Solo Player Preferences - A Brief Survey

We are in the process of fine tuning our automa for Nut Hunt!. I decided to reach out to the solo board gaming community for some insight into what solo gamers want with a brief survey.

While many players occasionally play solo games, I was particularly interested in the input from players who identify as solo gamers. So, I limited posting the survey to four solo-focused communities: r/soloboardgaming, Solo Board Gamers (FB), BG41 (FB), 1 Player Guild (BGG).

“Dummy Game Against Myself” - BGG user Mark P

Before we get into the numbers, this is a relatively small sample size (a little over 50 respondents on each question), but respondent preferences were fairly consistent - so I feel comfortable extrapolating that we are in the ballpark. If you would like to take a version of the survey, you can do so here.

If a solo game has multiple difficulties, how important is it that the difficulty is determined by mechanical differences (varied set up, varied automa actions, etc), versus a different scoring regime?

I think that I missed an opportunity with this question, as there are a number of ways to implement mechanical differences. Starting an automa with additional resources, is a very feel than having more powerful automa actions.

While I expected a preference for mechanical differences, the overwhelming size of that preference is surprising - especially since many popular solo games scale difficulty through scoring.

What is your ideal player win percentage in a solo game with one difficulty level (assuming a competent player)?

There is a strong clustering at 50%, with respondents on average preferring that competent players win a bit more than half the time. However, that isn’t a universal take, with a healthy cohort preferring challenging single difficulties – dropping all the way down to 10%.

In a game with 3 difficulty levels, what is your ideal player win percentage for Easy, Medium, Hard (assuming a competent player)?

Ranges for this question where pretty much as expected, with easy clustering in the 70-90% range, medium ~50%, and hard 30-40%. I was a little surprised by the extremes of player preference on difficulty with 30% of respondents expecting easy difficulty win percentages of 90% or higher.

An interesting data point in the survey is that when offered multiple difficulties, respondents tended to keep their medium difficulty win percentage flat with the single difficulty, or slightly increase it. Alternatively, if they have the option of a hard mode, they are comfortable with the medium mode being a little bit easier. I am hesitant to read too much into the conclusion, due to the small sample size.

Selective Commentary

Aside from the hard numbers, I got a lot of great qualitative commentary form respondents.

To me, a good solo game isn't measured by the win rate but by how challenging obstacles in-game were. Spirit Island is a good example. An experienced player can win almost every time, but the journey to that victory is not easy and not for novices. - Reddit user brodogmillionaire1

A few respondents differentiated between puzzle like difficulty scaling, where if you are good enough nearly every game is winnable, versus variance driven difficulty where even the best players will lose sometimes due to randomness.

I find that adding additional decision trees / flow charts to higher difficulties acceptable, since by that point you've likely internalized the core Automata rules and layering on additional complexity shouldn't add that much time overhead. - Reddit user lonelord

Complex isn’t always bad, but ‘complex’ and ‘challenging’ are not synonymous, and neither are ‘simple’ and ‘easy’ - Dune Imperium for instance is a straightforward but great AI, so you spend your time playing/plotting not running a fiddly opponent. - Survey respondent

There was a bit of a split on the complexity of the AI with some respondents enjoying AI decision trees, some abhorring them. I think these responses get to the crux of the issue. The most important thing is that players can spend their time making interesting decisions, rather than going through the motions of executing the AI. As players become more familiar with the game, slightly more complicated AI actions won’t be as much of a burden on them.

It's nice when the automatic actions feel like they might be something a human would do. - Survey respondent

It's OK to have the AI cheat as long as the end result of the action mirrors player actions. - Survey respondent

The player should play according the main rules. Do not introduce new rules or exceptions for the player. - Survey respondent

The game feeling real and consistent was a recurring theme. Players don’t want a drastically different play experience when playing solo, versus multi-player, and want rules that are consistent.

What are your favorite solo games, and what makes them great?