The Heist of the Argonaut Limited
When I was a kid, I had a handful of Lone Wolf books by Joe Dever. I do not remember how I got them, probably from a used book store? They were kind of Choose Your Own Adventure books, but with RPG stats, weapons, abilities, and an inventory. I’d never heard of Dungeons & Dragons, but I had played Final Fantasy. I had no idea that I was playing what was basically a solo TTRPG that didn’t require dice – all you needed for the Lone Wolf books was a pencil. This is the world that The Heist of the Argonaut Limited brought me back to.
THotAL is basically a dice-based solo tabletop role-playing game on the Playdate. There’s a lot to read, but you get to pick where the action goes, and the luck of your dice rolls determine the outcomes. Your job is to pull off a train heist, but you’re not the only one trying to steal something from this train! Are you strong, or sneaky, or smart? You decide! Utilize your strengths to tilt the odds in your favor when you do skill checks with an actual die-rolling graphic, and determine if your fellow passengers live or die.
If you have a good imagination, this is a pretty… graphic game, despite the very limited use of actual graphics. There’s a lot of dying, and on my first playthrough I got stabbed more than once, but somehow I managed to survive. There are dozens of possible endings, and the game is short enough that you’ll want to try each genre of character at least once. I’m always a tank in RPGs, so I went with the strong man for my first run. Oh, and you can choose your pronouns at the beginning, too, for a completely personalized experience. You really feel like your decisions matter, and you can play as yourself – or someone completely unlike yourself – to your heart’s content.
There’s also a set of achievements to get, encouraging multiple playthroughs and trying different play styles. It felt like I was getting a lot of “sneak” opportunities, but since I was a strength guy, I missed out on basically all of them. Made a lot of friends, though, and some of them made it to the end! (Actually, they didn’t. I survived, but I did a bad job.)
If you’re looking for a story-heavy, solo RPG where you don’t even need your own pencil, The Heist of the Argonaut Limited might just be the best (or only?) option on the Playdate. It’s part of the Fun in the Sun ‘24 Playdate Bundle like another narrative-heavy game, Echoes of the Emergent, but that’s a straight visual novel while this one has a lot more twists, turns, and replayability to see everything there is to see. I haven’t played something like this in a long time, and it’s making me consider getting some 40th anniversary Lone Wolf books as a little treat for myself!