Hello Wild Garden Backers,

This month our creative brains have been humming, and we've officially finished the solo campaign! All the files have been sent to our editor and everything is looking good to hit our deadline of having everything in the solo campaign ready for graphic design by the end of October. Because this month has been dedicated to working on solo scenarios, we thought it would be a great time to talk about what you can expect inside the campaign book.

When we designed the solo campaign for our previous game, Keystone: North America, we decided to approach it from a story standpoint. Deciding to base the solo challenges on a narrative helped us think of interesting approaches to our puzzles and was honestly more fun to design for. We hoped people would enjoy the campaign and learn a little more about North American ecosystems. After the games' release, the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive. People made entire videos just to talk about the solo campaign, streamed their play journeys through the campaign book, and created chats to discuss specific scenarios. After the first year we discovered that a large portion of the sales of the game was being driven by solo players. Following this success, we wanted to build on that experience with Wild Gardens and see if we could push the narrative and world building even farther.

In Wild Gardens every guest in the game has a unique personality, backstory, and dialog for players to discover in solo mode. You'll not only be presented with new gameplay rules and challenges, but have conversations with the guests you meet, make decisions that affect where the story goes next, and even have alternative endings based on your gameplay. Wild Gardens is a world much like our own, but not quite. So, players should expect to deal with everything from flower festivals to time paradoxes while they explore the foraging world. You'll find 7 scenarios in the campaign book and each expansion pack will feature an additional solo adventure featuring the new guests found within! 

Let's talk a little bit about how playing the solo version will work. First, you'll choose what scenario to play. These scenarios will be listed in order of difficulty, but they can be played in any order. Then you'll read the intro, set up, and any special rules that may be in effect during this scenario. The goals will tell you what you need to achieve in order to win the scenario, and the Milestone #1 will tell you what you need to do in order to move the story forward. After you start playing, you'll want to pay attention to any guests that you serve. After serving a guest you'll look at the story number listed on their card and find the corresponding entry in the scenario. Those entries may unlock new abilities, items, or let you know your next milestone in the story. Or they simply may be an interesting moment with that character. Only by serving many different guests during a game will you discover all there is to find in a scenario.

If you want to see a playthrough for A Feast for Flowers (the scenario showcased above) you can watch Jenna from Board Game Garden play through it with her fans. It's a great example of how the solo campaign plays so we encourage you to check it out!

Playing Wild Gardens Solo! | SOLO SUNDAY - YouTube

We hope this gets you excited for the Wild Gardens solo campaign! If you have additional questions about solo play, please comment below or email us at [email protected] 

The Rose Gauntlet Team