1 Player Podcast

This week we look at yet another Pandemic game.  This one is the Lord of the Rings themed Fate of the Fellowship.  This game does an excellent job of putting the characters into the story of the Lord of the Rings.  The goal of this game is to take the ring to Mount Doom in Morder and destroy the ring by casting it into the flames.

It's a highly thematic game set that any Lord of the Rings fan should at least play once.

• Fate of the Fellowship (BGG, Z-Man)

This week, Julius talks about the game Oros.  In this game, you play a good raising lands so that your followers can build you powerful temples atop volcanoes!

This time around we talk about Lost in Adventure: The Labyrinth.  It's a light point-and-click style adventure that will feel familiar to folks that played Cantaloop or video games like Leisure Suit Larry, Monkey Island and all those old games.  This game feels like those but quite a bit lighter.

• Lost in Adventure: The Labyrinth (BGG)

This week sporty Albert and Sporty Julius talk about sports... sports games that is!  We look at the various sports games we know and enjoy.

• 04:30 - Bottom of the 9th (BGG)
• 09:42 - Heat: Pedal to the Medal (BGG)
• 13:28 - Formula D / Formula Dé (BGG)
• 15:51 - Bowling Solitaire (BGG)
• 17:45 - K2 (BGG)
• 22:00 - Cold Water Crown (BGG)
• 23:42 - Proving Grounds (BGG)
• 28:00 - Plaay Games
• 29:00 - Tavarua (BGG)
• 30:16 - Mars Open: Tabletop Golf (BGG)

This week we learn about a new cozy game about books.  More specifically, storing books all over your house.  As a gamer, this surely sounds familiar.

• A Place for All My Books (BGG, Smirk & Dagger Games)

This week Julius introduces us to the game Emerald Skulls.  It's a gambling game for 1 to 6 feisty goblins!

* Emerald Skulls (BGG, Thunderworks Games)

This week Julius talks about Maki Masters, a game about preparing the best sushi recipes by carefully arranging ingredients on the preparation mat.  This is basically a tile laying game in which you are trying to arrange the ingredients to complete recipes.  However, this game brings some really nice looking components, especially if you have the deluxified edition.

• Maki Master (BGG, Kids Table BG)

This week I tell Julius all about managing a finishing and canning business while trying to keep ecological balance in Conservas.  It's a bag-building game by Scott Almes in which you are catching fish to sell in the market.  While doing this, you need to be careful and not overfish or risk unbalancing the ecosystem and losing the game.

It's a fun and cozy (it turns out) bag-building game. 

This week we return to Popular Mechanics.  This week we look at games that are sequels to other games.

• 01:56 The Search for Planet X (BGG) -> The Search for the Lost Species (BGG)
• 04:33 Arkham Horror (BGG) -> Elder Sign (BGG)
• 08:00 Sleep Gods (BGG) -> Sleeping Gods: Distant Skies (BGG)
• 11:50 The Harvest Trilogy: Agricola (BGG) -> At the Gates of Loyang (BGG)
• 14:50 Dorf Romantic (VGG) -> Dorfromantik: The Boardgame (BGG)
• 17:50 Cantaloop (BGG) -> Cantaloop 2 (BGG)

Honorable mentions

1. Castellion (BGG)
2. Bot Factory (BGG)
3. Nations: The Dice Game (BGG)
4. Comancheria (BGG)
5. Ironsworn (RPGGeek)
6. Final Girl (BGG)

This week Julius shares One Hit Heroes with us.  It's a game about fighting super-villains that are supposedly way more powerful than the heroes.  It's a co-operative game that can be played solo or multi-handed solo.

We got into some audio trouble just past the halfway mark around 23 minutes in. From then on, you'll hear lots of clicking and gaps in Julius's voice.  I wasn't able to fix that; but, I was able to fix his pitch which went up a tiny bit.  It sounded as if he'd been on helium for the last 15 minutes :D

This week I tell Julius all about the game SpaceCorp, by John Butterfield and published by GMT.  This game is played in three phases in which you explore colonize, the inner Solar System, then the outer Solar System and finally the nearby galaxies.  The game is based on the Galactican series by Ejner Fulsang.

• 1P 378 - SpaceCorp 2035-2300AD (BGG)
• Galactican series (Amazon)

This week Julius tells us about a game as big as a school bus!  Endeavor is a game about exploring the world's oceans solo, cooperatively or competitively.  It's a big game that sounds like lots of fun and very thematic.

• Endeavor: Deep Sea (BGG)

This week I talk with Mike & Olga Rimer of Caravel games.  They have been making video game content for years and years in the excellent D.R.O.D. series (Deadly Rooms of Death).  A few years ago, they released a solo puzzle game called Twisty Little Passages. Now they have Time Fenix coming to Kickstarter in a month or so.  We talk about all their games and then have a bit of a chat about tariffs and how they are trying to deal with so much uncertainty.

• 01:30 Caravel Games
• 05:00 D.R.O.D.: King Dugan's Dungeon (Caravel Games, G.O.G.)
• 12:05 Twisty Little Passages (Kickstarter)
• 20:15 Time Fenix (Kickstarter)
• 41:27 Tariffs

This week Julius and I talk about dexterity games.  It's not a category you see often when talking about solo games, but there are a few fun ones we've tried (mostly).

• 02:04 Flip Ships (BGG)
• 05:47 Nekojima (BGG)
• 09:50 What Lies Beneath (BGG)
• 12:30 Hunted: Mining Colony 415 (BGG)
• 15:43 Slide Quest (BGG)
• 21:20 Hoverkraft (BGG)
• 25:36 Menara (BGG)
• 31:14 Jenga (BGG) & Clever Girl (RPG Geek)
• 34:55 For Science! (BGG)

This week Julius and I talk about the smaller version of Terraforming Mars.  Well, one of the smaller versions.  The game is the very lovely  love-child of Terraforming Mars & Race for the Galaxy, Ares Expedition.  In this game, you are working to make Mars a habitable planet by managing the temperature & oxygen levels while raising oceans.  The theme is straight out of Terraforming Mars.  However, you do it by choosing actions and playing cards simultaneously, just like Race for the Galaxy.

• Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition (BGG)
• Terraforming Mars (BGG, Fryx Games)
• Race for the Galaxy (BGG)