I periodically return to discourse on the theme-mechanics relation in games; it is most likely because of the cognitive dissonance I possess over the subject, that an interesting theme and how the game portrays or simulates that theme is important to me, yet at the same time the game's mechanics are what really matter to enjoyable and challenging play, so I shouldn't really put so much stock in theme.

And yet, I do exactly that.

On Tuesday night I played Rock Hard: 1977 for the second time, and just like the first time I played, I found it rather engaging, despite the basic action selection framework underneath the music industry veneer. You take your action, move your levels up, gaining or spending points or resources, increasing the ability of your engine and so on. You compete for key actions, turn order, and particular goals. It's pretty much a run-of-the-mill engine-building game with a riff of randomness just to throw out a change of key here and there, and yet it shines above others of that ilk.

Rock Hard: 1977 is the brainchild of one Jackie Fox, formerly of The Runaways. It's apparent Jackie has drawn upon her industry experience in designing this game; however, more importantly, she has produced an engaging and competitive design with a very appealing theme. It hits the right level of complexity for the gamer, and has appeal for the non-gamer too, because the mechanics fit so closely with what they are trying to convey.

Each round is divided into Day, Night, and After Hours. During each of these three phases there are a number of permitted actions of which players will usually take only one. Daytime actions include rehearsal, radio interview, and landing a record contract; in the evening, there  is more studio time available, and gigs; after hours, an artist can set down a demo tape, party as hard as they rock, or have an early night so they're ahead of the game for the next day. There are also actions which may be taken at any time of the day, and as these aspiring rock gods and goddesses have a job (at least at the start of the game) they can go to work; however, what they choose to do and when makes a difference, as it's only one action per phase.

Under normal circumstances, at least.

I think it's time we mentioned the candy; or should I say, "candy"?

"Candy" can be taken once per phase, and gives the player's rock star a "sugar rush" which permits one or two extra actions during that phase. Some actions are not permitted more than once, for instance, only one gig can be performed every night, and you can't double-up on studio time; but the sugar rush from candy permits a rocker to, say, go to work and gig in the same evening! There is a risk; if a player overloads on candy, they may end up with "low blood sugar" and burn themselves out, requiring them to spend the next day in recovery. There is also a risk your candy is "sugar free", in which case your day, night or after hours proceed as normal.

Could there be anything more rock and roll?

Actually, yes, there could. At every stage of the game you are not only competing with the other players, but an underlying system mirroring to some extent the popular music industry of the nineteen-seventies. It might be the difficulties in landing a recording contract or negotiating for a better one; it might be losing your place to headline at a local venue, forcing you to play weddings and bar mitzvahs just to make ends meet; it might be your seduction by the press, businessmen, barmen, or groupies; it might be your manager's demand to be paid...

I mentioned randomness, often a pariah in a strategy game, but when handled correctly a boon. In Rock Hard there are cards drawn at the start of a round, one to determine the random gig available for players to fall back on if they can't make a venue, and one event which effects the entire forthcoming turn. The event can throw a bit of a bum note for those who had specific plans, but generally it is something which can be worked with or worked around. There are a set of candy cards, shuffled together at the start of every round, which must be drawn to determine whether zero, one or two extra actions are given; this is stacked in favour of a single action, but watching what other players draw first obviously changes your odds of getting the desired outcome. Taking candy also involves a die roll to determine if your blood sugar hits a bass note; the risk is calculable. Finally, there are cards drawn after hours, which usually give you something extra, a choice of stat increases and reductions, a bonus to an upcoming action, an extra card (as card sets completed garner Fame, which is what your victory points are in this game) or perhaps extra resources (candy or money).

It's not very swingy at all, when all is said and done; but that doesn't mean the random element is insignificant; players really need to consider when to gamble on taking candy (because extra actions are valuable, as long as you get them), and ought to pay attention to what their opponents are up to after hours. Arguably a sensible card draw after hours, over four rounds, will garner you five points your opponents didn't get; but then again, whilst you're courting publicity (or vomiting over it), you're not writing songs, or making your demo tape to land that record deal. Simply put, one shouldn't be deterred by a few unknown cards. 

