The lonely Citadel

I was a little bit bored. I was the only person awake, and I didn't want to edit my rules for The Citadel of Madness (formerly known as The Madness Place) any more. I wanted to play a game, but I don't own any solitaire games. I bought a pnp copy of Pentaquark, but have somehow never got around to printing it out.

I have also recently been listening to the Ludology podcast, and I liked their episode on solo games. It made me think I could make one. Given this situation I decided to see if I could come up with some rules to make The Citadel of Madness a solo game.

I came up with a few modifications that made the game into a pretty interesting (in my opinion) solo game:

  • Every action you remove a time token from the game. If they ever run out you lose.
  • Every time you pass do the following:
    • Return all time tokens to the pool
    • Build a new device that is not owned by you -or- modify a device that is not controlled by you (the rules are more complicated than that, but it amounts to that basically)
    • Score a room card for an imaginary opponent. You must win before he does.
I played a game, and it worked out. When I won, the opponent had 14 points to my 16. Additionally, I had only one time token left, so if I had done any worse I would have lost. In fact, if I hadn't won on that action, my opponent would have won after I passed (two actions later).

I know that I made The Citadel of Madness myself, so of course I would like it, but it really seems like I could get a publisher for this. I am thinking of trying to pitch it to a few publishers after I submit it to the ION Awards this year. If everything goes well, perhaps it could be signed before summer :).

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