1 Player Podcast

This week I tell Julius and the audience all about Free Ride, the train game by Friedemann Friese and published by Rio Grande Games.  This is a fun pick-up and deliver game with quick turns that includes a solo challenge.  Hop aboard and hear all about the game and what I think.

Also, listen in for the Final Girl Season 3 giveaway!

This week Julius tells us about the small game Welcome to Reckoning.  This 1 player game by Mike Heiman set in a wild wild west with cosmic horrors.  Gotta love those cosmic horrors.

This week we talk about a Vital Lacerda big-box game on wine making.  The game is the 2016 release of Vinhos: Deluxe Edition.  It's a fun game that lets produce wine, compete in wine fairs, sell and export.  All this in an effort to become the pre-eminent wine producer of Portugal.  It's a pretty neat game with an interesting theme but maybe too big for me.

• Vinhos: Deluxe Edition (BGG, Eagle-Gryphon)

This week, we look at a year of gaming.  Well, sorta.  We look at games that have a year in them or somehow use the flow of time in them.  It was harder than expected, but we found a few games that do have a pretty decent sense of time passing.

Check out the sample fancy map someone drew for Cartographers:

• 02:30 Creature Comforts (BGG, KTBG)
• 04:30 Project Ecco (RPG Geek, More Blueberries)
• 07:55 Cartographers (BGG, Thunderworks)
• 11:50 Hostage Negotiator: Career (BGG, VRG)
• 16:50 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (BGG, Z-Man)
• 19:05 Fields of Arle (BGG, Asmodee)

Honorable mentions

• Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar (BGG, Buried Without Ceremony)
• Fox Curio's Floating Bookshop (RPG Geek, Lost Ways Club)
• The Quiet Year (RPG Geek)
• Legacy of Yu (BGG)

This week Julius and I look at a game about growing magic herbs and plants in a communal wizard's hedge.  Position your helper sprites to help you get the most plants from this shared garden.  This is an interesting game of area control in which, each turn, you are placing plant patches to trigger a variety of powers and increase your control over the garden.  This game's solo experience closely mimics the multiplayer game using a bot that doesn't really add any time to the play.  In fact, because of player analysis paralysis, it may be faster.

Julius and I talk about Bot Factory but Vital Lacerda.  Mostly Julius describes the game and I talk about how much it reminds me of Kanban and how I want to play either of those two games.  Bot Factory is based on Kanban in both the theme of managing a factory and the mechanics which are simplified quite a bit without making it a simple game at all.

• Bot Factory (BGG, Eagle-Gryphon)
• Kanban EV (BGG, Eagle-Gryphon)

This week we look back at a classic co-op game, Castle Panic. Monsters have decided to attach your castle in a clearing surrounded by dangerous woods.  Waves of monsters charge the castle.  Fortunately, the clever design makes it hard for the monsters to get at your castle and your highly trained warriors (knights, archers and fighters defend the castle), each specializing in combat on a certain type of terrain.  This is a pretty simple and accessible tower defense game that has had a relatively recent art upgrade and continues to be fun, if a bit simple.

* Castle Panic (BGG, Fireside games)

This week tells us about a Monster High-ish game called Mythic Mischief.  In it, you play a group of monster kids in school, trying to cause mischief in the library and get one of the rival cliques in trouble.  It's a head-to-head sportsball type game of out-maneuvering your opponent's team members so they get caught by the library's Tomekeeper.  The game also features a solo mode that sounds pretty fun to me.  You can get one of two different base games, each with a different set of factions as well as stand-alone expansions, each consisting of a new faction.

• Mythic Mischief (BGG, IV Studio)

• 04:20 - Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age (BGG, Eagle-Gryphon)
• 08:55 - Cartographers (BGG, Thunderworks)
• 14:40 - Yahtzee! (BGG)
• 17:40 - Dungeon Dice (BGG)
• 22:45 - Railroad Ink (BGG)
• 27:39 - OctoDice (BGG)
• 31:27 - Clip-Cut Parks (BGG)
• 34:28 - Three Sisters (BGG)
• 36:23 - Catan: The Dice Game (BGG)

This week we talk about the game Aleph Null by Tony Boydell and published by Capstone Games.  The art is by Alex Leigh and music by Nicholas O'Neill.  I did not include music as I mentioned I might do, primarily because I didn't see it available on-line for public consumption.

Anway, this game is about summoning the demon Baphomet, the Sabbat Goat.  It's a bit creepy and would be creepier if not for the excellent and light-hearted art by Alex Leigh.  Either way, it's a really fun game in which you are trying to cast a ritual to summon Baphomet by playing cards from your hand and slowly using them up to do magics with the hope of finally completing the ritual as expected.

• Aleph Null (BGG, Capstone Games)

This week Julius and and daughter join this week to talk about the very lovely Wild Gardens.  This is a game about foraging for natural ingredients to put into your delicious recipes. It's a beautiful game that reminds of Studio Ghibli animations - think Totoro. 

• Wild Gardens (BGG, Rose Gauntlet)

This week I talk about a small solo RPG called Anamnesis.  This is a game about forgetting your past and then rediscovering who you are.  I found it hard to start because you begin with no information and you are making it all up as you go along!  That even goes for the setting!  I found as I played, the story comes together nicely and I have had a really good time every game I've played.

• Anamnesis(RPG Geek, itchi.io)

This game seems to come up again and again and it's for good reason.  Pandemic is a classic games in line with the likes of Monopoly, Clue or Scrabble.  Fight off diseases ravaging the world in an effort to save humanity.  This game has inspired variants, legacy games and made cooperative games popular.  It occurs to me that we didn't credit the game.  It was designed by Matt Leacock and originally published by Z-Man games.

• Pandemic (BGG, Z-Man Games)

While still struggling slightly (very slightly), Julius and family recorded an episode about tragic games.  That's right.  These week we look at games that are overall about sad events.  No tragedy here though, it's a very fun episode!

• 02:00 Endangered (BGG)
• 03:55 Leviathan Wilds (BGG)
• 05:30 Anachrony (BGG)
• 07:45 Pandemic (BGG)
• 11:20 Mysterium ?? (BGG)
• 13:00 Horrified (BGG)
• 14:30 Under Falling Skies (BGG)
• 15:07 Purim (BGG)
• 18:57 The Spill (BGG)
• 20:39 Flatline (BGG)

This week we talk about Deck of Wonders, which currently has an expansion out on Kickstarter.  I'd hope to get this episode out with plenty of time for listeners to decide if they want to back this.  Saddly, Hurricane Helene set back my production schedule and the Kickstarter ends in just a couple of days.

This game is a light deck construction game similar to Magic: The Gathering.  In fact, it draws some inspiration from that game.  However, this one is much lighter and more accessible because of that.  Also, the card pool is a bit smaller :)

• Deck of Wonders (BGG, Kickstarter Expansion)