etc.), trying to play each side's strategy as accurately as I could. I don't know if it made me a better tactician but it certainly threw open the gates of historical curiosity to the point that 12-year-old me knew more about WWII than my parents.

k__• 6 years ago

Half-OT: Anyone knows good contemporary board/card games for two players?

I like deduction games like "Mastermind".

redshirtrob• 6 years ago

"Ticket To Ride" is a nice, casual play as a two person game. "Twilight Struggle" is fun but much more intense.

"Small World" is a super fun, ultra confrontational game in two player mode.

caf2• 6 years ago

The hidden objectives in Ticket To Ride might suit that OP's request for a deductive element as well.

colanderman• 6 years ago

Try Hanabi: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/98778/hanabi "Multiplayer Mastermind with cards" is not too far off of a description.

szemet• 6 years ago

https://boardgamegeek.com/abstracts/browse/boardgame

I play patchwork and Azul regularly and like them.

jtms• 6 years ago

Splendor, Jaipur, and Seven Wonders: Duel are all fantastic 2 player games that get a ton of play at my house

chongli• 6 years ago

Battle Line [1]. Absolutely fantastic 2-player strategy card game. It has a lot of deduction built in. Since every card is one of a kind, you can win by playing a “bad” card in one place if it proves your opponent can’t win in another place. Love it!

[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/760/battle-line

akamoonknight• 6 years ago

Hive is pretty fun.

Red29• 6 years ago

Netrunner - card game. Can play online at 'jinteki'

JackMorgan3• 6 years ago

Highly recommend netrunner, it's asymetrical with one side trying to hide points face down while the other side tries to find them. Great fun. Having played a ton of Keyforge, Netrunner, Hearthstone, and MtG - Netrunner still is my favorite. However it's the steepest learning curve. It really took us both a while to even get through a whole game. Once it clicked though it became an instant favorite. Also it's discontinued so you can get a whole ton of cards by just buying someone's collection.

DavidAdams• 6 years ago

Lost Cities is a good game that's 2 player only

gmassman• 6 years ago

I've become quite a fan of Shobu lately. It has very simple game mechanics, even simpler than chess, yet still involves a lot of strategy and tactical thinking.

dragontamer• 6 years ago

Some 1v1 games I like:

* Pentago

* Dominion (Card game)

* Splendor (also mentioned by another user).

* Dominion

* Ikusa (~8+ hour game, 2 to 5 players. A faster-moving version of Axis and Allies)

* Chess

* Go

--* Gomoku (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomoku) Played on a Go board

--* Connect6 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect6), also played on a Go board

---------

One of my favorite games is "Acquire", but it only really works with 3+ players. There is a 2-player variant, but its not quite as good.

jaynos• 6 years ago

Dominion is available online. https://dominion.games/

raxxorrax• 6 years ago

Something that comes back regularly in my circle is Blokus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blokus

You can play it with 2 players, it is more fun with 4 though (should either be 2 or 4). Go and chess are classics I enjoy with 2 players, although I generally prefer larger groups. Not very creative, I know.

caf2• 6 years ago

Carcassonne works well as a two player game (not a deduction game, though).

Sagrada works two player and has a hidden objective element, though I feel it's a little better four player.

10 Days In Africa is a good quick game with hidden information that's playable two-player, but it's out of print so can be hard to find.

JackMorgan3• 6 years ago

My wife and I have played probably a hundred games of two player Carcassonne. We just dig the almost absent minded lazy play without striving too hard to win.

arkh• 6 years ago

7th Wonder Duel, Kero are boardgames for 2 players.

Keyforge: card game with random but fixed decks.

Splendor, Azul, Century are also good to play with 2 players.

altacc5• 6 years ago

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is a good deductive co-op and works well with 2 players (downside is that you can only play it 10 times before having to buy more scenarios).

I think Pandemic works well as 2 player, though not all agree.

7 Wonders Duel for combative PvP.

k-rus2• 6 years ago

I can recommend Pandemic, especially, trendy nowadays :) It is not deduction, but more strategic. In this game you collaborate with the other player to win against the game, instead of playing against each other. If you play just two, every game you might need to modify you strategy, so it is different and is not boring :)

k-rus2• 6 years ago

Link to wikipage with the exact game I mean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_(board_game)

Chris2048• 6 years ago

Santorini: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/194655/santorini

is a good two player game. It has a simple base game, and then is kept fresh by randomly changing the gameplay with additional rules each play. You can also buy more rule cards.

neogodless• 6 years ago

As another mentioned, Hive should be up your alley.