There are numerous approaches you can take to this game, but the key, point-scoring ones are never changed by card draws; this makes a strategy extremely important. And the solid, strategic core of this game is what makes it appealing, at least as much as the theme. The tension is palpable; it's one of those games where you want to do so much with your three actions per round, but you just cannot, and the decision you make at every point shapes the rest of your game. This doesn't mean you're losing on turn one or anything; quite the opposite; it is just so challenging to try to simultaneously hone your skills, build your repertoire, and raise your reputation.

I am looking forward to my next play. In the meantime, does anybody have any candy?

If there’s one genre which tends to grab my attention more than any other, it’s transport; if there’s one subgenre of transport which to me is undersubscribed in boardgames (generally in favour of rail games), it’s aircraft. There are a few good ones out there (Aeroplanes: Aviation Ascendant, and Tin Goose for instance), but most seem to overshoot the runway quite a bit.

When I heard about Pan Am early last year, it went straight onto my wants list. Pan Am promised to be a well-themed game about building routes, and also looked like it would be fun to play. I got a copy late last Autumn, but due to restrictions, I never got to play it I’ll recently.

The game follows a timeline in the form of events relevant to the history of Pan American Airways, and at the start of each turn one event card is drawn. These event cards come from a deck consisting of four for every round, giving some replayability, as one can never be certain which events will come out for each game.

Event cards do three things; they provide a random event affecting all players, a change in the Pan Am stock price, and an indication of how far Pan Am is going to expand this turn.

Once the event is resolved, players take turns to place their engineers in various action spaces. This works in a similar fashion to the classic Knizia design, Amun-Re; some of the actions have auction spaces with fixed values, which players must pay if they are successful. For instance, to buy a clipper plane, a player could bid 2, 4, 8 or 10; if they are outbid, they take back their engineer and may place it elsewhere, or on a higher bid again (if one is available). These mini-auctions apply to three areas - Airports, Destinations and Aircraft; the remaining two areas for Routes and Directives represent a limited number of actions and the order they will be implemented.

The Airport section permits one player to build an airport, which gives permanent landing rights for the owning player, and an increase in income. The Destination section presents four cards named for cities on the board; these give landing rights too, but how permanent those rights are depends upon how they’re used. The Aircraft section permits the purchase of aircraft for a player’s fleet; as technology progresses, better aircraft become available. The Routes section enables the building of routes anywhere, provided the player has the appropriate landing rights, an aircraft which can go the distance, and that the route has not been claimed by another player first, or else been taken over by Pan Am. Routes also result in an increase in income. Finally, Directives gets a player a game-changing Directive card, and priority access for the following turn (meaning the engineers placed there get to act first in the following round).

Landing rights are the core game concept for route building; any Destination cards or airports can be used to give landing rights, but can only apply to one end of the route. Different cards or airports must be used for the other end of the route. A player always has landing rights to a city named on a card, or where they have built an airport. Temporary landing rights can also be obtained through discarding Destination cards.

Once all actions are resolved, the round enters the Expansion phase. Pan Am expands as an airline, taking over routes which the players own on the way (whether you want them to or not). This results in an instant payout for the takeover, which gets bigger as the routes do, and an appropriate reduction in income for losing the route to Pan Am. After expansion, players receive income from their remaining routes and airports, subsequent to which they may buy as much stock in Pan Am as they wish.

After seven rounds are completed, the player with the most stock in Pan Am wins, with ties being broken in favour of the player with the most money remaining.

The game is a lot of fun, and has produced close results so far; however, I am not so sure it rewards skilful play as much as it should. If you want to know why, read on; if you like surprises, just go and play the game (because when you don’t know what is in the Events deck, it’s a surprise).

