Solo board gaming has surged from a niche feature to a major component of modern hobby board gaming in just a few years, according to a new academic analysis of more than 104,000 titles spanning almost a century of board game design.

The research, published in the journal Simulation & Gaming, analysed metadata from BoardGameGeek’s vast trove of titles, covering games published between 1930 and 2025.

It found that solo play ranked as the third most prevalent component in games released between 2020 and 2025, behind only dice rolling and hand management – a trend boosted by many publishers treating a dedicated solo mode as a commercial necessity over the past few years.

Co-op play also loomed larger in recent years, appearing in 2.9% of game listings in the 2010s and 3.7% between 2020 to 2025, having not appeared in the top ten mechanisms across any of the preceding eight decades.

The report also noted the extraordinary growth in games present in the BGG database since the turn of the millennium.

It said the number of titles published per decade grew about 22%, to about 9,400, from the 1980s to the 1990s, before more than doubling to over 21,000 titles in the 2000s, and surging to more than 38,000 in the 2010s.

The report, titled Monopoly to Ark Nova: An Empirical and Cultural History of Modern Board Game Design (1930–2025), was created by members of the LudIA research group at the European University Miguel de Cervantes, together with a researcher from the University of Valladolid.

Study co-author Azael Herrero, who posted a long summary of the research and the team’s conclusions to BoardGameGeek, said, “One result that I find particularly interesting is the stability of the median maximum player count.

“It remains four players in every historical period. Despite enormous changes in production, mechanisms, themes, and audiences, four players continue to represent a central configuration in board game design.

“The mean maximum player count nevertheless increases in recent periods, suggesting greater representation of party games, large-group games, and titles offering more flexible player ranges.”

While solo gaming provides the study’s clearest illustration of how the hobby has evolved, the broader picture is one of increasing diversity in game design.

The researchers found the number of documented mechanisms expanded from 69 during the 1930s to 192 in the 2020s, suggesting designers have dramatically broadened the range of tools available to them.

Rather than replacing older ideas, however, modern games increasingly combine multiple established mechanisms into hybrid systems – a trend the study says is reflected in the changing role of dice.

Roll-and-move dominated games throughout the 1930s to the 1960s, appearing in roughly a quarter of all titles in those decades, before steadily declining to the point where it no longer features among the ten most common mechanisms in the 2020-2025 period.

Dice themselves remain widespread, of course, but are now more commonly used for action selection, resource production, drafting, risk management and other strategic systems than for simply determining player movement.

The research also traces the changing influences that have shaped modern hobby gaming.

Simulation and wargames introduced mechanics such as hex grids, movement points and simultaneous action selection during the 1970s and 1980s, before the Eurogame boom of the 1990s and 2000s saw hand management, tile placement, set collection, drafting, auctions and area majority become increasingly common. Solo gaming, cooperative play and variable player powers then rose sharply during the 2010s and early 2020s.

The researchers also found BoardGameGeek ratings have increased over time, alongside modest rises in complexity and playing time, although they cautioned that these trends should not be interpreted as evidence that modern games are objectively better than earlier designs.

Instead, they point to factors including the site’s hobby-focused audience, changing player expectations, greater visibility and recency bias for newer releases and the influence of marketing and self-selection.

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The Isle of Cats designer Frank West has unveiled a new game set in the same universe as his bestselling polyomino-puzzle title, saying the project was shaped by lessons learned from more than a million recorded plays of the original.

The Isle of Penguins, which launches on Kickstarter on July 7, sees players rescuing the sea birds from melting ice floes and fitting them onto uniquely shaped rafts, in an experience West says is faster and more accessible than The Isle of Cats while retaining its strategic depth.

West, who runs publisher The City of Games, told BoardGameWire The Isle of Cats had now surpassed 250,000 physical sales since it was released in 2019 – a figure that rises to almost half a million when including spin-offs The Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw, The Isle of Cats Duel and digital versions of the game.

He said the design for The Isle of Penguins emerged after six years of analysing data from digital versions of The Isle of Cats, as well as player feedback from across Kickstarter and YouTube video comments, social media discussions and BoardGameGeek reviews.

That data amounts to more than one million plays across the digital versions the game – information West says he has used to create a game that plays 20% to 30% faster than The Isle of Cats standard mode, while also giving players more to do.

He told BoardGameWire, “I think my main takeaway was that The Isle of Cats is a great game that is loved by a lot of people – It didn’t need fixing. But, there are things that could make the game more accessible to some people. I wanted to design a game to sit alongside The Isle of Cats, rather than replace it.”

West said major changes include a new selection system which allows for simultaneous play, most scoring happening during the game rather than at the end, and a drastic shift to the complexity of the polyominoes themselves.

He said, “One of the unique parts of The Isle of Cats when it was released was the complexity of the cat tiles themselves. They use less common shapes and can be very tricky to place, which is great.

“However, some players struggle to flip tiles in their head or visualise how something might fit, and the complex shapes in The Isle of Cats made this challenging for them. This was a key part of the game, and I spent many years working out how to flip the experience.

“In The Isle of Penguins, every penguin tile is a square or a rectangle. These are the simplest shapes, and much easier for people to visualise and rotate in their heads.

“But the raft board you are placing them on is far more chaotic, with many restrictive areas, which makes finding the right place to put a tile just as hard.

“Effectively, this flips ‘hard shapes and a simple board’ into ‘easy shapes and a complex board’.”

He added, “I have been thinking about a lot of these things for a long time, but when I managed to flip the polyomino experience with the raft board, and found a way to make simultaneous play work, I realised I had something exciting.”

West said that streamlining of the game allows players to do more in less time, without reducing decision making – and added that the title would retain Isle of Cats’ inclusion of both a family mode and standard mode, in addition to a new expert mode for the new game.

He said, “This keeps the entry point of the game as friendly as possible, while offering something more to veterans of The Isle of Cats looking for a step up.

“It was important not to assume that just because someone has been playing games for years, they would now want something more complicated. But I also wanted to make sure there was something there for those who did want it.”

West confirmed to BoardGameWire that the new game would be illustrated by The Isle of Cats artist Dragolisco, saying, “I wanted to ensure The Isle of Penguins looked familiar to those who loved The Isle of Cats, and I think he is a great artist. He did a fantastic job!”

The original Isle of Cats Kickstarter campaign raised more than £460,000 from over 8,100 backers in 2019, and was followed by a £1m-plus campaign for the base game and several expansions in 2021, which was backed by over 12,000 people.

A co-op spin-off title, Race to the Raft, picked up almost £350,000 a year later.

The Isle of Penguins is set to launch on Kickstarter on July 7.

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