Best solo board games for those quiet nights in

These days, there are many solitaire board games for those who prefer a solo experience or those who want to move some things around a board in their free time (not judging, I get it). If you’re looking for your next addition, then have a look at this great list of solo board games.

Too Many Bones

Too Many Bones has likely the mightiest production value of any board game I’ve ever seen. Although this makes the game expensive, playing this game feels lavish and luxurious, which is a fun contrast to the gritty combat of the game.

In Too Many Bones, you will pick a character or form a party and choose a tyrant to take down. Naturally, a slew of encounters reside in the path between you and your target. What makes Too Many Bones shine, however, is the unique dice system employed.

Each character has a litany of upgrades and builds, and the dice in the game function as both upgrades and actions. Getting to properly flesh out your character for their specialized purpose is satisfying, and doing so with Chip Theory’s amazing dice makes it so much sweeter.

Gloomhaven Jaws Of The Lion

Gloomhaven: Jaws Of The Lion is a standalone expansion to the mighty Gloomhaven. For a solo experience, I’d recommend this instead of diving straight into the gargantuan nerdatron-3000 that is the base game.

This game is a rich and story-driven RPG where you’ll be building and playing as your own party. The combat is vicious and unforgiving, and it’ll sometimes feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall. However, the depth and strategy needed is almost addictive.

For those wanting to embark on a grand adventure and have a board game set up for far too long on the main room’s table, then Gloomhaven: Jaws Of The Lion is what you want.

Under Falling Skies

Under Falling Skies is a print-and-play game turned board game that’s specifically designed for solo play. Despite employing a dice-based system as a core mechanic, this game provides a low luck and high skill experience for those wanting something more akin to an action puzzle.

Using a rather long board, alien ships and their mothership will be descending from the skies toward your bunker. Every turn, you will roll dice and slot them into different bunker buildings for specific actions. As the enemy AI responds specifically to your actions, it’ll only be your actions that cause your downfall.

Under Falling Skies also comes with a campaign that adds more features and content to the board game, making this a great story and engaging game for solo players.

Spirit Island

Spirit Island is one of those incredibly popular board games that often gets brought up a lot, so I’m sorry if you’d heard this before, but Spirit Island is excellent no matter the player count.

In Spirit Island, greedy and invasive colonizers have infected the island, and it’s your job as the deity of your choice to repel them. Although this is a very complex game, having the luxury to take your time and read between the lines allows you to really dive in.

Each God is very unique, and you must use each of their abilities and caveats to fight back. Spirit Island is a game that’s far easier to lose than it is to win.

A Feast For Odin

A Feast For Odin is a relaxed resource management and worker-placement game that puts you in charge of a tribe of Vikings. In solo play, the game works virtually the same, except now it’s about reaching high scores and trying out new strategies and routes.

Sending your Vikings to the board to engage in the large array of actions is instantly rewarding and enjoyable. From collecting items, to hunting, to exploring new lands, to constructing new lodgings, there truly is far too much to do in one sitting.

The goal in A Feast For Odin is to gather as much stuff as you can. Managing your inventory of gained goods in your homestead makes for a satisfying puzzle, although having to feed your Vikings every turn is always an unwelcome stress. Especially if there’s no harvest that turn…

Final Girl

Final Girl is a love letter to the slasher genre that nails the vibe, aesthetic, and tropes of those cult classic films. Specifically a solitaire game, Final Girl is all about fighting back against the big bad before it finds you and delivers a disappointing off-camera death.

Across any map you play, survivors will be scattered. The killer is trying to slaughter them to get more powerful, and you’re trying to rescue them to activate your special ability. As you scurry around the map, you can also find powerful items that will help you in your fight against the killer.

There are many expansions to Final Girl that add more locations and enemies, meaning there is a lot of mileage you can get out of this game.

Dark Souls The Board Game

You needn’t be a Dark Souls fan to enjoy any of the three core Dark Souls The Board Game Core Sets (I’d personally recommend the Painted World of Ariamis box set). This reinvention of the game makes for an extremely engaging and grueling dungeon for you to crawl through with one to three characters.

The miniatures are disastrously cool and unique, and the levels that you’ll encounter them in are all unique and host great combinations of objectives, effects, and other nasty things to make you regret your purchase.

If you want to spend your evening thrashing against the nightmarish denizens of Dark Souls, then there’s no better board game to get than Dark Souls The Board Game.

Lost Ruins of Arnak

The Lost Ruins of Arnak is an exciting board game with many systems and lots of depth. Although complicated, the compartmentalization of the systems makes this manageable, and allows you to divorce your thinking slightly, which is needed considering how much thinking is needed.

You will be exploring and uncovering the ruins of this lush new land, where explorers are sent out to perform actions and creatures are discovered for you to fight. Despite the wealth of systems and cards present in Lost Ruins of Arnak, the game has a set timer and a set amount of cards you’ll be dealt, meaning every decision is a crucial one.

In solo play, Lost Ruins of Arnak becomes more of a puzzle than ever. If you wish to pour yourself over a vast and exciting puzzle, then you may enjoy exploring the undergrowth and crumbled halls of Arnak.

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective is among the greatest whodunnits in board gaming. It comes with ten mysteries to solve, each with their own unique components, such as newspapers and case files, that make you feel like you’re really taking on a mystery.

Using the board and everything at your disposal, you will keep following leads and crafting theories until you’re personally confident enough to answer all the questions regarding the case. Note that you can answer these any time you wish.

Once you think you know the answers to the case, you can flip to the answers and see how many you got right. Sherlock will be waiting right there for you.

Mage Knight

I hope you’re not one for analysis paralysis, for Mage Knight is an outrageously complex board game. Everything about Mage Knight requires plenty of thought, even if you know the deep systems inside and out.

If this isn’t a problem, then you will embark on an adventure that’s different every single time, thanks to the procedural generation and randomness from the cards and other systems. There are several scenarios for you to embark on in Mage Knight, although a common resort is conducting sieges on enemy cities.

With combat, raising armies, conducting sieges, and exploring, there’s little that Mage Knight doesn’t do and make exceptionally complicated.

Now for the hard part, actually choosing one of these solitaire board games to get. Make sure you’ve enough room on your shelf first, though.

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