We are deep into the Holiday season. That means many people will be peopled out. Holiday parties, crowded shopping malls, school concerts, and more. The holiday season is a busy time. Sometimes you just need to spend some time alone to recharge, and what better way to do that than with a solo game!
Hunted: North Pole is more than just a single, stand alone game. Hunted is a series of games with a wide range of themes. North Pole is obviously the Christmas version of the game. But you can get numerous themes in both print-and-play and/or physical versions, so you can probably take much of what I have to say here and apply it to those games too.
Here’s the premise: “Everyone was happily working on toys and getting ready for Christmas when all of a sudden Jack Frost and an army of minions showed up. They kidnapped Santa, scattered the elves, and are trying to ruin Christmas! Now, you’ll have to work your way through the North Pole and rescue Santa before Christmas is canceled…all while Jack Frost’s minions try to hunt you down…“
So essentially, you are an Elf. Specifically, you are one of two possible Elves (Becky or Clarence), each with their own stats and abilities. You need to cross three map cards to find and battle the wicked Jack Frost to rescue Santa.
Gameplay feels a bit weird the first time you play Hunted, frustrating even. The “problem” is that the game is HARD. So you may find yourself thrown straight into the cookie dough right at the start, and you wonder what you did wrong. The answer is probably nothing, it’s just hard. I said “problem” with quotation marks because solo games are supposed to be hard. When you don’t have other players to challenge you, it’s up to the game itself to provide that challenge. An extra good shuffling of the cards in the Hunted deck can help, but sometimes you just get a stocking full of coal. (Total aside here, surprisingly neither coal nor stockings make an appearance in this game, but there is definitely some stalking by Jack Frost’s minions.)
How the game works is that you draw a card from the Hunted deck and place it face up in a row. Cards can have several different icons on them, each for its own purpose. Along the left side, the icons are what you spend (by discarding the card from the row) to activate another card in the row. In the lower right corner are the icons you need to spend to activate it. Some cards have a bell in the top left corner. If there are two bells in the row an Enemy is in, that Enemy activates, and you must fight them. Even without the bells, drawing a second Enemy card will activate the stronger of the two Enemies. Finally, some cards have a Map icon. Activating these allows you to advance your pawn on the Map, getting you closer to Jack Frost and saving Christmas.
Technically, drawing a card is the entire turn, although turns tend to blend together here. Once you have cards in the row, you then have to decide if you want to hide, removing all the cards in the row without activating them, or activate a card in the row by discarding the cards with the necessary icons. (Or, you can do neither and draw again.) Activating a card means different things for different cards. Activating an Enemy means you have to fight them. Activating items, weapons, and elves means moving them into your inventory for later use. Activating a path or reindeer means moving on the map and drawing an Event card.
Whenever you move on the map, you draw an Event card. Each event gives flavour to your journey and asks you to roll dice for a stat check. On the first map card, you roll two d20 dice, taking the higher result. On the second, you roll one d20, and on the third, you roll two and take the lower result. Each map card has a higher goal to roll, so as you progress, the hard game gets harder and harder.
Circling back to Enemies, let’s talk battles. As I mentioned, Enemies are activated when there are either two Enemies or two bells in the row with an Enemy. Most of the time, you’ll discard the weaker of two Enemies, but some combine with one another, and you have to face both. You always get the first attack, so choose your weapon. By default, you have a slingshot that you can shoot up to three times in an attack (using up three ammo to do it) and do 1d4 damage for each shot. Other weapons do more damage, but may have other restrictions on them. For example, the single use Bomb, which does 1d20 damage and does 1 damage to you as well. Once you choose your weapon, reduce the uses on that weapon’s tracker and use up one time. Roll your dice, and if you roll higher than the Enemy’s health, yay. If not, take one damage and try again.
I think time is the only major mechanic left to explain. Every time you do something that would realistically delay you, you lose time. When you hide from an enemy, you lose time. When you get in a fight, you lose time. When you stop to search for more ammo, you lose time. Get it? If you run out of time, you lose, just as if you run out of life. As you lose time, some of the spaces on the calendar track have icons on them, allowing you to draw a random calendar token, which gives you a bonus.
I know that seems like a lot, and it is. But it doesn’t take long before the game is whooshing along like a sleigh through fresh snow.
I think I only have 2 complaints about this game. First is that it’s hard. Yes, I said solo games are supposed to be hard. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get frustrated over it. Second is a more valid complaint. In my first game, I ended up wondering where the calendar tokens came into play because the icons that show when you draw them are super hard to see. Even once I knew, I missed it a few times because of that. But that may not be the case in the other versions of Hunted, I don’t know. Once I pushed through the initial frustration and learning curve, I enjoyed this. I still haven’t managed to win yet, but I am still enjoying the attempts. One of my best games conveniently came when I streamed a game, so you can watch that and decide what you think.
As I write this, Hunted: North Pole seems to only be available as an affordable print-and-play version, along with several other versions. But the 1980s kid-themed Hunted: Wade Ridge is available as a physical version. So if you want some time to yourself to play a game, check either of those out.
You can find Best With One Games online at bestwith1.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/BestWith1.
