Note: any games still in playtest are not mentioned.

Games for a Moment

Quick games that I filled time between pomodoros, eye rest, wrist rest, etc, with.

Dice Squared (Mike Berg). 5-10 minutes, solo. If you have some d6s lying around, Dice Squared is an ideal little game. It’s quick but interesting enough to be replayed again and again. A tiny footprint, quick rules, and dice manipulation. A growing favorite of mine.
Tape Jam (Georg Fischer). 5-10 minutes, soloable. Surprisingly quick and interesting. Cards with dual values (similar to a domino set with 1-8) are arranged to satisfy sets within two simultaneous sequences (one on top, one below). A nice twist that isn’t too brain burning but offers interesting decisions.

Games When Ill

I am not a well person these days. It was not COVID that took me down, but I do have brain fog and bouts of fatigue. Thankfully I’m able to exercise lightly without ill effects – which unfortunately is not always true for these kinds of disorders.

Sometimes I will be physically fatigued but not mentally so. This is extremely detrimental to keeping my mind sharp, so in-hand games are how I keep myself going. Also boredom is terrible.

Dragons of Etchinstone (Joe Klipfel). 30-45 minutes, solo, in-hand. A cleverly compressed Mage Knight style experience in the palm of your hand. Impressive; I look forwards to the sequel/expansion. My review..
Handy Brawl (Igor Zuber). 5-20 minutes, solo, in-hand. A lot to explore in this innovative battle system in the palm of your hand. Amazing and engrossing. My review.

Microgame Joy

Games in 18 cards, or maybe a little more. Though these games have more table presence than you might expect; my gaming area maximum these days is about 14 inches by around 32 inches.

The Royal Limited (Scott Almes). 20 minutes, solo. One of my favorites in Button Shy’s Simply Solo line of games. A wonderful puzzle where you play train cars and regular passengers to satisfy specific conditions to place VIP characters in them; card powers on the trains add interesting twists that pop off when someone is placed in them. My review coming when it’s part of a future Kickstarter (along with two brand new expansions to bring it up to four expansions total).
The Last Lighthouse (Scott Almes). 10-15 minutes, solo. I helped to playtest this game quite a bit. A growing favorite in Button Shy’s Simply Solo line that I like very much. It could be considered a tower defense game, with haunting and beautiful art by Anastasia Khmelevska – though it is about defending the lighthouse from nightmares, the tides mean you’re never truly safe; it’s a fight to the very end. My favorite kind of tower defense game. I need to ask the Button Shy folks when it’s okay to review Last Lighthouse alongside its two expansions, especially since I don’t use images.
Skulls of Sedlec (Dustin Dobson). 10 minutes when solo (with Monstrance and/or Crown of Bones expansions). I was initially skeptical of this game as being something I would like (mostly because of the theme) but as it turns out I really love this game solo. It’s a puzzle of card placement in specific layouts, and the cards each having two levels means an evaluation of tradeoffs against their different scoring conditions. Wonderful. My review coming when it has a new Kickstarter for yet more expansions.
Converge (Peter C. Hayward). 10-15 minutes when solo (with the Aspects of Vision expansion). I love this game. My love for it is both simple and complex. When you launch out of the gate with variety in 3 wallets with corners to explore, I’m happy to wander through the corridors of play. Review forthcoming, though I’ve already written a guide to the skillsets.
ExoShip (Kevin Syles). 15 minutes or so, solo. It’s part of the growing science fiction space exploration ExoVerse series of games by We Heart Games that started with Mike Berg’s ExoBase. It brings me some of the feels of the Battlestar Galactica find-the-cylons game, which is quite elaborate and multiplayer – those vibes of paranoia and secret plotting, but solo and not taking hours! With a great narrative arc at that. I wrote one of the small blurbs for it on its Game Crafter page, and want to do a review later.

A Little Bigger Joy

Games definitely for the table, but fit handily in my little space, and using more cards and sometimes other components.

ExoBase (Mike Berg). 30-60 minutes solo, with the hardcore mode taking the upper range of time. It’s not a lot of cards at all – a little more than 18 cards – with components I could find or buy as generics, so very viable as a print and play while also being on Game Crafter. Building a base on an empty, new planet before a meteor strikes. Love it, the multiuse cards are great, the Founder characters communicate a sense of individuality through their (meaningful) names, job titles, and powers. I still am working on conquering hardcore mode, but I have pondered some kind of “midcore” mode between Standard and Hardcore. I wrote one of the small blurbs for it on its Game Crafter page, and want to do a review later.
The Brambles (John Burton). 15-25 minutes solo. Make a solo rummy variant that’s actually fire, give it a macabre Victorian era gothic theme, this is brilliant and very approachable for all sorts of gamers, from casual to hardcore. My review. By the way at some point I need to discuss the expansion, which comes in the box on Game Crafter. I quite like it.
Deckula (Dr. Mindflip). 5-15 minutes solo. This was a surprise for me. I want to flesh out this idea more but – in a lot of ways it reminds me of the type of Cheapass Games I liked: a charming and offbeat theme and scenario (you are a vampire and for some reason you’re inviting guests who all want to murder you, but then again, it’s probably just something to do to while away immortality), simple gameplay with cards that interact with each other in non-systematic, thematic ways, plays quickly and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Review forthcoming.
NAWALLI (Gonzalo Alvarez, Will Rogers). 15-30 minutes, 2-4 players. (I two-hand solo this.) Someone described this game to me as taking after Solforge and Keyforge. But I don’t think that’s the case at all (and nor do Solforge and Keyforge have much to do with each other in the slightest). While NAWALLI is also a lane battle game, I really like its approachability and its adaptions of actual Mesoamerican mythology/religion into the game. Review soon? Maybe? Can I even review a game I plan to 2-hand solo or develop a solo variant for?
Maquis (Jake Staines). 30 minutes, solo. I played the original PNP version of this and bought the second edition pretty much right away. A good game; worker placement, smooth, not overly complicated, small footprint, not too many bits, nice historical theme I’ve wanted to explore but don’t have the space to do so with a larger acclaimed game with a similar theme. Review forthcoming once I can like win the game sort of consistently on standard mode. Or maybe easy mode? It’s good but tough.

Not For Me (Probably)

I got these games out of curiosity and maybe nostalgia. I don’t think I should have done it because these kinds of games just don’t fit in my life any more, even if they live in mint tins. These are good games, just not for me these days.

Mint Knight (Scottronics). 60-90+ minutes, solo or 2-player co-op with expansion. I think this is actually a good compression of a lot of Mage Knight with a strong mechanical resemblance to the original game. I think the adaptations it makes to fit the smaller components and smaller decks and so on, are very well done. The motions were very Mage Knight. But I wasn’t really feeling it for some reason – but to be fair, I don’t think I would feel much about the original Mage Knight either. When I was younger, the amount of things you did on a turn was amazing; but I am older, and I have seen a lot. Will probably ponder why later.
Spearmint Valley (Scottronics). 30-90 minutes. 1-3 player co-op. I like the optimization problems to solve that the game presents. I think the mechanism of spending time for actions is clever. I think the map and the cards are cute and very much capture the aesthetics and mood of video games like Stardew Valley. Again, the amount of things you can do in a turn is wonderful – or would be, to my younger self. The problem is that if I’m going to be doing a lot of things on a turn in a simulator of farming or similar – I want a Rosenberg or Viticulture. Will probably ponder why later.