Rio Grande Games Friday

This game is highly recommended. I spend most of my game-time playing solo, so I was pleased to see that this little box contained a "solo adventure" and also that many reviews indicated that it was quite challenging. I will confirm that this game is not for the faint of heart. It took me several plays to beat the first of the four difficulties indicated in the instructions. With a little experience, however, I was able to figure out a strategy that seems to work well in most cases and I have been very successful with achieving victory even on the fourth difficulty level. If you want to know that strategy, you can find it easily on-line, and my experience has been that the general principals of the most common strategy found on-line will help you prevail. Bad news if you want a perpetual challenge, but good news if you want a winnable game that doesn't beat you up 9 out of 10 tries and make you feel despondent. More good news - you can always start with fewer life points of modify the card sets to create ever increasing levels of difficulty. There is certainly a point where luck of the draw will start to be more important than strategy as you design brutal challenges to combat your own success, but I am finding that playing the game just a wee bit harder than the fourth scenario in the instructions provides a good level of difficulty. If you like to play solo, this is an essential purchase. It is sleek in its design, engaging to play, has high replayability due to the potential to fine tune the difficulty) and it is a reasonably inexpensive game. PS. The components are not elaborate, but they are well made. I have played my set 20 times without any fatigue at all. I am careful with my game components, but all but the most careless people should find this set lasting for years and years.

This is a great alternative to Solitaire, my usual go-to card game for one. The idea is that you are Friday, and you are trying to train Robinson Crusoe to get off the island. You start with a hand of cards that represent Robinson's skills/state of mind, and over time you'll want to evolve his skills and mindset by building a stronger deck. You take two cards off of the encounter deck, and choose which encounter you want to send Robinson on (basing your decision on the required skill/mindset level to successfully beat the encounter). Then you flip over the number of cards allowed from that encounter card, and see how Robinson's skill/state of mind value compares to the requirements of the encounter. If you fall short, you can pay a life point to bring out another card and try to succeed (you can keep doing this if you want), or you can pay the difference in life points, and for each life point you are forced to discard, you can trash a card from your deck. If you pass the encounter, you get to keep the card, which on the lower half is a new Robinson skill/state of mind level (representing what he learned from surviving that encounter's adventure, and another crucial factor in determining which encounter you choose to have him attempt). There are a lot of factors in play. You need to run through the encounter deck at three different levels. Green (easy), yellow (medium), red (hard). The numeric value required to complete the encounters increases with every increase in difficulty level. So the first time through, you might think it's great to try to fail as many as possible to thin your deck of those bad -1 and 0 value cards, but then you'll have more encounters to face at those increased difficulty levels. Conversely, if you try to win as many encounters in the early round as possible, you may not get to trash as many cards as you like, leaving you with a lot of duds coming out in those harder levels. You also need to consider your life points, as when they run out, you instantly lose the game. So sometimes you fail a lot of encounters and cut cards, then realize you are dangerously low on life. Thankfully, many cards you gain from passing encounters along the way give you special actions, like +1 or +2 life points, +1 or +2 cards, destroy/trash a card, -1 to the encounter's pass level, etc. So those are also a consideration when you decide which encounter to go up against, as you can see at the bottom what skill/state of mind you'll gain from passing. On top of all of this, every time your deck runs out and you need to shuffle your discard pile and cycle through again, you add an aging card, which represents the passage of time on the island and how it wears on Robinson. These are tougher to remove from your deck, as you need to discard two life points to rid of them or use a trashing card. If you survive making it through all three difficulty phases of the encounters, you go up against two different pirate ships you must defeat. So essentially, you are not only building a deck to go up against encounters, you are building a deck that will defeat the pirate ships at the end. If you reach the needed level, Robinson makes it off the island. If not, well, he doesn't. I love the challenge of this game. It took me several tries to win, and I'm still on beginner's mode after 16 plays. There are additional difficulty levels to keep the game interesting as you get more experienced. There is obviously luck involved, but it certainly requires a good balance of all those aforementioned factors. If you're looking for a quick strategy game to play on your own, this is an excellent choice.

This is an excellent rules-light solo game. However, if you take a step back, you'll notice that this is just a version of a modern solitaire 52 card deck game with a new coat of paint. It's a great little game. but if you want to save some money, a search for "Isaludo" might get you a similar experience with the cards you already own. Still, as a published game, you kinda can't go wrong at this price. It's easy to learn, replayable, and super difficult to beat.

