Players: Games with Solitaire Rules

Following the success of unmanned rover missions, the United Nations established the Department of Operations and Mars Exploration (D.O.M.E.). The first settlers arrived on Mars in the year 2037 and in the decades after establishment Mars Base Camp, private exploration companies began work on the creation of a self-sustaining colony. As chief astronaut for one of these enterprises, you want to be a pioneer in the development of the biggest, most advanced colony on Mars by achieving both D.O.M.E. mission goals as well as your company’s private agenda.

In the beginning, you will be dependent on supplies from Earth and will have to travel often between the Mars Space Station and the planet's surface. As the colony expands over time, you will shift your activities to construct mines, power generators, water extractors, greenhouses, oxygen factories, and shelters. Your goal is to develop a self-sustaining colony independent of any terrestrial organization. This will require understanding the importance of water, air, power, and food — the necessities for survival.

Do you dare take part in humankind’s biggest challenge?

On Mars is played over several rounds, each consisting of two phases - the Colonization Phase ​and the Shuttle Phase​.

During the Colonization Phase, each player takes a turn during which they take actions. The available actions depend on the side of the board they are on. If you are in orbit, you can take blueprints, buy and develop technologies, and take supplies from the Warehouse. If you are on the surface of the planet, you can construct buildings with your bots, upgrade these buildings using blueprints, take scientists and new contracts, welcome new ships, and explore the planet’s surface with your rover. In the Shuttle Phase, players may travel between the colony and the Space Station in orbit.

All buildings on Mars have a dependency on each other and some are required for the colony to grow. Building shelters for Colonists to live in requires oxygen; generating oxygen requires plants; growing plants requires water; extracting water from ice requires power; generating power requires mining minerals; and mining minerals requires Colonists. Upgrading the colony’s ability to provide each of these resources is vital. As the colony grows, more shelters are needed so that the Colonists can survive the inhospitable conditions on Mars.

During the game, players are also trying to complete missions. Once a total of three missions have been completed, the game ends. To win the game, players must contribute to the development of the first colony on Mars. This is represented during the game by players gaining Opportunity Points (OP). The player with the most OP at the end of the game is declared the winner.

Friday, the second game in the Friedemann Friese Series: Freitag-Project (Friedemann Friese), is based on the story of Robinson Crusoe and his loyal partner Friday (Freitag). You play as Friday, and when Robinson Crusoe crashes his ship on your island, your peaceful times are disturbed. You must help Robinson to survive the island and prepare him to defeat the pirates that are coming for the island.

Friday is a solitaire deck-building game in which you optimize your deck of fight cards in order to defeat the hazards of the island. During a turn the player will attempt to defeat hazard cards by playing fight cards from their deck. If defeated, a hazard card will become a fight card and is added to the player's deck. If failed, the player will lose life points but also get the opportunity to remove unwanted cards from their fight deck. In the end, the player will use their optimized fight deck to defeat the two pirate ships coming for the island, allowing Robinson Crusoe to escape the island and allowing you to finally have your peace back!

You are a Dreamwalker, lost in a mysterious labyrinth, and you must discover the oneiric doors before your dreamtime runs out – or you will remain trapped forever!

You may wander through the chambers of dreams, hoping that chance will reveal the doors, or you can linger in each type of room. In both cases, you will have to deal with the slithering Nightmares, which haunt the hallways of the labyrinth.

Onirim is a solo/cooperative card game. You (and a partner, if you wish) must work (together) against the game to gather the eight Door cards before the deck runs out; you can obtain those Door cards either by playing cards of the same color three turns in a row, or by discarding (under specific circumstances) one of your powerful Key cards. In both cases you will have to decide the best use of each card in your hand and carefully play around the Nightmares. Those cards are hidden in the deck and will trigger painful dilemmas when drawn...

Seven mini-expansions, all standalone and compatible with one another, are included with the second edition of Onirim, including these three that were in the first edition of the game:

"The Towers" introduces a new type of card that allows more searching and deck manipulation, while also imposing an additional victory condition.

"Happy Dreams and Dark Premonitions" adds evil time bombs that will impede your progress at predictable moments of your quest as well as helpful but unreliable allies.

In "The Book of Steps Lost and Found", you must find the eight Door cards in a randomly given order and may remove discarded cards from the game to cast powerful spells that will help you complete this difficult task.

In addition to these three variants from the first edition, there are four new modules in the Onirim 2nd edition box. Just like previously, each module consists of something that makes the game easier and something that makes the game harder:

"The Glyphs" introduces a fourth symbol on location cards (apart from Key, Sun and Moon), which makes it easier to compose the row of unrepeated symbols. Player must then find one extra door of each color (so 12 doors in total) to win

"The Dreamcatchers" are four cards that "guard" the Limbo piles. The Limbo pile stays with Dreamcatcher until some effect allows the player to shuffle the pile back to the deck... if all Dreamcatchers are full and new cards should come to Limbo, a Dreamcatcher is discarded and his cards shuffled back. Also, four new "Lost Dreams" cards are supposed to be in Limbo at the end of the game, as an extra winning condition - so discarding all Dreamcatchers means loss.

"The Crossroads and Dead Ends" introduce location cards with a given symbol (3 Sun, 2 Moon, 1 Key), but serving as any color "joker". It also contains 10 "Dead End" cards, that remain in players hand (un-discard-able on its own) and block her 5-cards hand limit... until a player discards the whole hand (=the only way to discard a Dead End).

