For at least the last decade, video games have been offering profound emotional single-player experiences, yet the recent surge of solo tabletop role-playing games has shown that pen & paper RPGs can be just as heartbreaking — if not more.
Traditionally, tabletop role-playing games have been opportunities for players to come together at the table to crack jokes and slay monsters. While older hack and slash tabletop games could on occasion offer profound emotional moments (with a real uptick in narrative gaming during the 90s), the latest crop of tabletop designers has perfected the solitary, almost meditative experience of playing a single-player TTRPG.
Below are just a few games that will crack you open like an egg, leaving you to put your pieces together again.
Midnight Melodies by Cezar Capacle
Just one of many solo games from this award-winning game/graphic designer, architect, and musician, Midnight Melodies taps into his musical experience, having players embody a jazz pianist who discovers that the Grim Reaper cannot touch them. Rather than chase you eternally, Death takes you under its wing in the Department of Unauthorized Deaths. Each night, after your performance at the jazz bar, you unravel a mystery of someone’s untimely demise — performing a song to report your findings to the Grim Reaper.
Among Capacles other solo games are the ghost hunting Wraithhound, the 2023 CRiT Award winning Not A Demon, and Insurgent, a game for single or group play that tasks players with toppling a tyrannical government.
Galatea by S. Kaiya J.
Galatea — named after the greek myth of a statue come to life — is about a piece of art made by a brilliant and celebrated, yet terribly lonely and tormented artist. You were his perfect creation come to life and now you must remain perfect at all costs. This game about codependency and helplessness hones in on how devastating it is to not live up to the expectations others have forced upon you. Based on the Wretched & Alone system, this solo RPG uses the growing instability of a wooden block tower to build tension as it progresses. Galatea is maybe the most literal interpretation of this article’s theme, with a cover that alludes to the Japanese practice of Kitsugi, repairing the cracks in a piece of pottery with gold.
Among S. Kaiya’s other solo games work includes the Untitled Moth Game, a card based game about making promises you can’t keep, and you, beyond the pale, a daily ritual game which has players take on the role of a singularly unique monster observing the mortals around them.
The Magus and Farewell, Goodnight by momatoes
International award-winning designer momatoes makes games that feel like works of art before it even has the chance to dash your heart on the floor. A graphic designer by trade, momatoes’ singular perspective comes through both in their aesthetic and mechanical choices. For a free delve into their work, you can pick up Farewell, Goodnight, a game that uses die rolls to examine the inevitable cruelty of memory loss through the lens of electroshock therapy in a mid-century psychiatric hospital.
Offering a more mechanical experience, the second edition of The Magus has you act as a Wizard in search of arcane supremacy. Unlike other journaling games, The Magus is crunchy in its mechanics — having players roll dice as they lose control, gain power, and collect scars as they risk everything. Still, at the heart of this solo game is other people, bonds that ground you to your humanity along your doomed journey towards omnipotence. The first edition on sale, while the second edition is currently available for pre-orders.
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