Solitaire 2

Solitaire is probably the most popular card game out there, mainly because it used to come bundled with the operating system. However, hundreds of iterations have been released over the years, some of which are more polished than others. In essence, it depends on how serious you are about the subject, because the options at your disposal range from simple to incredibly complex.

Solitaire 2 is a basic card game that uses the original Solitaire rules and a very simple interface to present it all. There are no new ideas at work here, no multiple game modes and no special gimmicks when it comes to the graphics or the interface. Thus, unless you have yet to try a similar game until now, this is most likely be a huge disappointment.

To begin with, the gameplay is a bit disorienting, in the sense that you cannot draw more cards or do anything of the sort. Instead, you have the possibility to place any card in the empty slots at the top, which allows you to reach the desired cards at the bottom of each stack. There’s no tutorial to tell you about this, on the other hand, so it takes a while until you learn about it.

In case you ever get stuck and don’t know how to continue, you can use the hint system and let the game show you the next valid move. However, if you use this two times in a row it just shows you the previous move reversed, which is not very helpful. You can also go back one move in case you make a mistake, and this function is a lot more useful than the hint.

Lastly, the interface is about as simple as it can get, since there’s nothing but the cards and the menu at the top to look at. The cards themselves are very basic too, although that’s rarely important in a game such as this one. It would be nice to see a much more polished interface, but then again the rest of the game needs more work before that starts to matter.

In the end, Solitaire 2 does not have enough fun features to keep you playing for very long, and there are much better alternatives out there. Hence, the next iteration in the series needs to improve a lot in order to stand a chance in this niche.