Still here?

I shall proceed, then. Whilst on the face of it, the game is very strategic (Pan Am expansion being random but fairly predictable), the turn of Directives and Events throughout the game can be rather swingy. A good number of Directives cards can give players free stock certificates at the end of the game; at that point they’re usually around $10 each, which is difficult to compete with using profits alone. Additionally, there is at least one swingy event in there, awarding a stock certificate every route a player still has after Pan Am expands in the last turn (that’s the bit that surprised me, and yes, it’s a bit of a spoiler if you’re one of those people who doesn’t have to know the consistency of the deck before playing).

Are these things bad? It’s difficult to say yes, because this is clearly a family game; it’s also difficult to say no from a gamer’s perspective, since there is no question that this is a little bit swingy. There is an argument, however weak, that knowing this card is possibly going to be turned in the final round adds an interesting strategic consideration. Do you lean towards setting yourself up for Pan Am takeovers, away from it, or perhaps take the middle ground, concentrating on neither?

Quite frankly, it doesn’t really matter as I see it; it does grate on me a bit that a seemingly strong strategy throughout is not rewarded when this card appears, yet at the same time, the game is a lot of fun, and really doesn’t outstay its welcome. I suppose if I wanted to be serious about it, I could remove the offending event; however, that arguably removes what could qualify as a viable long-term strategy, so right now, I think I will keep it in, and view it as a kind of challenge.

Pan Am fluctuates between £20 and £30 delivered; it’s a real pleasure to play, and even the sourest of gamers should garner some pleasure from it, especially as it’s going for half the price of its competitors. I think Prospero Hall have done a great job of presenting an enjoyable and accessible game at a very reasonable price, and for this they should be lauded.

Whatever you think about the situation in the world and how it was dealt with, there is one truth all gamers have had to face up to, and that's the lack of facing up to opponents. Whilst there have been a number of online opportunities, playing via Zoom, utilising some of the popular online tabletop simulations, or playing web-hosted games, I found myself craving the analogue. Yes, when restrictions were lifted a little here in England late last Summer and into the Autumn, our group managed a few sessions; it was glorious but short-lived. Before and after this occurred, I decided to try a few games solo.

For the most part, I detest solitaire play in boardgame form; however, needs must, so I decided to try a few games for which a single player option had been developed. Knowing how I feel about solo gaming, it came as no surprise that I found just about everything I played solitaire to be dissatisfying to some extent. It was still rather interesting to try out games I love without real life opponents, but ludonanism just does not appeal to me; generally, any real challenge is removed in favour of a semi-random "AI", or a target number of points.

I expected nothing more; solo gaming is not very far removed from my least favourite kind of game - the cooperative game - and like that style, it can be done well, but mostly it is done very badly, unless a little player competition is injected (a type of semi-cooperative game), or one or more players are actually playing against the rest (asymmetric and/or traitor mechanisms). Despite my expectations, there was some pleasure derived; admittedly, nothing like the pleasure I experience being trounced by one of my fellow gamers, and generally not as challenging, but some pleasure notwithstanding.

