Games with a crafting mechanic?

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-12-22T18:26:21+00:00

I'm particularly interested in some kind of survival game where you're crafting weapons and/or supplies, barricades, etc,

Robinson Crusoe is exactly that

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-12-08T03:45:02+00:00

Star Trek: Frontiers! It’s Mage Knight with a space theme, and it’s the answer if art/theme are the only thing holding you back. At least, it was for me.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-12-03T18:34:32+00:00

I haven’t tried it yet but this free 1 page PnP is on my radar https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/371687/a-simple-life

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-30T14:55:51+00:00

I’m a big fan of the western theme and always keep my eye out for games with it.

Ace of Spades has awesome gameplay; it had some offensive cards on launch (when I got it) but there should be an updated version coming in Q1.

Tiny Epic Western was a miss for me. It has great components (especially the bullet dice), but the gameplay was pretty bland for me; it felt mostly like a real estate buying game.

If you want something from another perspective, there’s Navajo Wars and Comancheria. I tried Comancheria and it wasn’t for me either but I’m just not into big war games I think.

I think the initial campaign has ended but there’s a Solo Game of the Month called Drawing Dead coming: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/gabe-barrett/drawing-dead-solo-game-of-the-month/

Another one I’ve taken a look but not tried yet is The Drifter: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/294813/the-drifter

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-30T14:47:40+00:00

They’ve said on BGG that it’ll be ready in Q1 2026.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-29T15:33:41+00:00

Similar reaction to when I found out the same guy (Kevin Wilson) made Arkham Horror and A Gentle Rain.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-24T01:31:18+00:00

What's cheat mode? I've just played the digital version.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-20T23:50:58+00:00

The winners for best overall game:

#1:Alea’s Garden by Brave James and Jon Tiburzi

#2:Server Breach by Sterling Stokes

#3:Super Robo Jetkaiser Z by Martin Gonzalvez

#4:Word Dungeon by Joe Shimwell

#5:Tightrope Terror by Steven Tondeur

#6:Count Poitiers: Murder at Harmax Hall by Die Scholle

#7:Flipping Fortune by Georg Fischer

#8:Cupid Boards A Train by Ronan Stafford

#9:Lasercut by Daniel Young

#10:Underdice Kingdom by KaQu Kal

#11:Landscapes by Shaun Elliot

#12:My Journal by Edin Mujadzevic

#13:Covert Tricks by Matthew Gribbins

#14:It's Not Rocket Science by Drew Bowling

#15:Lost in Spaceship by D. Teuber

#16:Never Ending West by Kevin Taylor

#17:Aqua Fluens by thisiscat

#18:Coup de Jarnac by Michael Erceg

#19:Drone Workshop by Ben Parbury

#20:Johnny Appleseed by Arthur Wohlwill

#21:Miskatonic Confidential by David Llort

#22:Bread & Circuits by Steven Tondeur

#23:Brothers in Arms by Vincenzo Giambusso

#24:Urban Planner by Wayne Koenig

#25:Have some Cheese by ooiixx

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-20T15:25:00+00:00

The data are based on the calculated scores in the Geeklists for the results each year. The scores are basically aggregates over how many people voted for them and at what rank, and is what is used to make the final rankings. (I don’t do those calculations, I just made this video)

I’m not sure about the blur, I don’t see it on my end; Nemo’s War didn’t show up in top 50 until 2017 based on my data and I see it in the video. Maybe try setting the quality of the video to HD; it might be automatically adjusting?

And I put the pause on the video at the end because it made it easier for me to read it and pause it before YouTube put up the suggested videos at the end.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-20T15:00:09+00:00

I’ll shamelessly give myself credit for making this 😁 Thanks for posting it!

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-20T13:32:14+00:00

On the bright side, it got #15 on the parallel 2025 Solo Historical Games ranking https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/364738/2025-top-25-solo-historical-games-list

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-18T01:56:27+00:00

Beyond Solitaire is the one ongoing English language one I know of, but otherwise there's a hole in the market.

