1st Impressions of Sky Team, MLEM: Space Agency, Match of the Century, Lacuna, Quest for El Dorado: Dragons, Treasures & Mysteries, and more! - Bitewing Games blog.

If you prefer audio: podcast version

Also worth checking out: 2023 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide

This is the result of the Boardgamegeek 1-Player Guild's 2023 The People's Choice Top 200 Solo games compiled from about 20K community votes.

For those not familiar with BGG's geeklists the results are in reverse order so the number in front of the game's name is the position in the geeklist, not the position in the results. You can use the "200 items" button to more easily navigate the list.

Posting this for the fun intro that brings to life one of the pictures from the new expansion but the content is interesting too (for Arnak players).

Not the coolest or most expensive ones but the ones that you actually use All The Time.

I am looking for ways to track scores for games where the included score tracking is not great. I would like something tactile, I already use apps but I'd prefer not to fidget with digital devices at the table.

Ideally I'd like something that's:

• tactile, should be enjoyable to manipulate with our meat appendages
• easy to read
• robust, should resist some minor knocking about without losing the scores
• track 2-4 players
• go up to at least 100 and preferably also track 100s
• should be easy to increase or decrease scores in any increments
• shouldn't take up too much table space

The closest thing I see is a cribbage peg board. Or possibly an abacus. Or maybe one of those click wheels but those don't usually handle larger increments well. Any other options?

Challengers is a game I play a lot on BGA so it's very interesting to see the designers talk about the evolution of the design. Pictures of prototype components are always fun to see too.

This is part 4 of Czech Games Edition's series on boardgame production. In this one they give a lot of details about the manufacturing challenges of Tzolk'in's gears which I thought was really neat. They also talk about Tash-Kalar and Alchemists.

Playlist with the previous episodes

Have you ever missed or misread a rule and ended up playing several games the wrong way before you noticed?

Whenever I have trouble getting back into a game I like to make my own setup and rules summary to make it easier in the future. These are intended for myself only so they take shortcuts and make assumptions about how I think about the setup and play and even our typical player count (2). I will share an example in a comment.

Do you ever do something like this?

Imagine that your friendly local game store has a sale and you see a great deal on a game by one of your favorite designers. You know nothing about the game besides the designer's name and that it's a decent price. You are in a hurry, no time to research, buy it now or miss out.

Which designer's game would you most likely purchase blindly based only on their name?

Not sure if the community is interested in deal posts and digital implementations so why not try both?

The Steam Summer Sale is on and it includes a bunch of digital boardgame implementations. Unfortunately the "boardgame" and "tabletop" user tags are a bit polluted so have to wade through the noise. Here are some standouts I see (USD prices), please add yours in the comments.

• Aeon's End - $1.94 $14.99
• One Deck Dungeon $0.99 9.99
• Scythe - $7.99 $17.99
• Sentinels of the Multiverse $0.99 9.99
• Spirit Island $12.48 24.99 (all time low I believe)
• Tabletop Simulator - $9.99 $19.99
• Wingspan $9.99 19.99

Note that some publishers do matching sales on mobile so for example One Deck Dungeon is on sale on Android too.

Edit: relevant BGG forum post with some more