Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s October 2nd and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.
Table of Contents
Main Feature: What I love about Solatro
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: 10 Print & Play Tips
In Case You Missed It
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?
What I love about Solatro
JASON GREENO // OCTOBER 1, 2026
If you like poker-inspired games and video games, you’ve probably had the pleasure of playing Balatro, the immensely popular roguelike where you build increasingly powerful card combinations to reach wildly escalating scores. The genre has exploded on Steam, and we’re starting to see that influence spread into the board game space, which I think is great. One of those games is Solatro by TechDweeb.
In Solatro, a one-page print-and-play game, you attempt to build poker hands over the course of three hands each round. Each round increases the scoring goal by 25 points, keeping the pressure on the player and the choices interesting. You have a limited number of discards and redraws per round, so you’re constantly challenged with the question: Is now the right time to “go for it”?
At first, it seems like the game might be going easy on you, but you quickly start to feel the pressure creep in. While you have access to powerful upgrades that you can purchase at the end of a round, they are finite consumables. During my playthrough, I realized I needed to plan ahead if I was going to make a push for a high score in the later rounds.
What Do You Need to Play?
Short answer? Not much. A deck of playing cards, including two Jokers; a few tokens to track your upgrade purchases; a way to track your score across three hands; and a round and score-goal tracker.
If you’d like to upgrade your print-and-play games, this one certainly leaves plenty of room to do so. I saw online that some players added poker chips. I’d love to find a cool box and some tokens to add to the game’s charm.
Rules Clarifications
Since the rules and components are all on one page, I did have to check the itch.io comments for a few clarifications. I’ll share those below to save you some time:
Shoppe Upgrades: These are consumable, but they can be repurchased at the end of a round. If you don’t use them, they stay with you into the next round.
Extra Points above the round’s scoring goal: These are what you use to buy Shoppe Upgrades, but they do not roll over to the next round. Spend ’em while you’ve got ’em.
Discards: These are a finite resource per round not hand, so use them sparingly!
Joker Discard Penalty: I forgot to Bank my Joker and draw a replacement card. If you draw another Joker while you’re still holding the first one, however, you lose both, so don’t hold onto it for too long!
Expansions? Homebrew?
This feels like a game that is ripe with possibilities for new themes, expansions, and homebrew rules. BGG has some player-created content you might want to check out.
Here are a few ideas I had:
Adversaries: Playing against rival characters from whatever genre suits your fancy could be a fun way to introduce variable rules:
Tax Collector: Hands containing Diamonds are worth one reward tier lower, to a minimum reward of 5.
Jealous Lover: Lose a Shoppe Reward if your played hand includes Hearts.
Highway Thief: Each Spade in your played hand subtracts 5 points from your score.
Black Knight: Each Spade in your opening hand increases the round’s target score by 10.
Find Solatro and Other Great Games From TechDweeb
As previously mentioned, you can grab Solatro on itch.io, along with other microgames like Hero-ish, which I played recently and discussed here on Substack.
Want to support PNP Arcade?
Everything here is free to read, and I’d like to keep it that way. If you enjoy the articles, game discoveries, tutorials, and other PNP nonsense I send your way, you can become a paid subscriber to help support the time that goes into making it all happen. No paywalls. Just a way to toss a few bucks in the tip jar if you’d like to help keep PNP Arcade going.
The Walden Paradox (Exeunt Press)
You play as Henry David Thoreau during his final months at Walden Pond, which already sounds like a fairly peaceful journaling game. Then the time anomalies start showing up.
Each month brings a new visitor, and you’ll need to watch for peculiar details that suggest something is seriously wrong with time. It uses a standard deck of cards, two dice, and a notebook, and there’s even a smaller trifold version if you want something easier to print.
Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Dire Golem
The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. The Smash boss ability can be stacked with Shocked to create a chain of effects. This chain can cause a load of hurt to the heroes. Link.
Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.
10 Print & Play Tips
Joey Evans from The Dice Tower shares ten practical tips for making and organizing print-and-play games.
There are ideas for cutting, storing components, improving table presence, and even repurposing pieces from inexpensive thrift-store games. It’s a nice mix of beginner advice and little tricks that longtime PNP builders may not have considered.
Fintastic
Fintastic is a small solo fishing puzzle built from only 18 cards.
You arrange overlapping water cards as you guide your float toward a fish and then attempt to reel it back to shore. Along the way, the placement of plants and wildlife can either help or hurt your final score. There are three fishing locations with different scoring conditions, and reaching 20 points means you’ve managed to catch the legendary Mighty Muskie.
It plays in about 15 minutes, is name-your-own-price, and requires only 18 cards and a single page of rules.
Fintastic from Itch.io
Here’s a PNP-related crowdfunding campaign that we thought you might find interesting:
The Last in the Woods
The Last in the Woods is a competitive survival card game in which two to four players attempt to outlast one another in the wilderness.
You’ll gather resources, craft equipment, deal with changing events, and use your character’s particular survival ability to stay in the game a little longer than everyone else. The campaign is currently accepting late pledges and includes a Print and Play edition.
Kart
The latest campaign from Leder Games is about neighborhood kids racing ridiculous homemade vehicles built from whatever they could find in garages and dumpsters.
Kart is a two-to-four-player downhill racing game where you build your vehicle, look for helpful shortcuts, and try to survive the chaos created by the other racers. The campaign includes downloadable Print and Play files if you’d like to get the game onto the table before deciding whether to back it. The game is illustrated by Kyle Armstrong, and the Kickstarter ends October 6.
Check out the Kickstarter
Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.
Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.
Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.
Would you like to submit a PNP Game?
With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.
Click this link to submit information about a game
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Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.