1 Player Podcast

This week Julius and I talk about Bullet ♥︎ and, really, Bullet ★. These games are in the style of Bullet Hell video games were bullets are flying all over the place in overwhelming quantities.  It's a really fast playing simultaneous play game with a timer.  Julius find the timer optional and I appreciate that because it makes the game sound more fun to me.

• Bullet ♥︎ (BGG)
• Bullet ★ (BGG)
• Bullet series (Level 99)

This week's episode I tell Julius all about the game Red Cathedral, in which you are tasked with helping to build St. Basil's Cathedral in Russia.  It's an interesting game with beautiful artwork and a very simple AI for the solo gamer.  Fortunately, I did most of the talking this week.  Julius's audio was a bit garbled and I was unable to clean it up.

This week Julius and I look at Mathy and try to figure out if the subject adds up for us.  We had some conversations I thought were interesting in what makes or doesn't make a mathy game while presenting six different examples.

• 07:00 Sprawopolis (BGG)
• 08:50  Castles of Burgundy (BGG)
• 15:20 Friday (BGG)
• 17:15 Cartographers (BGG)
• 19:45 Search for Planet X (BGG)
• 21:30 Racetrack (mistakenly called Vector Racing) (BGG, Wikipedia)

This week Julius and I revisit a classic realtime game... Escape: The Curse of the Temple, in which you Indiana Jones your way out of a cursed temple.  Hurry though, you only have 10 minutes!

• Escape: The Curse of the Temple (BGG, Queen Games)

This week Julius and I talk about Flamecraft, a fun worker placement-ish game of running around being a good dragon.  It is actually worker placement but for me it felt more like running around doing errands than like placing workers.

• Flamecraft (BGG, Cardboard Alchemy)

This week Julius and I look at Cyberion, the latest Oniverse game my Shadi Torbey.  It's a cool game about fighting the Devious Cog whose trying to destroy your factory.  We really like the Oniverse and send almost an hour discussing this game!

• Cyberion (BGG)

This week we learn how to start a new zoo!  Julius tells us about New York Zoo, a game in which you are trying to build a new zoo with animals and rides.  It's a rondel game with polyominoes by Uwe Rosenberg and pretty family friendly.

• New York Zoo (BGG)

This week's popular mechanics episode is a bit unorthodox.  Instead of looking at a single mechanic, we talk about mechanics (or game stuff) that caught our attention in 2023.

• 03:10 For Northwood! (BGG)
• 05:15 Bullet⭐ (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/343844/bullet)
• 10:55 Wreck This Deck (RPG Geek)
• 14:20 Bruges (BGG)
• 1 7:45 Banish the Snakes (BGG)
• 20:35 Legacy of Yu (BGG)
• 21:10 Habitat (BGG)
• 24:37 Overboss (BGG)
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This week I go solo and talk about an RPG called Wreck This Deck.  The title says it all, this is a game in which you get to alter and craft on a deck of playing cards all while trapping demons, doing readings and casting spells.   Best of all, you are altering cards!

These are the cards I've altered.  

• Wreck This Deck (RPG Geek, itch.io, Reddit)
• Discord (Unofficial)
• My list of demons and entities (Unkn's)

This week I'm out, as well as next week, so Julius and family fill in to talk about a solo poker game!

• Lock & Spell (BGG, Jupiter Valley Studios)

This week's episode, I talk about a small game called Age of Civilization, in which you can play through the rise and fall of empires in about 30 minutes.  It's a fun little worker placement game with lots of choices and lots of variability.  The entire show collapses at the end when my headphones run out of battery.

This week Julius shares a game he can't stop gushing about.  It's Endangered, the cooperative game about saving endangered species.  It's a neat little compact game with an interesting theme and nice artwork. 

Poor Julius sprained his wrist pretty badly and has been struggling with shuffling cards.  This week we brainstorm games that we can play without having to do all that shuffling.

• 02:30 Escape: The Curse of the Temple (BGG)
• 04:15 Search for Planet X (BGG)
• 06:25 Search for the Lost Species (BGG)
• 09:00 Fields of Arle (BGG) 
• 10:50 Caverna: Cave vs Cave (BGG)
• 13:00 Nautilion (BGG)
• 14:50 Castellion (BGG)
• 15:45 Top Ten Games You Can Play in Your Head by Yourself (RPG Geek)
• 21:00 Under Falling Skies (BGG)
• 26:00 Ricochet Robot (BGG)

This week's game is Pericle: The Gathering Darkness.  It's a fantasy adventure board game set in a world that reminds me of ancient Rome or Greece.  It is app driven to simulate playing with a game master and really does feel a lot more like playing an RPG than it feels like playing a boardgame.  I very much have enjoyed playing the game and think it is a pretty unique experience.

The game was kindly provided by the publisher, Long Dog Games.

• Pericle: The Gathering Darkness (BGG, Long Dog Games)

This week Julius and I revisit the game PAX by Bernd Eisenstein and published by Irongames.  This game is a small, fast playing drafting game that reminds me (but not Julius) of 7 Wonders.

• PAX (BGG, Irongames)
• PAX: Noctornus (BGG)