Only a month has passed since the App Store opened, and thanks to 12 separate developers, there are literally 19 different Solitaire card games to choose from today for the iPhone and iPod touch – you’d have to spend $75 to try them all. So that’s what we’ve done, canvassing the entire collection of titles to help you decide which one or two will be best for you.
There’s good news for players on a budget: there are some good free Solitaire titles, so you don’t need to shell out for the more expensive options if you just want to play a basic card game. Our top paid picks are Mondo Solitaire and Solitaire Forever, with the best free picks going to Cookie Bonus Solitaire – Free and Sol Free Solitaire. Skip right to them if you only want the best of the bunch; otherwise read straight through for all the gory details.
Acid Solitaire Collection
Acid Solitaire Collection ($10) by Red Mercury is amongst the most interesting Solitaire titles we’ve reviewed, and though we wouldn’t say it’s worth the price relative to some of our top picks, it’s a nicely developed piece of software. Unlike some of the games here, it shifts cleanly between horizontal and vertical presentation modes, and though the audio portion consists merely of infrequent sound effects, the gameplay is what shines.
While there are only three games to choose from—Spider, Klondike Solitaire, and Freecell—and you get one piece of background art per game, the art’s nice, and Red Mercury’s card dragging and auto-complete interface is pretty good. Acid Solitaire has millions of pre-set games to play, most in Freecell, and tracks progress in multiple games at once. It also has a good hint, redo, and undo system. We’d consider it worthy of a general recommendation if it wasn’t so expensive relative to what you get; our top picks offer many more games to choose from, as well as greater interface customization. iLounge Rating: B-.
Cookie Bonus Solitaire
Cookie Bonus Solitaire ($3) and Cookie Bonus Solitaire – Free (Free) by Amplified Games are cartoony, enhanced versions of Klondike with one major difference: the free version has in-game advertising from JCPenney’s, while the paid version doesn’t. In our view, it’s not worth the $3 to skip the ad, and frankly, we wouldn’t be hugely bothered to see a simple thing like that pop up in the future if it can effectively remove an app’s cost to consumers.
While Cookie Bonus Solitaire’s cutesy interface may not make sense at first, the game has been designed to make classic Klondike a little more fun. Certain cards are marked with bonus points or cookie rewards that help you complete the game more quickly, and there’s a sidebar with cheats to ease the gameplay. One will show you all the face down cards, another reshuffles the deck, and so on. The emphasis in this game is fun, rather than sophistication. Our only knocks on it are the scattered touch interface, which makes you drag rather than using easy tapping to complete certain motions, though it toes auto-complete under certain conditions; similarly, there’s no music, just plain sound effects.
There’s also an online mode that lets users chat with other users, and get score updates while they’re playing. The feature worked after registration when we visited, and we found the rooms full of players, but there was some adult language on display; it’s not a great idea for younger players to visit until Amplified puts some more protection in place. Other than these little issues, the free version of Cookie Bonus Solitaire is definitely worth checking out; we’d pass on the paid version unless you really can’t stand small ads. iLounge Rating – Cookie Bonus Solitaire – Free: B+. iLounge Rating – Cookie Bonus Solitaire: B-.
Demon Solitaire and Las Vegas Solitaire
It’s hard to feel enthusiastic about either Demon Solitaire ($1) or Las Vegas Solitaire ($3) from Cliff Maier. These are both extremely plain, one rule set games that have fine card animations but little else going for them.
With a red background, Demon Solitaire is a relatively hard Solitaire variant that’s presented solely in vertical mode, with no real frills to speak of; it’s silent. Las Vegas Solitaire starts in vertical mode, but can also rotate onto its side, albeit with an awful-looking grainy background. The latter title provides four so-so looking card backs to choose from, while Demon doesn’t offer any sort of visual customization; the only extra here is a second screen to show you the rules.
It would be easy to guess that the developer spent more time creating interesting iPhone menu icons for these titles than it did on actual game development. As a concept, the name “Las Vegas Solitaire” is almost funny in that there’s nothing Las Vegas about the experience except for a dollar tally on the screen; there isn’t a sophisticated gambling system, real background art, or anything else here to compare with the Vegas-style graphics and music in Platinum Solitaire. Given how good some of the iPhone’s free card games are, we wouldn’t spend a dollar on either of these. iLounge Ratings: D.
