Hey folks! With less than a week left in May, how’s the month been for you?
Mine’s been pretty micro, if you know what I’m saying...
I’ve been fully immersed in new games launching on Micro May, along with a few gems on Gamefound and Pocketopia. It’s been a touch hectic, truth be told. Not that it’s something I don’t enjoy. I love it!
The quality of these new games has been fantastic. The stories behind creating them are just as interesting. I’m having a blast taking a full 360 look at these games as I explore every bit of them, and of course, share them with you folks.
But it’s been a good while since we last talked about some free gems out there. The free PnPs I still keep leaning back to in the background.
So this issue is going to be about the 5 free PnPs that reappear on my table the most, to date.
This issue is also a nod to the subscribers who mail me wanting to know which games to start their PnP journey with. We also get posts in our PnP group on Facebook (feel free to join!) about the same thing.
So, here we are!
1. Lantern
It’s a one-page solo roll-and-write where you step out of the safety of the fortress and face enemy after enemy through dice allocation and manipulation.
It is quick to learn, easy to print, and gets going fast. Game changer: how much choice comes out of six dice. Flipping dice, adjusting values, rerolling, deciding when to use abilities, all of it makes the game feel much bigger than the single sheet in front of you.
2. All Is Bomb
It is an 18-card solo game about making breakfast for a princess in a world where every single thing is waiting to explode.
At first, it may look purely chaotic. But the more you play, the more it becomes about reading the deck, planning a few steps ahead, and using the right card at the right moment. Game changer: how much game it squeezes out of just 18 cards, with no dice, tokens, board, or extra components needed once the deck is ready.
3. Galdor’s Grip
It’s another 18-card solo game, but this one does something that still feels rare, and that is the game changer: you play the whole thing in your hand.
No table. No surface. Just card orientation, movement, memory, and a constant sense that one bad decision could let the telepath win. It’s quite challenging, which makes it irresistible! It feels like the kind of PnP you can keep in your bag and pull out during work breaks, or commutes.
4. Mini Rogue
It’s a 9-card solo dungeon crawl that somehow manages to fit monsters, merchants, rooms, stats, upgrades, dice, and danger into a tiny setup.
This is probably not the simplest first print, because there are a handful of little tokens involved. But if dungeon crawling is your thing, Mini Rogue shows how much a microgame can hold. Game changer: the sense of progression. You are not just moving through rooms. You are managing stats, upgrading yourself, choosing risks, and trying to survive a dungeon that keeps getting meaner and meaner.
5. Black Sonata
Black Sonata is the more advanced pick on this list.
It is a solo deduction game set in Shakespeare’s London, where you are trying to find the mysterious Dark Lady through clues, movement, and a beautiful hidden system that makes her feel alive even without another player controlling her. The assembly takes more work, and learning it takes a while, but the payoff is special.
Game changer: how the game turns deduction into pursuit. You are not just solving clues from a distance. You are moving through London, trying to predict where the Dark Lady might be, and hoping your next scan catches her before she slips away again.
For anyone who wants to see how ambitious a free PnP can get at least in the earlier stage of your PnP journey, Black Sonata is one of those games that makes the format look pretty serious.
Honorary mention: Orchard
It is a 9-card solo game about overlapping cards to harvest fruit, with dice used as score markers instead of being rolled. It is easy to learn, set up, carry, and quite easy to play multiple times in a row. Game changer: how much tension comes from placement. Every card can score now, set up something better for later, or quietly ruin the neat little orchard you were trying to build. There’s also a monthly BGG contest on the game that’s an absolute banger.
Oddly, even after playing plenty of PnPs over the years, only about 15 free games keep rotating back to my table.
And that number should be higher.
So now I’m asking you folks, which free print-and-play games do you feel I absolutely MUST play?
Send them my way. Reply to this email with a list of the games I’m missing out on, and why!
- Tas.
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