Shadow House: The Code
- Designer: Eros Lin
- Publisher: EmperorS4
- Players: 3-5
- Age: 8+
- Time: 15 minutes
- Played with review copy provided by publisher
After a series of extraordinary events, Viscount Shadow met an untimely demise. With no designated successor, the family recalled the existence of the Viscount’s will, securely stored in a safe. The challenge, however, lies in the fact that nobody possesses the complete password to access the safe. The Viscount, known for his love of solving mysteries, had scattered clues throughout the mansion.
In Shadow House: The Code, players assume the roles of detectives, invited to the Shadow Viscount’s mansion to uncover clues that will unlock the safe. Throughout the game, you have already discovered some clues to make educated guesses about the password.
There are two modes in the game. In Faction Mode, the detectives take turns revealing clues and placing hints between their clues until someone deduces the correct combination in the Safe. Additionally, each detective belongs to a faction, and their competitors are also in the house. Although they need to hack the Safe, they have another objective: uncovering clues held by rival detectives to ruin their reputations. In Conspiracy Mode, the detectives work together to crack the Safe for reputations; however, the daredevil won’t earn any reputations, so be careful of the hints you provide.
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Solo Gaming 2024: The First Eight Months
I’ve been writing these solo gaming reports since March of 2020… but my solo gaming started a lot farther back than that – being a wargamer in the 1970s/80s meant that a lot of your collection only saw table time if you played against yourself – choosing actions and rolling dice for both sides of the conflict. There were some actual solo games (Chainsaw Warrior, Ambush!, Mosby’s Raiders, RAF, etc.) – but the new era of well-designed automata and solo modes for multiplayer games was still a decade or two away.
Solo gaming is now a decent-sized chunk of my gaming experiences – while I still play a lot of games with friends and family, nearly 25% of my gaming in the first eight months of 2024 was solo. For comparison, the yearly total for 2023 was 20%, 2022 was 22%, 2021 was 33%, 2020 was 19%, and 2019 was 6%.
So, what follows are my thoughts on the fifty-six (56!) different solo games I’ve played so far in 2024 – 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 Nemo’s War is an excellent solo game design but I haven’t played it [yet!] in 2024.)
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