The first game I tried to play solo during "lockdown" (it really wasn't lockdown though, was it - I worked, I shopped, I walked in places around town I had never before been in a lifetime), was Arkham Horror (2nd edition). Arkham Horror is one of a myriad of Lovecraftian-themed horror games, most of them being spin-offs from Sandy Petersen's acclaimed 1980s role-playing game, Call of Cthulhu. Players (I suppose in this case I should say "player") move investigators around various fictional New England locations, picking up clues, fighting off Old Ones and their minions and their cultists, and risking life and sanity in their endeavours to close the interdimensional gates which threaten to bring a Great Old One into early Twentieth Century America, who will subjugate humanity in terrifying ways. Arkham Horror is, technically, a cooperative game; however, it is a rather old-school thematic game, where the pleasure is more about the journey than the destination (the destination usually amounting to investigators writhing in tortured agony as the horror of what they are facing becomes apparent). As a game, mechanically, Arkham horror is rather prone to fate; the draw of a monster, the movement of a shuggoth, the appearance of a clue, are all down to chance, as is the success of any investigator against adversity. Chance can be mitigated as part of the game, but time is against the player, and so is just about everything else. It can often feel that everything is just random; however, the resulting stories are fascinating and interesting. Arkham Horror usually ends up being a long and drawn-out adventure, but an adventure it is; the most annoying part is the (rather too frequent in my plays) final battle with the Great Old One, which generally amounts to a lot of dice-rolling, and not many interesting decisions. I know I would struggle to keep our group's attention with this one long enough to finish a game; in isolation the mechanisms used are boring and random, and few interesting decisions exist. However, the "fun" of this game is akin to watching a fresh film on an old genre, or reading a book you haven't before; there is absolutely nothing you can do to change the unfolding story, but watch it unfold, and the story can be exciting. Ironically, whilst this might be one of the least strategically interesting games I have played, it could be one of the best solo gaming experiences I had.

By this time, our group had been playing a lot of Through the Ages on the application, which also has a great solo implementation in the form of challenges. With that in place, there is no need to pursue solo rules for that particular game; however, Nations, a similar but less involved game, stared out from its shelf. boasting a player count of 1-4. I decided, having packed Arkham away after the third or fourth game, that Nations would be worth trying. With nations, I came across a typical issue with analogue game AIs; predictability. Knowing how the AI works means that in single player mode most games reveal the basic puzzle of making the best move you can on the basis of the move the AI is going to make. Yes, it can be a challenging puzzle, but the downsides are clear; everything I play games for - the tension, the challenge, the unknown vagaries of opponent decisions, the risk-taking and so on, are gone. Instead, there is no such thing as an optimal move on the part of the basic AI; you know what the AI is going to do, and hence your optimal move becomes quite obvious. Nations manages to circumvent this a little bit, by virtue of the fact you don't really know what cards will turn up on the display, and you don't precisely know what is needed to outstrip the AI from epoch to epoch (there is an AI deck to draw from, which changes the AI stance each time); however, such chance elements often cannot be helped, avoided or mitigated prior to their being drawn. The result is a minimal change in the AI puzzle, and a barely interesting decision set. It wasn't at all bad, but when all is said and done it is nothing compared to the long-term plans of a cunning opponent. I can recommend nations for solo play, but it didn't really do much for me, because it lacks the tension of the multiplayer game. It isn't necessarily easy to win, but it feels arbitrarily so, such that the player has to think less about building the civilisation and more about resource management. The solo game did hit the mark for me in one respect; it made a good refresher for what I would consider an overlooked title, a game which essentially does what takes Through the Ages half a day in just one school night.

One of my favourite designers is Vital Lacerda, and his games frequently include rules for solo play. Skipping the obvious cooperative title, CO2, I went for Escape Plan as my first Lacerda solo try-out. The familiar non-player character of Sandra, a strict supervisor in Kanban, returns as a police officer in this game for two player and solo play; for solo play, there is also the corrupt Lt Costa to contend with. For those unfamiliar with the game, players compete to escape the city with the best part of their haul from a crime caper that went wrong; as players zoom about the city to free up their assets in accordance with their escape plan, the police close in, making it more and more difficult to move about safely. Eventually, players either escape the city with some or all of their ill-gotten gains, or it's off to the penitentiary for them. As a solo player you are up against two AIs, each of which behaves differently. Sandra is simply disruptive, whilst Costa is looking to earn as much as he can on his "escape" plan whilst putting the squeeze on you. With the disparate AI behaviour, the game gets very interesting; you know when particular locations are not going to be touched by the non-players, because they never visit the same place twice, but there's every risk that they could close off one of your business interests before you can extract your stash. Coupled with the ever-present threat of the core game mechanics - time running out and the police closing in - Escape Plan feels a lot more like a game than a puzzle when played solitaire. I have to say, this was one of the best solo experiences of the lot; the player is forced to gauge his actions and plan for the worst case at the same time, then hope the worst case doesn't happen. The unknown of where Sandra and Costa are going to turn up becomes more determinate as the game draws on, so the player is forced to not just think about his game, but their semi-random game. It's not the same as other mediocre approaches, because the results are partially predictable with just enough chaos to keep a player on their toes. It's hard to describe why this is different in, say, Nations; quite simply I think the difference is a whole order of magnitude of depth in figuring out the best approach, without actually guaranteeing it will be.

