Players: Games with Solitaire Rules

Cthulhu: Dark Providence

Set in the Cthulhu: Death May Die, Dark Providence is a competitive game in which players take on secret roles of Investigators, Cultists Or Dissidents from the most influential cities of the United States during the Great Depression. While the Cultists explore the nation's vulnerability seeking to remake it into a twisted version of itself by consorting with unspeakable beings from nightmarish dimensions, Investigators take the opposite side, standing against this dark providence. Meanwhile Dissidents are no longer part of either side. Dissidents score points for assassinating Agents and for sealing and protecting Gates. As enemies of both sides of the struggle, concealing their identity is paramount.

Each player's secret alignment determines how they’ll score points at the end of the game, however, this is not a cooperative game. During the game players use Influence cubes to bid for the right to claim Asset cards, take control of cities, and gather Mythos cards. Each new Asset card acquired improves the players’ deck and therefore the resources and actions they can perform during a turn. At the center of Dark Providence’s deck building mechanics lie the Asset cards. All players start the game with the same 10 initial cards. Regardless of their strategy, acquiring new Asset cards is fundamental to improve their decks.

Trying to keep their identity secret and avoid insanity, players perform a multitude of actions, swaying Hired Agents to their side of the battle, assassinating other players’ Agents, gathering additional help from Mythos cards, blocking other players from claiming cards, and sealing or protecting Gates, among others to gain Victory Points. At the end, only the player with the most Victory Points of the dominant side of the battle will win the game!

Dark Providence also has a brand new solo version in which a single player comes face-to-face with an Elder One attempting to corrupt the nation. The player takes the side of Investigators and plays against 1 of 6 Elder Ones, each with unique features and goals.

The Hobbit: There and Back Again

The Hobbit: There & Back Again is a competitive adventure game in which players draft dice to make pathways, collect resources, and perform actions that help them to reach their chapter goal.

In more detail, each of the players has their own adventure board book open to the same chapter of the game, and they play in turn order starting with the shortest player. That player rolls all of the dice, then selects one, then the next player selects one, and so on until all dice have been chosen, at which point the next player rolls all the dice once again.

With your chosen dice, you use a dry-erase pen to mark the current chapter of your book, drafting a path to evade trolls, battle goblins, solve riddles, and pen the best conclusion to each chapter. The game takes players through the eight most iconic challenges faced by Bilbo and the Dwarves in The Hobbit, such as overcoming trolls, goblins, wargs, and giant spiders; reclaiming the treasure of the dwarves; and defeating the dragon Smaug. In the end, you want to complete the most rewarding journey to The Lonely Mountain.

The Hobbit: There & Back Again includes a solo mode, as well as a way to increase the game's difficulty, whether for some players to balance different skills levels or for everyone to increase the challenge.

Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition

Railroad Ink Challenge is a quick-playing roll-and-write game for 1 to 4 players. Grab a board and a dry-erase marker, and get ready to reach networking nirvana! Roll the dice and draw the routes to connect the exits around your board. Expand your network with railways, highways and stations to collect points, but you will be penalized for any open connections, so plan carefully!

Railroad Ink Challenge has everything you love from the original Railroad Ink games and a lot more, with an all-new focus on player interaction thanks to in-game goals! Only those who achieve them first get the reward, so you have to keep an eye on what your opponents are doing and try to complete the goals before they do! A different set of goals is available each time, so no two games will be the same!

But wait, there's more! Draw unprecedented, mind-bending route configurations thanks to the new dice! Connect special structures to your network to trigger new effects: factories allow you to duplicate a die, villages give bonus points if they are close to a station, universities unlock extra special routes — use these effects wisely and you'll score big!

Railroad Ink Challenge comes in two versions, each one including one expansion with an additional dice set that adds new special rules to your games. Create placid forest landscapes and build into a beautiful arboreal paradise with the Lush Green Edition!

—description from publisher

Skara Brae

Around five thousand years ago, a resilient group of farmers and hunters built a thriving community on the Orkney Islands of Northern Scotland. Rather than discarding their empty shells, broken tools, bones, and other waste, they used them to form large mounds of earth over hundreds of years. Later generations dug into these midden piles to create a series of rooms and tunnels to shelter from the harsh winds and cold winter months.

The aim of Skara Brae is to gather various resources in order to feed, clothe, and shelter the growing number of settlers. Players take turns drafting cards and using their workers to furnish, cook, craft, clean, and trade. At the end of each round, players need to provide for their settlers and will likely create more midden that needs to be cleaned up. After four rounds, the player with the most points wins.

—description from designer

Earthborne Rangers

Earthborne Rangers is a customizable, co-operative card game set in the wilderness of the far future. You take on the role of a Ranger, a protector of the mountain valley you call home: a vast wilderness transformed by monumental feats of science and technology devised to save the Earth from destruction long ago. The story of Earthborne Rangers is presented as a branching narrative campaign consisting of a main storyline and a multitude of side stories. In it, you can choose to follow the critical path or to strike off on your own to discover the Valley's many engaging characters, mysterious ruins, and beings both familiar and strange.

You begin by building a deck that reflects your Ranger's interests, personal history, and personality. Then, as you explore the open world and your story takes shape, you augment your deck with improved equipment, refined skills, and the memories of your journey.

Each game session represents one day in the Valley, and you'll pick up in the same location on the map where you rested the night before. Your goal is to either complete one of your available missions or to explore the open world. The session ends when you're either forced to rest (through either fatigue or injury), or you choose to rest for the night.

An individual game session is played in rounds, and those rounds consist of turns. On your turn, you perform one action: either play a card from your hand, or choose an action from a card on the table. Each action allows you to interact thematically and narratively with the world, and each time you take an action, the world comes to life around you. Predators stalk their prey, rain pours from the sky, rocks tumble down the mountain to block your path, and much more.

—description from the publisher