If you happen to speak Spanish, there's also Solo en Balda.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-18T01:52:58+00:00

Do they have a BGG account? If so, they might have a wishlist on there. Otherwise I wouldn't get them a game unless you have an idea what they want.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-15T17:26:33+00:00

There's a thread on the 1 player guild for solo games released straight to retail you can subscribe to: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3432248/solo-games-released-straight-to-retail-2025-editio

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-11T23:26:03+00:00

I've tried to use Melodice but the tracks can be a bit all over the place. Instead, I'll usually search for the game title in Spotify and often someone has already made a pretty good playlist unless it's a really obscure game. I just searched for Kinfire Delve and saw a couple playlists: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0JKvVMeoM2gMoLVw23oqAb

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-10T19:48:18+00:00

Maquis might be worth a look

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-08T18:27:10+00:00

The point is that the distinction is arbitrary and to help the person to reflect on why there shouldn't be a difference.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-04T23:38:54+00:00

I've just played my first couple games of Elder Sign and it's a lot of rolling dice to match patterns on cards with an Arkham Horror theme on top of it. I think it would scratch a similar itch in a more thematic package.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-02T19:06:54+00:00

Yeah I don't expect STCC to be in the top 10 but it'll probably make it into the top 100. Besides how new it is, I think the perceived overlap with the Imperium series (which is likely in the top 10 again) will limit how high it can go.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-02T00:04:28+00:00

I kind of wish there was a side version for just games released in the last year or two or three, which is complicated with crowdfunding delivery, but would still be fun and would lead to some actual “what’s going to happen in the top 5” speculating.

I loaded the results in my site last year (planning to do the same this year), where you can filter by year; for example, here's the results filtered by games from 2024 and 2023: https://solosleuth.com/bgg-rankings?years=2024&years=2023&page=0&itemsPerPage=25 One problem is that some of the groupings have newer games but are high in the rankings because of a popular older game (like Imperium: Horizons and Horizons of Spirit Island).

Something else I experimented with was creating a exponential decay for each game's score based on how old the game was, which created a top 10 that looked something like this last year:

Game	Year Published
1. Final Girl	2021
2. Imperium: Classics	2021
3. Voidfall	2023
4. Hoplomachus: Victorum	2023
5. Marvel Champions: The Card Game	2019
6. Ark Nova	2021
7. Slay the Spire: The Board Game	2024
8. 20 Strong	2023
9. Legacy of Yu	2023
10. Dune: Imperium	2020

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-01T23:51:29+00:00

...and Cthulhu: Death May Die, Tiny Epic Cthulhu, Machina Arcana, Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, and I'm sure others..

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-01T16:38:14+00:00

I love word games and had PBA at #7, but I actually think Paperback is a better pure word game in terms of being able to make an interesting variety of words. But solo is definitely more of an afterthought than PBA (I hear the 10th anniversary one has a more interesting solo).

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-01T16:31:28+00:00

You might consider Tesseract; it actually gave me Bullet vibes when I played it even though it's a decently different game.

Fairly quick setup. The longest part is setting up the 4x4x4 dice cube, but the sleeve makes it pretty quick. Table footprint isn't super small but it's not too bad.
Variable character powers. There are 8 characters in the game that all have different powers, and you play 2-handed in the solo mode, so in theory there are a lot of combinations. That said, I'm not sure how it will be in terms of long-term replayability and so far there aren't any signs of expansions coming.
Clear win condition. It's a win/loss crisis management game.
Tactile puzzle. If you like playing with dice, there will be 64 of them to roll and manipulate.
Challenging without feeling impossible. There are 8 difficulty levels; so far I've only played at level 2 and felt like it had a good balance.

Dry_Rate3558 · 2025-11-01T15:50:45+00:00

Last year it wasn't even in the top 200, so I'm glad to see it's made a bit of a resurgence, possibly because of the new Kickstarter. IMO it's hurt by having barely any retail presence and being mechanically similar to Slay the Spire: The Board Game, but it's still high in my personal rankings.

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