I get asked, more than you’d think, why I don’t play games solo. A lot of my shelf technically supports it, plenty of modern titles ship with a solo variant baked in as a matter of course now, and I know people who genuinely love that mode of playing, quiet nights working through a puzzle with nobody else in the room. I’ve tried it a handful of times, always on someone’s specific recommendation, and every single time I’ve felt something closer to going through the motions than actually playing.
Here’s my honest theory about why, and I’ll admit up front it’s a theory built entirely out of my own bias, not some universal truth about games. I think a huge amount of what I actually love about this hobby is watching someone else’s face when a plan comes together, or fall apart, and a solo mode removes the only part of the evening I actually show up for. It’s a little like cooking a full dinner and eating it alone in the kitchen standing at the counter. The food’s the same food. Something about the whole point of the exercise is just missing.
I don’t think this makes solo gaming wrong, to be clear, I think it makes me a specific kind of person who’s built her whole hobby, and honestly her whole job, around a table full of other people. Cooking for strangers most nights and reading alone most nights balances out, weirdly, into someone who wants gaming to be the loud, social half of that equation rather than another quiet one. If I wanted quiet I’d just read more, which I also do plenty of.
There’s a practical angle too, if I’m honest. Solo modes exist partly to solve a real problem, not everyone has four people free on a Tuesday, and I get that completely. I just happen to have built a life where I basically always do, a standing Friday table, a couple of regulars, guests who rotate through, and so the problem the solo mode solves doesn’t really apply to me most weeks. That’s a genuine privilege of circumstance more than some superior philosophy about how games should be played, and I try to remember that before I get too smug about it.
So no solo mode reviews from me, probably ever, not because I think they’re bad, I just don’t think I’m the right person to tell you if one’s good. Ask someone who actually plays that way. I’ll be at my table on Friday, hopefully with company.