We also enjoy Castles of Burgundy at two players.

Santorini might suit you.

7373737373• 6 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abalone_(board_game) is easy and fun

neuland• 6 years ago

Other people have mentioned a lot of good 2 player games that I like, particularly Dominion, Carcassonne, Hive, and Sagrada. But, I'll add the following recommendations that I haven't seen mentioned:

- Jaipur

- Century: Spice Road

- Race for the Galaxy

drewcoo• 6 years ago

Works for typical puzzle/optimization Euros, but not for the games my gaming groups have enjoyed most. Anything involving politics, diplomacy, intrigue, back stabbing and the like just don't work solo. Nor do RPGs except for grindy munchkin-fests like CRPGs. IMHO, that human interaction is the reason to play games with other people.

Animats• 6 years ago

Somebody is really bored.

Still, this is a great era for not being bored. There's far more content coming out every day than anyone can consume. That was not the case two decades ago.

altacc5• 6 years ago

For many people simply consuming media for long periods of time is boring and unmotivating. Playing a strategy boardgame is much more interesting and involved.

Cthulhu_• 6 years ago

IDK, there are some really good and compelling single player video games out there nowadays. I'm trying to play half a dozen at the same time lately <_<.

altacc5• 6 years ago

As well as solo play, I've also started playing more digital versions of board games where an AI opponent is available. Whist not at all social it is a good way to quickly work on your strategy for when you do find a mutually convenient time to play online with friends. Plus most of them work on a decently powered laptop and don't need powerful graphics cards that a lot of other games do.

pixxel• 6 years ago

If you don't mind me asking, where do you play these digital board games?

JackMorgan3• 6 years ago

Not OP but likely the various paid and free DLC for Tabletop Simulator might have such features. Keep in mind as someone who enjoys boardgames TS can be a surprisingly steep learning curve.

altacc5• 6 years ago

As someone else has said, Tabletop Simulator has lots of options but there's dedicated digital versions of board games available on Steam, such as Scythe, Terraforming Mars, Splendor.

elefantastisch• 6 years ago

Board Game Arena is a good option.

9214• 6 years ago

Design of 1-player and 0-player games is a topic that really interests me, but finding any coherent resources on it is a non-trivial task.

Aside from card solitaire reviews, Hesse's "glass-bead games" (aka Hipbone games [1]) and various articles on Game of Life, only [2] with [3] seems close enough to what I have in mind (+ variations on Jung's active imagination with tarot, surrealist games), mainly using board games as a tool for thought and modeling beyond the purview of classical game theory.

I would appreciate pointers in that direction.

As a bonus, if you are interested in abstract board games and eurogames, GIPF project [4] is worth checking out.

[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38371/hipbone-games

[2] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691025667/la...

[3] https://senseis.xmp.net/?TheProtractedGame

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIPF_project

navbaker2• 6 years ago

I can't recommend Fantasy Flight Games' co-op card offerings enough. They allow 1-4 people to play against an encounter deck that acts as the opposition and generates the story of the quest/encounter.

-Lord of the Rings: They have the rights to the books, not the movies, which allows for a ton of creative writing and characters. Definitely the heaviest and most complex of the three, but allows for the most granularity in deck building. Has an enormous card pool.

-Arkham Horror: VERY story driven, cosmic horror theme that draws heavily from Lovecraft writing, but isn't afraid to blaze its own path. Feels very much like an RPG.

-Marvel Champions: Lighter weight than the other two, but an absolute blast to play. Very pick up and play with minimal story, feels like an action brawler. The newest of the three. Deck building is much less of a chore than with the others. You pick a super hero, they come with fifteen hero-specific cards, then pick an aspect (think color from Magic) and fill out the deck with only cards from that aspect.

lukifer• 6 years ago

It isn't one-player exactly, but it's easy to jump into from home during quarantine, so quick plug: FFG's tragically deceased LCG Android:Netrunner lives on digitally at http://jinteki.net, and the community is very welcoming to new players. (It's also open-source and quite elegantly engineered using Clojure/ClojureScript.)

navbaker2• 6 years ago

There is a solo variant for both the runner and corp that you can find on BoardGameGeek. I believe the runner side is called Running Solo, can’t remember what the corp side is called. I printed it out ages ago and never tried it, you’ve inspired me to give it a go today!

n2dasun• 6 years ago

Arkham Horror is on sale at Amazon and Walmart right now.

https://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Flight-Games-Arkham-Horror/dp...

remmargorp64• 6 years ago

Whenever I got bored enough to actually do something like this, I just read a book.

The utilitarian pleasures of playing board games by yourself

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