Teotihuacan: City of Gods is a bit of a challenge to play with multiple players, so when I tried it solitaire a couple of times, I was expecting to suffer similar difficulties. The challenge from Teotihuacan comes not so much from strategy and outdoing ones opponents, more so it is the challenge of remembering to do everything you must do under the rules. Your workers are dice, and the pips represent their age and experience, with higher pips able to do more, but closer to "ascending", which gets you bonuses, moves you further along the Avenue of the Dead (which means points and bonuses), and gets you a fresh-faced and inexperienced replacement. Just like every time I have played Teotihuacan competitively, I somehow managed to forget from time to time that I was supposed to "advance" my workers. It's not the only thing that gets missed, but having to do it for "Teotibot" (the AI) as well means it's more likely to be forgotten than usual. The solo game has a bunch of dummy workers laid out just to clog spaces, and an AI whose workers move just like yours. the AI carries out fixed movement and fixed actions based on the situation when their turn commences, and the challenge a player faces is to outdo the AI player's score, which ramps up at a significant but arithmetic rate, since they don't score the same way as you, the human player. On the whole, whilst it sounds almost as puzzle-like as Nations was, playing Teotihuacan solo was not a bad experience. Unlike most games, it is fairly close to the competitive version, simply because the main thing you look for in that is how opponents' workers affect your actions, and moving a dummy player's workers around with fixed actions for each space, coupled with fixed AI behaviour based on the game situation, means you you mostly doing the same thing you would with competitors - figuring out how to be least screwed whilst screwing your opponent as much as possible. The "puzzle" of playing against Teotibot is obfuscated by a detailed set of AI functions, so detailed that one has to refer to them almost continually to avoid getting the AI's action wrong. However, it is a very rewarding result; if this is a game you enjoy playing competitively, I think it is likely you will also enjoy the challenge of a solo play.

I have a tendency to pursue civilisation games; it's part of a long-running quest for the elusive "Civ-lite". A few games have come close to it, but there is always something missing, to the point I think it is unattainable. Unlike the previously mentioned Nations, Historia tends to concentrate on the technology track, with territory and population taking a back seat, and in-game strategy and tactics being governed by hand management. It works fairly well, but ultimately a lot of folk who have played consider it rather bland. As the player count is listed between one and six, I decided to give it some table time during the pandemic. The AI in this game consists of randomised players called "Civbots", whose actions are decided by the random turn of cards, coupled with strict AI rules for each card. For instance, if a Civbot draws Art, instead of building a wonder as a normal player might, a random wonder is discarded from the game; if war is drawn, the the Civbot will attack, but only if it will win, human first, other Civbots if the human player cannot be attacked. One of the main problems with Historia in the solo mode is that it suffers the same fate as Nations. It will either be arbitrarily difficult to win, or arbitrarily easy. Only one Civbot has to beat you, the single player, and it doesn't take long before you can see which one you need to beat; however, the achievability of that goal tends to depend upon the draw of the cards. And it's the draw of the cards you will mostly be dealing with, if you'll pardon the pun; shuffling and drawing three to five cards for each Civbot seems to take forever and gets very boring very quickly. If you decide to give it a go, download an appropriate randomiser application (a couple have been developed specifically for use with this game). Based on this experience, I would recommend using Civbots as suggested in the rules for lower player counts than six. Play solo to learn the rules, but not if you're looking to experience a challenge the solo game just drags, is rather average, and is unrewarding.