I've had this game a few months but not sure how many times I've played it but at least a couple dozen at the basic level and once at the highest level. I'm not really good at figuring out stuff by reading - guess it's impatience or laziness but this one I read through and still refer back to the instructions and realize I was doing something wrong! I'm not overly impressed with the artwork ( I tend to go for cutesy) but it does look nice and fits the theme. At first the setup seemed to take forever but I've gotten a lot faster. It does take up a bit of table space but it has 3 small square 'boards' marked for each deck. there are 22 life points that are good quality IMO - wood painted green - and lots of sorting cards at the end (as you win the hazards they mix in with the fighting cards since the other end of the card has a fightng value and/or special ability) and you have cards you destroy in another stack and some of these are the starting fighting cards and aging cards. To begin the game you need to shuffle the pirate cards and randomnly pick 2 that you will fight at the end(if you get that far!). you also separate the aging cards - the first level you can leave out one of the regular hazards cards but the others(and that one) you shuffle then you shuffle the 3 white haired ones(really bad ones) - these 3 white ones go under the regular aging cards and go on one board(I put mine to the left). the fighting cards are shuffled and put facedown on the middle board. Over on the right you shuffle the hazard cards. there are also 3 cards - green, yellow, and red that go by these so you can keep track of which level you're fighting. I found this a bit overwhelming at first but the more I've played I find it nice to lose myself in a game! I recently played the hardest level for the first time and ran out of lifepoints so many times - I was down to 2 or none while fighting the yellow and red hazards(got more from the special abiltiies fighting cards and promptly used them). I fought the pirates starting with no life points - won against the first but lost the 2nd - it was an exciting game!

I have probably played this game a dozen or more times over the past 30 days and still haven't beaten it... which is not to say that it is unfair or broken, it's just a relatively simply game that is very challenging! The card illustrations are nothing to get excited about, but the mechanics are easy enough to learn once you've watched a short tutorial video. I almost only buy games with a solo "mode" or that are only solo. This is a one player game and really challenges you to make risky choices for rewards later on. There is definitely an element of luck in this game which can be very annoying, especially in the first 5 minutes of playing it, but at the same time, nothing beats getting to the end of the game and feeling the thrill of have so many options to win as you lay the cards down. Overall, you cannot beat the low price point so I would recommend giving it a try!

Friday is a very challenging solo player boardgame that doesn't require much in the way of play pieces to be absolutely ENTHRALLING! I have yet to win & play this on nights I want to bundle up in the covers & watch a good movie. While it /can/ be a very in-depth strategy game, you can also learn deeper routes of play while keeping it simple & constantly detaching your attention from it. AKA very good when watching a movie, chatting with friends online, in-between games/queues/loading screens that take a long time. The turns you take can take seconds to minutes depending on what moves you plan on making. I can't recommend this enough, as the price is SO low considering how much content & replayability fit into this one box. If any of you miss the days of Diablo 2 & its seemingly endless replayability then you'll really appreciate the polish this game has! They've really nailed down a phenomenal style of board game that I truly hope we see more of in the future! Keep an eye on Friedemann Friese Freitag-Project (The designers of this game, 2nd in their repertoire!) Thank you for taking the time to read this & I hope you found it helpful! I'll gladly answer any questions y'all might have, & promptly at that! Best wishes! P.S. The Robinson Crusoe theme feels like the ultimate marriage with the mechanics in this game!

I got this for my mom. Its a fun game, but the instructions are really bad.

Friday is a small, fairly quick solitaire game. You are Friday, trying to prepare Robinson Crusoe for life on the island. You help him get stronger so that he can face the various dangers of the island. If he survives these dangers, then he'll have to face two pirate ships. If he survives the pirates, he escapes, and you get your nice, peaceful island back. The game is basically a simple solo deck-builder. Each card in the threat deck that you defeat takes its place in your "Robinson" deck, giving you more powerful offense, and often some special ability. But your deck also gains "aging" cards that give you various penalties when they come into play. Your job is to get rid of these bad cards and streamline your deck into one that can defeat the pirates. The best thing about Friday is that the game can adapt to your skill level. There's a fairly easy beginner level, and as you get more familiar with the game, you can increase the difficulty so that the game never gets old. It sounds like a game that will get stale after a few plays, but it hasn't done so for us, yet. It's a fun, challenging solitaire "puzzle" type game that you can play in 30 minutes or less.