🔥 7 new solo releases and crowdfunding campaigns

Also development updates and my favorite dice rolling app!

May 27, 2023

🖥️ Outliers

You are a research assistant operating in a surreal setting filled with clones, time travelers, and cryptids. Document daily lab activities, procure funds, enlist participants, gather data, and carry out other sundry lab tasks before the study runs out of money. Recruitment, Consent & Screening, Data Collection, and Miscellaneous prompts are inspired by real work the creator, Sam Leigh, has done as a research assistant. Outliers is available on Itchio.

🗺️ Nihilation

You’re a survivor of Doomsday, exploring and mapping the remnants of "The World that Was.” Based on the rules system behind Firelights (see The Soloist March 1), you will uncover long-lost relics, revive faded memories, fight adversaries, and perhaps, find a pathway to salvation. The biggest change from Firelights is that you use a hex map instead of playing cards to create the world. A distinctive damage mechanic has you tearing off parts of your character sheet to signify the toll of injuries. Nihilation by animator Jason Christopher is available on Itchio.

📚 Fox Curio’s Floating Bookshop

In this 222-page solo journaling game, you travel the Bury River selling books to animalfolk who live along the banks. Your days are filled with helping customers (welcomed and troublesome) and dealing with challenges like leaks and pests. Make friends with your regulars, experience the river through different seasons, explore towns, and go fishing. Throughout the year, the seasons change and days off give you the chance to join in local festivities. Fox Curio’s Floating Bookshop was created by Ella Lim and is available on Itchio.

2. New crowdfunding campaigns

🐲 Dragon Dowser

As a ‘Dowser’ your mission is to rescue dragon eggs, return them to a sanctuary before running out of resources, and rear hatchlings to adulthood so they might save a kingdom at war. As you traverse a grid of 24 playing cards, each reveal will alter your resources and ask open-ended questions for you to answer and record. The game has a fully illustrated rulebook and a deck of custom playing cards. Dragon Dowser by Hatchlings Games is on Kickstarter until June 22.

🏯 Colostle: Kyodaina

Colostle, Nich Angell’s 2022 ENNIE award winner for Best Rules, is a solo tabletop set in a castle so big that oceans, mountains, and cities fill entire rooms. Stalking these Roomlands, are the Rooks, hostile walking stone castle towers that hold the only source of magic in this world. Colostle: Kyodaina is an expansion that adds a new Asian-themed Roomland, optional rules, lore, and a guided story campaign. The Kickstarter runs until June 14.

🐛 Loam

This set-matching boardgame is about building healthy soils. You are a plant, who for obvious reasons is into that sort of thing. Manipulate your environment by coaxing various creatures into your root zone. Just like a real ecological community, each creature contributes differently to your soil's health: some improve its structure, some add nutrients, and others regulate pests and pathogens. Loam can be played with up to 4 players, but has a solo mode that can be played with the base rules or using four unique scenarios that provide score targets. Back Loam, by Cardboard Revolution, on Gamfound and try it for free on Screentop.gg right now.

♣️ Wreck This Deck

This solo journaling game of demon summoning and deck crafting is designed to be played on social media. You summon and bind demons into your Demon Deck, defacing cards as you go. Originally released as a PDF during the pandemic, it is now being developed into a 30-page zine that includes journaling prompts for your character’s life problems and the demons that can solve them. Black Armada Games’ crowdfunding campaign for Wreck This Deck will be launching on Backerkit on June 1. Sign-up to be notified when it’s live.

3. GM-less RPGs Development Updates

MIRU 2

Postapocalyptic mapmaking, hex-crawling horror
Physical copies shipping out week of May 29
Sample and download the MIRU soundtrack on Itchio
MIRU 1 and MIRU 2 now have barcodes and are ready for retail
Regular updates are available on the Atopia Discord

Stoneburner

Demon-hunting space dwarves
Kickstarter ended on May 11 funded with all stretch goals unlocked
Working with Role for full-featured integration (free to backers)

2D6 Dungeon

Classic fantasy RPG with random dungeons
Core rules version 0.99 available for free here
Watch Toby playthrough on his YouTube channel

Sanctuary & Sentinel

Two games about a place of power and its guardian
Zines on track to be printed and shipped by mid-summer
Creator Meghan Cross is developing an SRD and is planning a July game jam

These Stars Will Guide You Home

Explore an archipelago in search of a new home
Game is feature complete
Fernando is working on illustrating all the weird and wonderful islands

4. Last Roll 🎲

The Cursed Die

Shawn Tomkin’s latest update on Sundered Isles, his seafaring adventure supplement for Ironsworn: Starforged, introduces the Cursed Die mechanic.

Players can roll a 10-sided 'cursed die' along with their regular oracle dice to determine if an event or location has a supernatural aspect.
If the result is a 10, your answer is cursed and you have the option of either interpreting the result as a supernatural event or using a special cursed oracle table.

My favorite dice roller

I recently found Twilight Dice by Kevin Danielson. It’s an elegant, free dice rolling app for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac.

It includes all your favorite multi-sided dice that can be modified. You can reroll, increase, decrease, lock, or explode individual or groups of dice.
The custom haptics for each type of die is a nice bit of polish.

And if you’re in need of a digital deck of standard playing cards, check out the no-frills Draw a Card Deck.