I have always felt Suburbia was a bit ho-hum as a multiplayer game, with mild interaction and an easily absorbed set of options with no real depth. It is exactly as it is meant to be; accessible, easy to learn, and great for family game nights. The tendency of Suburbia towards multiplayer solitaire means it lends itself well to solitaire play; however, in this case two modes of solo play are offered - one permits the player to just aim for a good score, the other pits the ludonanist against a simple AI (Dale the Bot), which basically takes all the good stuff on its turn, before you can get it. I am the kind of player who prefers the latter kind of play; merely trying to better my score is like playing Klondike, challenging, but uninteresting. However, I found the AI was too light, and while I could have handicapped myself for a greater challenge, I decided instead to move on. Suburbia is fine in the solo mode, so I can recommend it for those who are perhaps already interested in the game; however, like a lot of games which include these solo options, it just isn't intended to be played that way, and it felt less engaging than the not-too-engaging multiplayer version. Well, it wasn't for me, anyway.

One thing that lockdown gave us was a propensity for indoor activity, and boardgames is the second best indoor activity you can do with your partner. The best? Well, that certainly isn't binge-watching television shows from decades past; however, that is exactly what the Missus decided to do. Top of the list for her was The Walking Dead, which prompted me to table The Walking Dead: No Sanctuary, in an endeavour to draw her in. She really wasn't interested. In all fairness, though, I still have time to encourage her. In any case, i tried it solo, not only to see if I got any joy from playing it, but also to familiarise myself with the game rules. As a solo outing, it didn't work very well; this is because a lot of the game revolves around the player interaction, or more specifically the player-character interaction. Trust is a characteristic representing the level of trust the others have for the player; an untrusted player loses a special action their character has been given. This isn't the only interactive dynamic; there is group tension, which forces players to spend trust to remove the tension. More importantly, there are things characters know that other characters do not, typical of your cooperative game against a common enemy, where the designer has tried to turn something tactically simple into a nightmarish challenge. However, no matter how many characters I used as a single player, the game just felt plodding and pedestrian for the most part, followed by a short-lived crescendo of action which was just too short lived to be memorable. I suspect this game will work so much better with the interactive dynamic of a number of disparate minds around the table, but "zombies" and "cooperative" are a tough combination to sell to the group.

One of my favourite worker placement games is The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire, in which workers don't necessarily block spaces, because opponents may spend more workers or else stack more energy with their workers in order to use the same action. The restriction is that each subsequent use of the space requires more workers and energy in the stack. Because of the reliance upon other players to actually drive up the cost of placement, I was sceptical that the solitaire game would provide suitable competition. I was correct. Essentially the game was transformed into a challenging but ultimately, comparatively, dissatisfying puzzle (compared to the multiplayer version, that is). As solo experiences go, you could do a lot worse; this was certainly not what I was after for a solo experience, though, and I can only really suggest it is a handy method for rules familiarisation.

Alban Viard's Tramways fared slightly better; a simplistic and easy to remember set of AI rules, coupled with special rules for the auction, resulted in a good mix of chance and challenge. The regular multiplayer game involves players competing to build the most lucrative tramways and earn prestige for passengers utilising them. That's not the only way to score; building, upgrading and other players using their tramways will also, for instance, earn a player prestige. All the while they are trying to do this, they are having to build up their deck, and manage each hand they draw. The solo version allows a player to puch their luck to retain better cards out of the auction, but at greater cost; this replaces an interesting and cut-throat turn order auction in the multiplayer game. An interesting enough puzzle, this kept my attention enough to play it three times before having to persuade myself to make room for something else.

