Sad Press’ The Shrike is available from Itcho but, for now, author Jo Lindsay Walton has made the early access edition available for free.
The 120+ page edition comes with four adventures, two of which are designed for solo play. The game is inspired by Avery Alder’s The Quiet Year and John Harper’s Lady Blackbird with influences from Italo Calvino and Ursula K. Le Guin.
In The Shrike, Walton has managed to find a level of detail between traditional solo gamebooks and games like The Quiet Year.
You’ll get prompts from people and places but also enough flexibility to create your own worlds. As a result, The Shrike is a good match for solo gamers who want to get into worldbuilding.
If not using The Strike as a solo game then it suits 3 to 4 players.
The Shrike generates one-shot GM-less RPGs about skyship voyages. At least, sometimes. If you can keep the machine chugging for the next five or ten minutes, you’ll have the Prologue, and Chapters One, Two, Three, and Four. You can then print and play, or experiment with the solo playtest tool.
What do you think? Measured observations are welcome and you can leave them in the comment section below.
