Card games for one player

A one-player patience: deal cards in a line and collapse matching neighbors until, ideally, one pile remains.

Deal four piles, discard lower cards of a suit, and try to finish with only the four aces on the table.

An open patience: aces start in the middle and every card is visible, so success depends on planning moves.

A purely mechanical solitaire laid out like a clock face; it ends when the fourth king turns up.

A patience with four free cells and every card visible; nearly every deal can be won with careful play.

Lay out all 52 cards, remove the aces, and slide cards into the gaps to build each row in suit order.

Also called Montana.

The solitaire most people simply call “Solitaire”: build down in alternating colors and up by suit to the foundations.

Turn over two cards at a time and remember their positions to collect matching pairs.

Pair cards that add up to 13 to dismantle a pyramid of 28 cards; kings leave on their own.

A demanding two-deck patience where only single cards may move and the tableau quickly clogs up.

Needs two decks.

A cooperative game for a standard deck: defeat twelve royal enemies by playing cards whose suits trigger powers.

A two-deck patience where you build full king-to-ace runs in suit inside the tableau to clear them.

Needs two decks.

A solo deck-builder: help Robinson survive the island by fighting hazards and slowly trimming weakness from your deck.

A tiny roguelike: explore a dungeon deck, roll your hero’s dice into card challenges, and level up before the boss.

Uses dice alongside the cards.

Escape a labyrinth of dreams by playing cards in color runs to find eight doors before the deck runs out.

A whole game held in one hand: rotate and flip cards to grow a village, no table required.

A cooperative tile-laying card game for kids and families: close every tunnel before the bandit escapes.

Cooperatively play cards 2–99 onto rising and falling piles, hinting without naming numbers.

A cooperative deck-builder where you never shuffle, so the order of your discards becomes part of the plan against a boss.

A series of single-use escape rooms in a box, solved with riddle cards, a decoder wheel, and sometimes scissors.

Each box can be played once.

Recruit Marvel heroes into your deck and fight together against a mastermind and its villain scheme.

Build a city from just 18 cards, overlapping zones and roads to satisfy three random scoring goals.

A series of card-based escape rooms, with an app that checks codes and runs the timer.

A cooperative, story-driven living card game where investigators build decks and play through linked horror scenarios.

Four players need extra core content.

Build a hero deck and cooperate to defeat a villain before its scheme succeeds.

A cooperative living card game where heroes quest through Middle-earth scenarios, playable fully solo.

Make books and runs across eleven rounds as the hand size and wild rank change.

Plant herbs into different pots—some need variety, some need pairs—in a calm, pretty set-collection game.

Find three cards where each feature—color, shape, number, shading—is all the same or all different.

Buy heroes and constructs from a constantly changing center row, or spend power to defeat monsters for honor.

A deck-building word game where your cards are letters: spell words to buy better letters and wild cards.

Build words from letter cards as hand sizes grow over eight rounds.

Roll dice each turn to activate citizens for everyone, then recruit more, slay monsters, and build domains.

Arrange flowers and trees around your village green to satisfy changing award cards.

A deck-building civilization game where your nation evolves from barbarian to empire, each with unique cards.