I’m considering a new purchase this summer so am looking for suggestions from the hive mind here.
I’m thinking of getting a fantasy (or maybe sci-fi) dungeon crawler game but it needs to be one I can play solo as the chance of me finding local gaming friends is remote. I’d also like something with a shortish setup time and not too sprawling as I have limited spare time and table space and far too many cats to play a long game with a big footprint.
Any suggestions? I currently have One Deck Dungeon which is okay but doesn’t get many outings for me.
Less dungeon and less crawling than I think you are looking for, but don’t overlook Aeon’s End is a pleasing “defeat the boss and it’s minions” romp through deckbuilding.
As @RossM suggests, I’ve got a few games that fit into this category. A fair few are more sprawling and I think now unavailable, but here’s a couple of suggestions.
I quite like Warhammer Quest: Adventure Card Game by FFG, now sadly out of print due to FFG no longer holding a GW license. The game mechanics were however recycled for Heroes of Terrinoth (I haven’t seen much recent support for that game by FFG in terms of expansions etc. recently though either).
The game is card based, with heroes having four different types of actions (explore, aid, fight and another one I can’t recall recovery) that they have to carefully pick to tackle the threats in front of them; once used an action can’t be used again until the recovery action is taken.
That’s a pretty poor explanation (I had written up a nice review of Warhammer Quest on the old forum… sigh…), but I recommend checking HoT out. Plays 1-4, co-operative.
For a more pen and paper experience, there’s Four Against Darkness. Solo dungeon delver where you draw out the dungeon on squared paper as you go. Pretty cheap little book that only requires the addition of a d6 or two and a pencil.
I really like the D&D Adventure System games, and the most recent two (Tomb of Annihilation and Dungeon of the Mad Mage) are both quite good. They work well solo, or with up to four, are fairly light, have a campaign system and the table footprint isn’t too bad (a small token organizer helps a lot).
I’ve also had a good time with the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game.
Sword and Sorcery is good if you like things crunchier, and the solo-with-the-app mode for Imperial Assault is also quite fun. Bother of those game s can get a bit cumbersome with their setup systems, however.
When I’m in the mood for some good old fashioned monster fighting, **Adventure System ** and One Deck Dungeon are my go-to games.
There is a large paid-for expansion called Ironsworn: Delve. However I believe if you picked up the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality it was include there.
I’d forgotten about the D&D boardgames so might look into one of those, and Sword and Sorcery looked good too. As a fan of miniatures games and owner and regular player of the likes of Talisman and Heroquest in my teens, seems like they may scratch my itch better at the right price, although some of those do seem quite expensive if released a few years ago. The card games might work too but I don’t find true deckbuilders all that fun when done solo.
Sword & Sorcery is excellent, but it’s really not meeting your criteria. Setup isn’t actually too bad so long as you keep your unique tokens (there are a LOT of em) and all the cards organized, but it’s a table hog (less the map/board, more the heroes and monsters) and the 50 page manual is dense, if well-written. It’s an excellent solo game, but going solo means managing all the monsters and that adds considerably to the playtime.
Really, I can’t recommend it enough, but not here. My 2¢ after seeing it come up.
Stretching definitions a little, have you considered The Lost Expedition? Since the Fountain of Youth expansion released I would always recommended playing with that folded in, but it’s a quick little survival run into the jungle with some desperately underprepared and fragile explorers. You won’t get the exploration or “character development” (level ups, campaign) of a typical dungeon crawler, but it does provide a quick, pretty damned harrowing survival experience if you don’t mind a game based entirely around mitigating evil draws. I got a few dozen plays with that one (particularly after the expansion) before deciding I’d had my fill.
More or less on-topic is Dice Conquest, which I ordered on a whim recently. (In transit; have not played yet.)
It’s a dungeon crawl without the dungeon? It’s just a series of monsters to figure out how to defeat with your party of heroes, by rolling dice and figuring out how best to use them. I’m hoping there’s enough of a puzzle for that to be fun, and some of the comments were encouraging.
I’ve seen a lot recently on Paupers Ladder from the BGG 1-player Guild; a lot of people saying it’s exactly the sort of thing they were looking for. Usually with caveats around it being a bit heavy on randomness? I’ve added it to my list to keep an eye on
