Bounced off solo board games in the past? Maybe your journey leads to The 7th Citadel

polygon.com:

Given the nature of the work that I do here as Polygon’s tabletop editor, I end up playing an awful lot of board games by myself. Not board games that you should play by yourself, mind you. Instead of luxuriating with the cardboard equivalent of the Times’ Sunday crossword, I look more like Bugs Bunny playing baseball. That’s why I’m excited to get my hands on The 7th Citadel, among the best modern solo board games. It’s also pretty great as a cooperative experience.

Published by Serious Poulp, The 7th Citadel is the descendant of The 7th Continent, a Cthulhu-inspired board game that made waves back in 2015 with a €1.2 million campaign. That one I’ve played quite a lot, and I admire its depth and complexity. Players take on the role of explorers who must use their survival skills to prevail against otherworldly odds. But the game itself is just a big box of numbered cards. The system, inspired by Choose Your Own Adventure books, uses those numbered cards — nearly 850 of them in the base game — to tell an elaborate story. Then, at the end of the adventure, you end up with a table covered in a charming isometric map made from the cards you’ve drawn.

Not only does the game work exceedingly well as a solo experience, I’ve also played it more or less hot-seat with other members of my family. While I have the attention level to see it through to the end, I’ll often be joined at several points along the way by other explorers. It’s a delight.

Meanwhile, Serious Poulp kept on publishing. It blew the doors of its next campaign in 2018, which included a reprint and a big expansion. All told, it earned over $7 million dollars. That effort was later followed up, in 2020, with The 7th Citadel, a dark medieval-inspired tale with nearly identical mechanics. That one pulled in more than €3.2 million.

Now the design team of Ludovic Roudy and Bruno Sautter are back for another reprint. This one includes a lavish new version of The 7th Citadeland, like the reprint campaign for The