Solo Tabletop RPGs that will make you cry

For at least the last decade, video games have offered deep emotional single-player experiences, but the recent surge single-player tabletop role-playing games showed that role-playing games with pen and paper can be just as harrowing, if not more so.

Traditionally, tabletop role-playing games players had the opportunity to gather around the table, joke around and kill monsters. While the old hack and slash board games could sometimes offer deep emotional moments (with a real surge in narrative games in the ’90s), the newest generation of board game designers have perfected the solitary, almost meditative experience of gaming. I’m playing a single-player TTRPG.

Below are just a few games that will crack you open like an egg and leave you putting the pieces back together again.

Just one of many solo games from this award-winning graphic designer, architect, and musician, Midnight Melodies taps into his musical background by asking players to embody a jazz pianist who discovers that the Grim Reaper can’t touch them. Instead of haunting you forever, Death takes you under his wing in the Unauthorized Deaths Unit. Every night after performing at a jazz bar, you unravel the mystery of someone’s untimely death – singing a song to report your findings to the Grim Reaper.

Capacles’ other single-player games include ghost hunting. Ghost Hound2023 CRiT Award Winner Not a DemonAnd Insurgent, a single-player or multi-player game that challenges players to overthrow a tyrannical government.

Galatea — named after the Greek myth of a statue that came to life — is about a work of art created by a brilliant and famous but terribly lonely and tortured artist. You were his perfect creation come to life, and now you must remain perfect at all costs. This game about codependency and helplessness shows how devastating it is to not live up to the expectations others have placed on you. Based on Miserable and lonely This single-player RPG uses the increasing instability of a wooden block tower to build tension as you progress. Galatea This is perhaps the most literal interpretation of the theme of this article, the cover of which references the Japanese practice of Kitsugi, which is used to seal cracks in pottery with gold.

Other solo games by S. Kaya include Game “Untitled Moth”a card game about making promises you can’t keep, and you’re beyond the linea daily ritual game in which players take on the role of a unique monster that watches over the mortals around them.

International award-winning designer Momatoes creates games that feel like works of art before they even have the chance to smash your heart on the floor. A graphic designer by profession, Momato takes an exceptional approach to both aesthetic and mechanical choices. To get acquainted with their work for free, you can pick up Goodbye, good nighta game in which dice rolls explore the inevitable cruelty of memory loss through the lens of electroconvulsive therapy in a mid-century mental hospital.

Offering a More Mechanical Experience, Second Edition Magus you take on the role of a Wizard in search of secret superiority. Unlike other magazine games, Magus features complex mechanics: players roll dice, lose control, gain power and collect scars, risking everything. However, at the heart of this single-player game are other people, the bonds that bind you to your humanity on your doomed path to omnipotence. The first edition is on sale, and the second edition currently available for pre-orders.