Colostle – A Solo Tabletop Role Playing Experience
Nich Angell’s Colostle begins with an architectural impossibility and treats it not as allegory but as environment. The game’s world exists entirely inside a single structure: a castle of such scale that seas, cities, plains, and ruins occupy its interior. There is no exterior geography, no sky beyond stone vaults and distant ceilings. The inhabitants of this world do not search for an outside. They live among corridors that stretch for miles and doorways that open onto regions rather than rooms. The name Colostle—a contraction of “colossal castle”—functions less as wordplay than as a statement of physical law.
Published as a solo tabletop role-playing game, Colostle stands apart from the mechanical “crunch” of many contemporary RPGs. While it utilizes a single six-sided die to dictate the unpredictable maneuvers of enemies in combat, the vast majority of play is mediated through a standard deck of playing cards and a written journal kept by the player. The journal is not ancillary documentation; it is the primary site of play. What matters is not what is rolled, but what is written.
A Wayward Wanderer of Colostle
The base rulebook establishes this framework with deliberate restraint. Players create a character known as a Wayward—one called to leave their home and wander the heights—selecting from a small set of archetypes defined by narrative posture rather than numerical complexity. Advancement is subtle. There are no elaborate systems to master, no optimization paths to pursue. Progress emerges through accumulation of experience in the literal sense: encounters survived, spaces crossed, objects recovered, and patterns noticed.
Movement and discovery are governed by card draws from the “Path” deck. Each suit corresponds to a category of circumstance—landscape, treasure, combat, or social encounter—and each card value points to a prompt rather than a binary outcome. A drawn card might suggest a breathtaking environmental shift or a moment of quiet passage. Resolution is interpretive. The player reads the prompt, responds in prose, and continues forward. The system refuses closure. It frames events without exhausting them, leaving meaning to be developed through continuity rather than calculation.
Animated Abstract Structures
The most prominent figures within the Colostle are the Rooks: vast, animate structures that wander the Roomlands. They resemble walking fortresses or fragments of architecture set in motion. Rooks function as both adversaries and landmarks, their presence shaping the world around them. Confrontations with them are abstracted, resolved through prompts and narrative choice rather than spatial tactics. What matters is consequence—what is gained, what is lost, what changes afterward—not the granular mechanics of the struggle itself.
The world’s peculiar coherence is found in the tension between the Roomlands and the Craglands. The “rooms” are massive biomes contained within walls—an inland sea with tides that strike masonry, or a forest growing toward a ceiling sun. Connecting them are the Craglands, the claustrophobic, labyrinthine crawl-spaces of the castle’s inner workings. These spaces are sketched rather than mapped. The rulebook provides tone and constraint but resists exhaustive description, leaving the player to fill in the gaps. The result is a world that feels internally consistent without being overdetermined, governed by rules that are unfamiliar but stable.
A Visual Treat to Explore
Visually, Colostle reinforces this sense of scale and restraint. The artwork favors stark compositions and muted tones. Figures are often small, their vulnerability emphasized against immense architectural backdrops. Rooks appear not as fantastical monsters but as inevitabilities—structures that happen to move. The images do not instruct so much as delimit, establishing a narrow tonal corridor within which imagination can operate.
The physical design of the book reflects the same philosophy. Layout is spare and legible. Tables are concise, prompts economical. The book presents itself as a working object rather than a display piece, meant to be returned to repeatedly and marked by use. Although conceived primarily for solo play, an optional cooperative mode allows two players to share the burden of discovery, though the core remains firmly rooted in the act of journaling.
What distinguishes Colostle is not novelty of mechanics but clarity of intention. It does not attempt to simulate a world so much as create conditions for attention. The castle does not demand conquest or explanation. It offers space, prompts, and silence. The rest is left to the person at the table, turning cards and writing what they find.
Colostle, created by Nich Angell, is a solo tabletop role-playing game set within an impossibly vast, infinite castle containing entire biomes, oceans, and civilizations. Shifting away from traditional RPG tropes like dice and complex stats, the game utilizes a standard deck of playing cards and a journaling mechanic to drive exploration and discovery. Players take on the role of a “Wayward,” navigating “Roomlands” and encountering “Rooks”—towering, sentient stone automatons. With its minimalist design, evocative monochrome art, and focus on narrative atmosphere over tactical simulation, Colostle offers a meditative and imaginative experience where the primary goal is not to conquer the world, but to witness and record its endless wonders.
Where to Buy Colostle
To support the creator directly and ensure you are getting the official versions of the book and its various expansions, you should visit the official Colostle website at Colostle.com.
Available Colostle Products:
The Base Rulebook: Everything you need to start your journey as a Wayward.
The Roomlands: A major expansion that provides a more guided narrative and deeper world-building.
Job Packs: Card-based expansions that add specific roles and unique prompts to your gameplay.
The Kyodai: A specialized expansion exploring the mechanical giants of the castle.
