There have been some talk lately on BGG that solo board games:
- takes more time to play.
- require more time to setup and store.
- demand the player to manage resolution, AI and bookeeping.
- Ask the player to learn or relearn the rules.
- If the session is too long, the player must have a table they could leave the game on.
For me, time is a real issue as like I said, I played elder sign solo as a physical game in 3 hours, while I played the digital game in 1 hour.
From what I can see, what seems to take a lot of time in board game is: Thinking, Reading and Manipulating. The only activity players could be enjoying is Thinking, or reading for story elements. When I play a digital board game, I only do the thinking part.
So I was wondering if there were certain design choices that could be used to make games more attractive for solitaire play. Here are a few ideas I had:
Have a short and simple game: Sombody suggested Friday and Onirim which are agree are short and sweet. Still, generally I want more meat in a solo game because I have more time to put though into the game.
Make sure the game has little setup: It might be harder if you want a deeper game with more components. But I think it's always possible to have games where most of the components build up over the course of the game. Else reducing the need to position components during setup, like you open the box and the game is ready could be an option.
Make every component manipulation have a decision: To avoid bookeeping, or make it more interesting, make sure that any manipulation of components is not simply automated. There must be a decision implied with every manipulation. For example, if you empty a track filled with cubes, maybe players has some control over where the cubes get discarded. I think a rule of thumb would be that 1 decision can create only 1 or 2 manipulation.
Put the rules on the components: In order to reduce the need to go back in the rule book, not only keep the rules simple, but also keep the rule on the components themselves like "legends of Andor".
Use as little ability text as possible: Special text ability implies more reading than just the rulebook. It is sometimes harder to analyse and understand the impact of text than simple icons and numbers. So desiging a game with little special abilities, or very common abilities (Ex: Puerto Rico Roles), could make it easier to play. I play a lot of Lords of waterdeep lately, and some "building" has a simple icon abilities like "gain 2 black cubes".
Any other ideas are welcomed.
Board games are already hard to design, so adding additional design rules could be more annoying. But maybe if we have some basic guidelines in the back of out mind, it could make the design process easier.
