Today I've been playing Utopia by David Markiwsky, a game that's been floating around the top of my Play Me pile for a while now. It's a Cyberpunk game with a native solo mode, and though there are suggestions for co-op and GM run, the core mechanics are definitely more comfortable with solo. The system itself is clearly inspired by Ironsworn, but is not a simple hack, and does some smart things with mechanics and genre.

You use Ironwsworn-style world truths to create your cyberpunk city (with three pre-genned ones, which help a lot), create a character and then play through their life a week at a time, setting short and long-term goals. The Resources system forces you to take jobs and pay expenses without counting too many numbers, and a News Feed system makes the events of the city take a central part in your game. Over the course of a morning I got my character out of the slums, avoided a sinister pogrom against the poor and made an enemy of a cybernetic cat, and now genuinely feel like I have a lot of choices without being overwhelmed.

The book is well laid-out, with a clear contents page and logical order meaning I never had to look hard to find things. It definitely puts a lot of creative burden on the player, and though the core mechanics run themselves, many players will find themselves wanting to add a basic Yes/No oracle as well as other tables - I used the Key Word charts from Mythic 2e and the incomparable Augmented Reality - so they're not just making stuff up themselves. Probably not an ideal first solo experience, but great for Ironsworn/Starforge players who want something different.

Straight up the best narrative-driven solo game I've ever played. Rather than a Mythic-style GM emulator, this is a complete rules-set that can be adapted to any setting. If you want crunchy combat or meaningful strategy you won't get it here, but for a fast-paced, story-driven single character game, I've not found anything better.

Great setting, simple but effective rules set and meaningful use of a one-word trait system. I love Pocket Quest, but tend to view most of the entries as interesting experiments rather than functional games - this definitely breaks that rule.

I've never come across the Monsters! Monsters! rules before, and am surprised by how ahead of their time they must have been when they first appeared - but the appeal of Lair for me is the setting and world-building. A Sword & Sorcery setting without the problematic elements they often have, it's an evocative and violent setting with potential for lots of different types of stories. Really excited to see where Mindjammer go with this new property.