Dreadfarer

Dreadfarer is a cosmic horror ttrpg themed around exploration and discovery. You could call it a kind of 1800s imperial SCP game, played solo, with stats and resource tracking and lots of little decisions to make. There's also sketching and journaling, with the goal of creating an artifact of play by the end of the experience---if you're not killed first. You play as an explorer who has sold most of their possessions to go make discoveries in Lemuira, a newly uncovered Pacific archipelago.

The PDF for Dreadfarer is high quality. 220 pages, full color, large text, high contrast, with a few tricky to read fonts but mostly extremely legible on a quick skim.

The interior art is also excellent, using photobashing and distortion to create plausible artifacts. Every piece feels like the foundation for a decent 2010s creepypasta, and they all feel coherent with each other and within the layout. There's even a writing system unique to the book that appears in a few illustrations---I have no idea if it's an actual conlang, but some of the characters do repeat.

In terms of game loop, the basic structure is fairly simple. You choose a relic to go looking for, you traipse off into an unfamiliar country with your provisions, you have harrowing experiences along the way, and then you decide what to do with your discovery.

There is character creation, and this is a game you can lose. Creation is not overwhelmingly technical, but each character class comes with a backstory hook, an hp pool, a quantity of cash, and a unique artifact. The difference between these classes feels good, and shapes gameplay. The displaced noble heir can invest in long term resource generation, and has the starting funds to capitalize on this. The starving youngster recovers health constantly, but loses money just as fast and gains corruption quickly. Several classes are slightly cryptic, enhancing the impression that the game book is meant to be puzzled over.

Expedition planning is slightly random. You choose the pool of locations you might investigate, but then where you go specifically and what's available to find is on a d20. This does keep things breezy, but at the slight cost of some intentionality in play. Also relic duplicates are discarded, making it slightly frustrating when you roll repeats.

Writing-wise, I think a lot of what you're playing Dreadfarer for is to soak in the atmosphere, and with that in mind the writing absolutely does not disappoint. There's a lot of cultural context, a lot of mysterious sites, a lot of small mysteries that piece together into an ominous whole, and you could treat Dreadfarer as a kind of tourism simulator if you wanted to---with the caveat that you are in danger the whole while.

I do think some elements of the game pull against each other. The journaling and sketching that you are instructed to do is a slow and deliberate process that adds weight to the game, but the rolls and combats and resource tracking play quickly and can end your journal prematurely. I don't think this is ultimately a problem, but Dreadfarer may be best for those with a temperament that can enjoy both types of play.

At the same time, Dreadfarer adapts to its structure by having you pass the journal and sketchbook between characters when one is killed. Even if you get a run of bad luck, you won't lose the thing that matters most: your real world artifact of play.

It is also worth stressing that there is an incredibly wide variety of things to encounter in this game, and that they are all very detailed in their implementation. Each zone has four unique biomes, each biome has four encounter types, each encounter has at least two branches, and this is without getting into the integumentary parts of the game like shopping, traveling, and suffering curses.

Rules are provided for a canon ending, as well as something that I think is rare but neat: explicit multiplayer support in a solo game system. You can take a buddy with you into Lemuria, even competing with them for relics.

Overall, I think this is probably a book you want in physical. It's lovely and immersive and has a very well developed sense of itself, traits that will shine through even stronger when you also get the tactility of flipping through it. As for whether it's right for you, I think if you like taking solo games at your own pace, and you like creating art and writing as you go, (and you like cosmic horror,) this will be a good fit. If you are one of the many, many people who's enjoyed Thousand Year Old Vampire, you will likely enjoy Dreadfarer too.

Minor Issues:

-This is probably the nitpickiest note I have givenin a while, but I think the CWs being mostly listed as their full phobia names makes them a little harder to read. Trypophobia is probably fine, since it's such a specific thing that people who are screening for it probably know its name, but I had to look up casadastraphobia.

-Page 127, "If you repeat an Encounter". I do not understand this section. Is it saying that if you reroll an encounter you may repeat it exactly as it went the first time, rolling the same numbers and suffering the same consequences? Or that you can alter the lore of how the encounter happened the previous time? I fully couldn't figure this one out.

-Page 127, "the ant swallowing it gladly" should this be ant-lion?