Joshua Kronengold

To me, 1-person games are quite various, but making 1-person games into multi-person contests makes them all the same, to a fair degree. Shot put and golf are at least as much of a class as tennis and volleyball, because shotput and gold are both contests rather than sport games. I haven't seen Race for the Galaxy, but your implicit description of it makes it seem like a member of the golf-shot put class.