SOLITAIRE PRINT AND PLAY

We explore the world of solo gaming one move at a time. This month: the solo print and play

Print and play is a similarly mysterious part of the hobby to solo gaming, or at least, it was. Nearly two years of people being forced into finding new ways to game has seen a blooming of the ‘arts and crafts’ side of our community. They also go together simply because there is a strong overlap between the two areas of the hobby, after all if you’re making a print and play, you’re probably going to want to test it quickly, and a solo mode is always going to be a priority. This month I sat down with freshly printed card fronts, some old business cards, a handful of card sleeves, and a pair of scissors and got to it.

I had a previous notion that the creating of the games would be its own contemplative reward. Cutting out the cards nicely, dropping them into card sleeves, rustling up just the right kind of meeples and cubes for the games

I wanted to play. A kind of Christmassy activity that can be done with a crackling fire and soft focus. Instead, I found it to be an annoyance. It felt a little bit like those games where you’re instructed to set everything out in a certain way… and then the rulebook tells you to remove something for your player count. Still, once the job was done I felt a certain sense of pride over my deck of cards, rulebook and player sheets. And a sense of anxiety that they didn’t have a box to live in, and might not be long for this world. (Dear reader, I was right on that last part).

I found most of the games I played this month through Board Game Geek forum posts – which is an adventure in itself. Simply downloading the files from the ‘files’ section of a listing, working out which is going to cause your printer the least amount of problems, and then hitting print (and holding out hope) it was all I needed to get started.

In many ways games like Kaiju Siege are exactly what I wanted from a print and play solo experience. I had a little puzzle in front of me (a giant monster pulling my castle down) and some choices to make about how I allocated my workers – some of which might get destroyed in the process. The systems in the game are clever – implementing a large amount of replayability depending on your set up, and only require a small amount of input randomness. Other, more card heavy games didn’t suit my kind of play at all – there are some things that are better left to professional production and dealing with so many cards would often have me exasperated.

Solo print and play games have the quality of something slightly more ephemeral, and a little like the world of small RPGs, there’s a sense that you can engage with them lightly. Take a single good idea and work with it. There’s no need to add a campaign (although some print and plays do have this) or extras – just get on with the handful of interesting ideas.

But what I wanted more than anything for the games I liked was a

‘proper’ release – a nice shiny version that could be boxed off in a diminutive way. Luckily there is a pipeline for this – in the form of bigger publishers picking up these small games and turning them into lush experiences. Mini Rogue, as reviewed in this issue, is one such example picked up by Nuts! Publishing, and the stellar Under Falling Skies is another from Czech Games Edition. For us, we plead that this may long continue and we’re happy to wait. But if you don’t mind spending an evening with a pair of scissors and a lot of printer ink, maybe it’s time for you to jump into the unknown wilds of solo print and play games.