Solo Gaming 2026: The First Eight Months

Posted on September 15, 2026 by Mark Jackson

The new era of well-designed automata and solo modes for multiplayer games, coupled with excellent new solo game designs, is actually quite heartening to someone (me!) who finds something very satisfying about physically playing a game: shuffling cards, moving pieces, seeing it all spread out in front of you. (I will note that the new era has also brought some really weak solo modes for games that probably shouldn’t have had a solo mode in the first place, but I’m trying to focus on gratitude rather than griping in 2026.)

Solo gaming is now a decent-sized chunk of my gaming experiences – while I still play a lot of games with friends and family, 21% of my gaming in the first eight months of 2026 was solo. Last year is was over 31% for January through August, so this is a bit of a drop-off. For comparison, the yearly total for 2025 was 24%, the yearly total for 2024 was 31%, 2023 was 20%, 2022 was 22%, 2021 was 33%, 2020 was 19%, and 2019 was 6%. I’ve actually more opportunities for both online play (BGA and playtesting games on TTS) and in-person play this year… and I think that I’m playing a greater number of long-ish solo games.

So, what follows are my thoughts on the forty-nine (49) different solo games I’ve played so far in 2026 – ordered by the number of times I’ve played them. (Note: this is not necessarily how much I like a particular game for solo play – for example, I think Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread is an excellent solo game design but I haven’t played it [yet!] in 2026.)

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Dale Yu: Review of Cascadia Alpine Lakes

Posted on September 15, 2026 by Dale Yu

 

 

Cascadia Alpine Lakes

  • Designer: Randy Flynn 
  • Publisher: AEG / Flatout Games
  • Players: 1-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 30-45 mins
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4yjWdkB
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Cascadia: Alpine Lakes is a standalone follow-up to the hit spatial puzzle game Cascadia! In this puzzly tile-layering game, players continue the journey started in Cascadia to create the most diverse Pacific Northwest environment as they draft new double-hexagon habitat tiles and unique new wildlife tokens to build out — and up — their beautiful landscape mosaic.

Each game of Cascadia: Alpine Lakes features unique combinations of scoring objectives linked to how the five wildlife species are arranged across three different alpine habitats. Players also score for how well surrounded and elevated their lakes and wildlife are. Habitat and environment scoring cards add unique scoring conditions so that each game provides a new spatial challenge with thousands of possible combinations.

Turns are simple: Choose a habitat tile and wildlife token pair, then place them into your expanding environment. This time, each habitat tile is a double-hexagon and tiles can be stacked. Many of the core game mechanisms are similar to Cascadia, but the twist is that each habitat scores in different ways and your environment is now a three-dimensional spatial puzzle with new stacking and adjacency challenges.

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Dale Yu: Review of Trial of the Forest

Posted on September 14, 2026 by Dale Yu

 

 

Trial of the Forest

  • Designer: Giancarlo Spinelli
  • Publisher: Rebel studio
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 12+
  • Time: 60-120 min
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3Tpm9MK
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Embark on a journey deep into the ancient forest of The Trial of the Forest. Traverse labyrinthine paths, gather resources and choose which deeds you wish to accomplish. You may peacefully forage for berries or seek lost artifacts on dangerous expeditions; ambush your rivals or surprise them with a cup of tea; buy equipment at a store or burn it to the ground. Each deed improves your skills and earns you fame. However, only one adventurer can emerge victorious from the Trial of the Forest.

The Trial of the Forest is a strategic narrative adventure game featuring resource management, multi-use cards, skill progression, combat and an evolving board. Every decision shapes your own story, creating a unique emergent narrative and forging a personal path to victory.

 

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Gen Con 2026 – Resurrection Games, Archon Studios, Avalon Hill, Hasbro

Posted on September 14, 2026 by Matt J Carlson

There’s still more to talk about in the gaming hall. It really is a big mix of trading card game, miniatures, and boardgames from big and small publishers.

 

A new publisher, Resurrection Games, had a very nice setup showing off their new superhero bag-builder battler called Brave & Bold. If I were going to spend far too much money on a miniatures game, StarCraft: Tabletop Miniatures Game by Archon Studios would be awfully tempting.

As is traditional, Hasbro and Avalon Hill were only to be found in the gaming hall. They had rereleases of Fury of Dracula (now 5th edition) and the old Guillotine card game along with the new Market Fresh game of produce-stacking. Hasbro had two new flavors of Monopoly Deal: KPop Demon Hunters and No Mercy. There is also a new release of the BB shooting Crossfire for some mindless fun. In honor of the wonderful midwestern weather, we’ll take a peek at the bonus water also appearing in the gaming hall.

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Gen Con 2026 – Tesselation Games, Incredible Dream Studios, Lime Green Games

Posted on September 13, 2026 by Matt J Carlson

While the main dealer hall can’t be beat for concentrated gaming information, the adjacent gaming hall is a great place to stop in and play games. Some publishers rent space to provide an area for a full playthrough of their games and/or host tournaments during the weekend. This includes some people without a booth in the dealer hall. The gaming hall provides a bit of exposure and much more room for gaming for what I suspect is a lower price point.

Since I usually went through the gaming hall on my way in and out of the convention, I was able to check out several publishers who weren’t to be found in the main dealer hall. Tesselation Games was an easy visit because they were showing off String Theory, the crazy-looking yarn-unspooling game of conspiracy podcasting. I also tried their older game, Berrymandering, consisting of repeated I-split you-choose results until the board is finished off.

As a fan of the League of Legends videogame, I was happy to see Incredible Dream Studios bringing back the cooperative Mechs vs. Minions campaign game. You can get it with cardboard and acrylic pieces or the old-school pile of plastic figures. Not technically the game demo hall, but I caught up with a friend at the freeplay ballroom to see how his car-battler Vroom Zoom Boom from Lime Green Games is coming along.  Continue reading →

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Dale Yu: Two new Pandasaurus versions of classic games: Gulo Gulo and Hacienda

Posted on September 13, 2026 by Dale Yu

 

 

Well, Pandasaurus has had a number of new summer releases, and two of them share names with classic games.   Daryl Andrews is back to his old tricks, and he has reworked both of these games into new versions.

 

Gulo Gulo

  • Designers: Wolfgang Kramer, Hans Raggan, Daryl Andrews, Jurgen P. Grunau 
  • Publisher: Pandasaurus
  • Players: 2-6
  • Age: 5+
  • Time: 20-30 mins
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4yiVGiL
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Each player is a Gulo, or wolverine, trying to rescue a baby Gulo who got caught by the swamp vulture whose eggs it was trying to steal. Unfortunately for the baby Gulo, all the adult Gulos are distracted by all the delicious swamp vulture eggs, and it has to wait very, very patiently as the adults constantly trip the very, very sensitive “egg alarm” rigged by the vulture to scare off the pesky Gulos.

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