I want to make it perfectly clear, here at the top, that I do in fact have friends.Tabletop gaming is — generally speaking — a group hobby. Games are fantastic at facilitating interesting and exciting interactions between people, even strangers. It’s why I fell in love with them and why I continue to play them.But the older I’ve gotten, the harder it’s become to get my friend group to spend hours building ancient civilizations or pretending to be a 19th-century British industrialist.For me, solo board games help fill in the gaps between group gaming nights. Like puzzles or other high-focus activities, single-player board games can put you in a flow state, completely absorbed by the task in front of you. And as a bonus, you never have to wait on that one friend who always takes hours figuring out their next move.We’ve waded through a lot of single-player games to recommend four excellent choices. Picks include tense slasher-film simulations, a tabletop interpretation of an Atari classic, a balancing act of protecting a town from evil without being persecuted because of it, and a campaign game focused on stopping flooding in ancient China.