"The Door To The Oniverse" brings several one-time abilities cards as "inhabitants of the Oniverse"... and one extra colorless door to find.

Apart from all those, there are a few special rules to use the dark meeple in the game (which interferes with Nightmare cards resolving), making the game easier or harder, depending on the chosen variant.

The great Sapa Inca Pachacuti turned to his offspring and ordered them to worship Inti, the Sun God, and to expand the Inca Empire as far as the llamas roam. With Chinchaysuyu, Antisuyu, Qullasuyu, and Kuntisuyu — the four regions of the new empire — now ripe for conquest, the time has come for Pachacuti's true successor to arise.

Gather your people from the villages below and use their unique abilities to strategically place them where they can perform the greatest tasks for you. Climb the steps of the Sun Temple, reaping the rewards of your piety. Build structures that both nourish your people and provide you with benefits no other has at their disposal. Muster an army and conquer villages in the four realms of Tawantinsuyu. Prove yourself a worthy successor to Pachacuti and lead the Inca to glory!

During Tawantinsuyu: The Inca Empire, players place workers onto various locations on the game board, performing actions, collecting resources (potatoes, corn, stone, and gold), constructing buildings and stairs, sculpt statues, expanding their military strength, and collecting weavings.

The game board features a hill located within the old Inca capital of Cusco, the sides of which are terraced and divided into five sections. Atop the hill sits the Coricancha, The Golden Temple, the most important temple of the Inca Empire. Within the Coricancha, each player has a High Priest. On the terraced sections below exist a variety of worker placement locations, interconnected by paths and individually marked by symbols. On your turn, you must either place a worker onto a location outside the Coricancha OR choose two of the following:

Recruit one worker.
Take two god cards.
Draw two army cards and keep one of them.
Move your High Priest one or two steps clockwise within the Coricancha.

When placing a worker, you must first discard a god card with a matching symbol or pay one gold. Once placed, the worker remains on the game board for the rest of the game! Each worker placement location is connected to exactly three action spaces. You must always perform at least one of these actions. However, for each adjacent worker (i.e., connected to your worker's location via direct path through one of the action spaces) that matches the type of worker just placed, you receive one additional action!

While some locations will result in you being able to perform multiple actions, other actions and placements may be more desirable, especially since each of the five types of workers has a unique ability:

Warrior: Remove one of the adjacent workers, placing it in your player area.
Craftsman: Gain +1 action if placed onto a craftsman space.
Architect: Gain +1 action if placed onto an architect space.
Courier: Decreased placement cost; +1 action if it's the first worker placed within a given area.
Priest: Take one god card; you may pay one potato to gain +1 action.

All god cards feature one of the different symbols found on the worker placement locations. Before placing a worker, you must either discard a god card with a matching symbol or pay valuable gold resources. God cards also depict special abilities that can be activated only if you have previously built a matching statue!

Army cards allow you to send one or more units to conquer villages in nearby regions. You must compete against the other players for control of each region as well as for valuable rewards that can be gained as a result of military conquest.

The position of your High Priest within the Coricancha has a significant impact on your overall strategy, affecting your access to powerful actions and determining any potential resource costs when placing your workers. More specifically, when placing a worker, you must pay additional resources the farther your worker is from your High Priest, from nothing all the way up to eight potatoes or corn!

Additionally, when moving your High Priest, you can activate powerful actions available only within the Coricancha:

Produce: Gain all rewards from your production buildings.
Worship: Sacrifice previously sculpted statues to gain permanent temple advancements.
Offering: Pay resources to gain temple advancements.
Conquer: Engage in military conquest of nearby villages.
Rejuvenate: Refresh previously activated buildings and military units.

Throughout the game, you score victory points whenever you construct stairs or sculpt statues. Gain bonus victory points whenever another player makes use of the stairs you have constructed. Score victory points from temple advancements and control of the four regions.

The game ends when the worker pool has become exhausted, symbolizing the full incorporation of nearby regions and villages into the newly risen Inca Empire. You then score bonus victory points from reaching the top of the temple, from your woven tapestries, and from various buildings and resources you have accumulated.

—description from publisher

Description from the designer:

Nautilion is a dice game in the Oniverse series!

Take the helm of a Nautilion submarine and recruit a heroic crew to vanquish the treacherous Darkhouse that lurks in the oceanic depths. You must get to the Abyss, lair of the Darkhouse, before the Phantom Submarine (his henchman) reaches your homeland, the Happy Isles — but to defeat the Darkhouse, not only must you be faster than the Phantom Submarine, you must also assemble the submarine's crew along the way.

Each turn, you roll three dice and give one to each of these figures: the Nautilion, the Phantom Submarine, and the Darkhouse. The dice of the Nautilion and the Phantom Submarine move those figures along a path formed by Crew tokens: the Nautilion from the Happy Isles towards the Abyss; the Phantom Submarine in the opposite direction. The crew token on which your Nautilion ends its move joins your submarine, the one the Phantom Submarine reaches is lost!

Only four copies exist of each of the nine different tokens, so you have to decide carefully which die you need and which you can leave to your enemies. (The Darkhouse doesn't move, but inflicts damage to you each time he gets a die with a high value.) To win, you need to reach the Abyss with a full crew of nine different tokens.

Five expansions are included with the game, adding new crew members, powers, treacheries and challenges.