Solo Tabletop RPG Review – Alone Among the Stars

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Alone Among the Stars
Written & Designed by Takuma Okada

You can download the game and pay what you want here.

Even today, with so many diverse tabletop RPGs for people to enjoy, the mainstream response to hearing about ttrpgs is for people to think of Dungeons & Dragons. While DnD certainly created a structure for a very dominant roleplaying style, it is not the be-all and end-all of the hobby. With recent decisions by DnD’s owners, Wizards of the Coast, to try and limit the open gaming licenses, which allow third parties to create content for the game and send Pinkerton agents to harass & threaten a streamer who legally purchased material WOTC accidentally sent out early, it’s time to find a new game. One thing that helps to expand your horizons is to engage with something wildly different than you are used to, and Alone Among the Stars is nothing like DnD.

Alone Among the Stars was designed from the start as a solo experience. It’s also a non-combat rpg unless you really want there to be fighting in it. The materials needed are a single six-sided die and a standard deck of playing cards. You may also want a way to record your game, as this is all about what you write as you play. The premise is that you are a space traveler making your journey alone. You may be employed to catalog new unexplored worlds, or you’re searching for something out there. As you encounter each world, you find some places of note and jot down what you see and what thoughts & emotions they evoke in you.

You roll a six-sided die, and the number you get determines how many cards you pull face down for the planet. Each card is something you will visit and explore. You roll the die each time before flipping a card over, and that die roll tells you something about how you find the something. The card’s suit is the type of thing (living being, plant life, ruins, or natural phenomena). The number tells you more specifically where you find this thing, whether in the desert, deep underwater, or more. It took me a minute to click with the mechanics because they seemed too simple. Once I figured I had a handle on it, I dove in. 

My first planet gave me a 1 on the die, and so I discovered a single notable feature there:

Planet #1

First Feature – it is arduous to get to, plants or other immobile life, on a cliff face.
I must exit my ship and slowly descend a sheer cliff face to reach the only sign of life my sensors could pick up on this barren rock. I found it there. A simple mold affixed to the rock extends hungry tendrils to feed on the methane in the air, filtering it and turning the chemical into hydrogen. I did a closer analysis and discovered the mold was teeming with active bacteria and microscopic life. They likely don’t possess the ability to understand how remote and isolated they are. As long as the mold keeps feeding, they keep living. Maybe one day, all that will be left in the universe is this mold.

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My second planet provided a few more features to explore:

Planet #2

First Feature – you come upon it suddenly, natural phenomena, On a glacier

Lightning coming up from the glacier; it is translucent; you can see a roiling lightning ball within the structure and have to dodge the bolts as they strike upwards.

Second Feature – it is arduous to get to, ruins, In a treetop.

Once past the violent lightning glacier storms, the ship must dive into a nearby cavern that plummets vertically beneath the surface. Sunlight pours down into the cave like a spotlight. That sunlight has helped a massive tree grow towards the cavern’s mouth. On top of this tree are the ruins of a village built into it. There were once bridges that connected structures; some remain while others have broken apart.

Third Feature – it is arduous to get to, plants and other immobile forms of life, by a gentle river.

Descending into this cavern further, past the massive tree, it becomes clear why the inhabitants built their home here. A rushing river of freshwater flows through the cave. Next to this calm river, scans pick up an abundance of vegetation, rich in iron and essential vitamins. The plants serve as food for the native animals, creatures who have not quite evolved into blind cave dwellers due to the rich spotlight of sun coming down. Both the plants and animals would have been a great source of nutrition for the cave tree inhabitants. They couldn’t have run out of food, so why are they gone now?

Fourth Feature – you spot it as you are resting, in ruins, On a glacier.

I land the ship on a nearby glacier that is not spitting lightning at me. I break out a ration to eat and sit, feet propped up on the dash, looking out at the viewscreen. I notice something on the horizon and increase the digital zoom. On top of the lightning glacier is an object I hadn’t seen while entering the atmosphere. Upon closer examination, it is a tower that has partially crumbled. Large, thick cables extend from the building into holes bored into the glacier. They had figured out a way to harness the electricity? Possibly not safe if the tower is as severely damaged as it appears. There’s no sign of any human or automated operators in or around it.

Fifth Feature – it is arduous to get to, natural phenomena, On the snowy peak of a mountain.

My scans show a massive mountain in the southern hemisphere, and I guide my ship that way. It’s 700 Km wide and 40 Km high, making it one of the most impressive landforms I’ve seen in my travels. I have to make my way up through cloud cover to even see its peak. Those clouds are a massive perpetual snowstorm dumping tons of snow. An attempt at landing has to be reversed when I realize the snow is not very compact. I quickly start to sink into it. Instead, I remain above the mountain and send a couple probes down that tell me the snow is 1 Km deep before I would have even touched the rock.

My conclusion about this world is that a climate event must have happened, resulting in bizarre interactions between the weather and the landscape. I can see why there are no inhabitants because living on the surface of such a world would be a constant struggle against nature. Perhaps, they ventured deeper into the cave system I only saw a glimpse of. They could be living down there, safe from the hazards on the surface.

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A game like Alone Among the Stars depends on the player’s openness to its ideas. If you are looking for a tactical combat-focused experience, that’s simply not what this game does. If you want to chill out yet still engage in tabletop roleplay, this game will do the job. It’s clean & meditative, focusing the player on thinking about a scene in the natural world and exploring it without a quest screaming over your shoulder. As a result, there are many spin-offs, with some staying in the quiet exploratory vein of the original and others getting wilder with it (Alone at the Fridge, Alone in Cyberspace, Alone in a Roleplaying Game). 

If you’re in need of a gaming palette cleanser, something that delivers a deceptively complex and thoughtful experience, you can’t do better than Alone Among the Stars.