That something else was Alubari: A Nice Cup of Tea, a Snowdonia variant, both being designed by Tony Boydell, in which players build a railway through India, opening tea plantations as well as stations, and spend chai in order to bolster their actions. At its core it is Snowdonia, but there are particular rules changes which set it apart; for instance, players are able to build anywhere before the next bridge (although they still need to lay track from the railhead). I cannot compare this to the original game as a solo experience, because I haven't yet tried Snowdonia solo; however, as a solo outing, it was not decent enough to rail me in for a second attempt. Like Energy Empire, however, I was left mildly disappointed in the pedestrian and predictable nature of the AI. The AI doesn't necessarily make it easy, but the decision points where the AI is concerned mean it is easy to turn things to your advantage, whilst simultaneously a lucky contract draw will make or break your game.

The last two games I will discuss for the time being are from that master of convolution, Vital Lacerda. The Gallerist is one of my favourite games of all time, and also one of his less convoluted designs. It is an absolute pleasure to play, and never fails to grip me. The solo experience was no exception, and I found myself becoming once more engrossed in the gameplay, forgetting the added challenge of trying to minimise the actions the AI gets. The AI itself was extremely linear and processional, basically acting like a timer, which the player could speed up or slow down through careful choice of location. The rules set specific victory conditions which are more about achieving particular curator and dealer goals, with points just being a qualifier; naturally, this is not as easy as it looks. I failed to achieve anything above the lowest rating in both solo games I tried, and felt the solo variant added too much strategic focus; there were just too few paths in comparison to the multiplayer game. It's fine having a narrow set of possible achievements, but when the core game offers slightly more variance on how to get that win, closing it up a bit felt comparatively stifling. I just found the solo game too restrictive, with the perception of choice being left, whereas there is no real choice if you want to win. Adding that to the one-dimensional AI left my win hollow, and my loss in the following game unavoidable. In all, I think I will stick to the competitive game for this one.

In contrast, the AI in Lisboa felt much more like an AI; again, the AI was fairly predictable. However, random card and tile draws are not predictable, only what the AI will do when they appear. This forces the solo player to develop a strategy on the basis of what is and what may appear, to challenge the AI in light of the actions it is potentially going to take, and where possible to take advantage of the AI's activity in order to make the greatest gains. It's not a tougher AI than the one in The Gallerist by any means; yet the challenge is greater, because the solo player is not only contending with the AI. One has to think forward a lot more, planning the usual approach one would take if the AI was another player; clearing rubble of the right type, building for future points as well as immediate points, and setting up the goods production to permit the best actions later on. Yes, the AI is far from perfect, because once again the player can predict exactly what the AI is going to do on the basis of their own move. It's just another puzzle, like any other solo variant; in Lisboa, however, it seems to give so much more.

If you have stuck around as far as this, then you've done well, as there was a lot to get through. And for that you deserve to hear about my conclusions. The key one was, of course, that solo games behave generally as I expected, usually being a combination of predictable and random elements. This generally leaves me cold on solo play, and few games which do this actually felt good when played. The unexpected conclusion I have reached is that I greatly prefer games that tell a story when playing solo; Escape Plan is not exactly all story, but certainly develops like one and I rated it highly for solo play. Arkham Horror is mechanically awful, but it's an experience; I knew I was never going to win (well okay, I might have done if I had permitted myself more investigators), and I just enjoyed the story. It took me back to Call of Cthulhu in the 80s; even though I was games-mastering at the time, it was an experience watching the tales of terror unfold, watch the characters come up against nearly insurmountable dangers, and ultimately die in screaming agony, or else spend their remaining years in a cushioned room. It was such fun; I know if I ever get other players around the table for it, the experience will pale in comparison to solo play.

If you're going to play something alone, my advice is to make it something with a bit more chance involved, avoid mechanical and predictable AIs, and if possible, play something with palpable theme. Better still, confine solo play to computer games, and save the boardgames for competitive play.