Wreckland Run Brings Solo Thrills To The Table

Renegade Game Studios and renowned designer Scott Almes have announced a new dieselpunk car combat single-player board game, Wreckland Run, is coming to Kickstarter.


Published: January 12, 2022 2:29 PM /

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A promotional image of Wreckland Run with weaponized cars attacking eachother

Renegade Game Studios has teamed up with Scott Almes and T.C. Petty III once again for a new project coming to Kickstarter: Wreckland Run. It is a new installment in the studio's Solo Hero series, a collection of single-player only board games, and it is all about delivering an action-packed post-apocalyptic vehicle combat experience.

We reached out to Almes with questions about Wreckland Run, which he was glad to answer. While the official press release by Renegade didn't go into exact details about the game itself, Almes was able to to discuss his creative vision for the project. First, there was the key influence of post-apocalyptic movies and massive car chases like Mad Max. Almes stated, " I wanted something that felt like you were a little car against a horde of diesel-chugging, nothing-to-lose, hulking vehicles with an army behind them. I wanted crazy weapons with clever ways of using them. This definitely led to the car chase segments of the game, and the overall feel of the experience."

Second, Almes mentioned that Wreckland Run would have car customization. Almes mentioned that he always enjoyed building things, even mentioning Lego as a kid, and brought that kind of personal creative expression into this game. Of course, he also mentioned there's a good chance that custom car will be torn to pieces by machine gun fire. But by the same token, that very labor of love can leave war rigs mere craters in the wasteland.

Artwork of several armed vehicles fighting in a wasteland
We are War Boys! Image Credit: Renegade Game Studios

Since Wreckland Run has been designed as a Solo Hero game, we asked about the game's accessibility and ease of set up. Almes was happy to share. "The game itself has a simple framework, and is similar in weight to my previous game in the series Warp’s Edge. The complexity of the game comes when you learn how the different elements interact with one another. You’ll learn how to chain different parts together to get enemies in the right location to blow them away. You’ll learn how to select parts in a way that you’ll be able to maximize a wide range of dice. There’s a lot to discover under the design’s easy to learn system."

Almes was also quick to discuss the difficulties that come with designing a single-player experience like Wreckland Run. "In a multiplayer game, there is an amount of table talk and social interaction that can help the experience. If your game is a bit weak in decisions, but fun in interactivity, the game can still be a blast. In a solo game, the decisions space and theme have to drive the player’s enjoyment. So, that’s what I find the biggest challenge for a solo game. Your game’s decisions and challenges are put under a microscope, so you have to be extra diligent with your playtesting and balancing steps."

The Kickstarter campaign for Wreckland Run goes live February 8.

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Ever since he was small, Tyler Chancey has had a deep, abiding love for video games and a tendency to think and overanalyze everything he enjoyed. This… More about Tyler