[h1]Better Than Solitaire, Except For The Solitaire[/h1]
[quote]Please [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38944951-Bottom-of-the-Dumpster-Fire/]follow my Steam Curator for more interesting games like this[/url] and [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mNWqud-yhQ]feel free to watch this review in video format[/url].[/quote]
So, let's say you're looking up Solitaire games to replace the one that comes with Windows. While this game comes with Klondike, the format that's used for Microsoft Solitaire, it's but a mere bonus to the central core of the game.
This is actually a completely different beast, with a single foundation pile, and you can move cards onto it that are either one higher or one lower of any suit. This way, you can draw cards like J-10-J-Q-K-A-2-A-K and it's considered perfectly acceptable. If you can't put any cards into the pile, you can draw an additional card or play one of your bonus cards to keep your existing chain going. If you chain enough cards together, you get a gold multiplier, and at the end, you can take the gold you've gotten to obtain extra powerups, like being able to remove a card at no cost, to getting a wild card, or to get more cards in your deck when you start.
I've been enjoying playing it, to be honest, it's a great game to unwind and to stimulate the mind a little bit. If basic Solitaire has gotten boring, this comes with a good 300 levels of the puzzle mechanic, and if you try to get all the hidden emeralds in the level, you can use those to build up a castle for a wallpaper you can set your desktop to. If you try to full-clear the board, which is much more difficult, you can get up to 3 stars for completing a level, which you can then use to get the bonus games, which includes a dozen and a half variations on Solitaire, and I don't mean like minor variations; there are big changes to the rules for each of them, from FreeCell to dumping Twenty cards at a time and trying to fill out two boards at once.
Unfortunately, the actual rules of the bonus games are implemented wrong. In Klondike, if you for example, send a card to the foundation pile, you can't pull it out again, unlike in Microsoft's version, as well as the real game, and if you have Auto-play on, the game will lock away your cards from you. I have ended up in situations that were unwinnable because of this, and it's genuinely infuriating when it happens. On top of that, the hint system the game offers is honestly useless, thinking that moving a card back and forth is the best course of action.
Lastly, the music. It's all right, that's all I can say. There's a sister game to this called Jewel Match Atlantis Solitaire, which has far more memorable tracks, but this title? At worst they're inoffensive, at best, they're not quite memorable. While there is a sound effect I absolutely despise hearing, the music is neither so bad that I want to turn it off, nor so good that I can hum it after I turn the game off.
Overall, I'd say that full price is a fair price for the game, but it has gone on sale for good discounts, and I personally picked it up from a fairly large game bundle that'll expire in a few days' time. If you need a Solitaire replacement now, you can't really go more wrong than this, but if you can wait, wishlist it until the next sale. It was worth the price I paid for it, at least.