MobilityWare Freecell, Pyramid, and Solitaire
As with the above titles from Cliff Maier, MobilityWare obviously thought that it could make more money from the App Store by selling individual card games separately than bundling them together. The pitfall, unfortunately, is that none of these three titles – Freecell ($2), Pyramid ($1), or Solitaire ($2) – would be worth buying individually or together.
All of them are pretty mediocre, limited versions of their respective games.
The presentation is as boring as these titles get; they’re played vertically only, with no screen rotation, and the graphics are as forgettable as they come: bland green backgrounds, bland simple cards. There’s no board customization except in Solitaire, which lets you switch between oversized, more readable cards and the “classic” ones. You’re given simple sound effects with no music.
As we’ve noted in other Solitaire reviews, there are better games out there for free than these titles judged either individually or collectively; there were, in fact, equally unimpressive web-based Solitaire titles for the iPhone before applications were even available for sale. We’d pass on them; they’re demo-quality, and not worth spending money on. iLounge Ratings: D.
Mondo Solitaire
Though it’s comparatively expensive, Mondo Solitaire ($10) by Ambrosia Software is definitely one of the best options in this bunch. Unlike so many of the other games here, it’s obvious from the title screen to the options and variety of built-in card games that Mondo Solitaire was professionally developed.
The most important feature for serious card players is Mondo’s inclusion of just over one hundred different types of solitaire games, each with on-screen rules, internal links to related games, and interesting ways of tracking statistics. This isn’t just Klondike, Spider, and Freecell; you get tons of different board layouts to choose from, providing a nearly infinite amount of replayability and opportunities to learn different rules.
We were also impressed to find that Mondo includes seven backgrounds or your choice of background photos, plus eight types of card backs. While we’d have really liked the ability to customize the cards further, the interface is extremely clean, and makes very nice use of the iPhone’s display. There’s a well-done combination dragging and auto-complete interface with some cool touches, including a magnifying glass to see too-small cards and a neat dotted line to indicate where certain cards are being moved; the only issue with the interface is a confusing paperclip interface that’s supposed to help you pick multiple cards to move at once, but in our experience was unintuitively implemented.
While we really don’t think Solitaire games are worthy of $10 asking prices relative to the highly sophisticated 3-D titles that are appearing on the iPhone at that level, Mondo Solitaire comes pretty close to being worthy of some premium. If you’re looking for a very cleanly designed Solitaire title with plenty of depth, this should be one of the first titles you check out. iLounge Rating: B+.
Platinum Solitaire
We’ve generally been pretty big fans of Gameloft as an iPod and iPhone developer, but we weren’t quite as taken with Platinum Solitaire ($4). On the positive side, it feels the most like a completely developed “game” of all of the titles in this roundup—good artwork, some music, and a casino quest mode provide different things to see, hear, and do within the title. But the interface and depth are only so-so by contrast with its best competitors.
Gameloft has again used animated on-screen characters to guide you through the game, employing cartoony tutors and casino hosts to help break the visuals up from monotonous tables and cards. This is also the rare iPhone Solitaire game to include a gambling mode; it actually has a structured stage play system with five locked casinos and one unlocked in different world settings. While not quite the rival of Apple’s Texas Hold’em in number or detail of the casino worlds, at least Gameloft has tried.
Similarly, this is one of very few iPhone card games to include some music, and it’s casino-style no less, but it’s short-lived and limited; Gameloft lets you turn it off in favor of your iPod library. The included sound effects are very simple.
Our view of this title is influenced by competing considerations: first, while it’s limited in depth by comparison with the best titles out there, featuring only six different games (Klondike, Golf, Pyramid, Freecell, Yukon, Spiders) to choose from, it sells for only $4, which seems reasonable given the quantity and quality of what’s inside. Additionally, while the game offers better than typical tutorials, guiding you through your first game of a given ruleset, the interface is a little kludgy, and doesn’t feel as if it’s been totally optimized for the iPhone OS. We’d call Platinum Solitare a flat B overall for the price; it’s worth checking out if having a bit more structure in gameplay appeals to you. iLounge Rating: B.
Pyramid Solitaire
Relatively simple in execution, Pyramid Solitaire ($5) and Pyramid Solitaire Lite (Free) by Seahorse Software are virtually the same game, separated by $5 in cash and a few settings. Seahorse presents the classic Pyramid solitaire game with an interesting mosaic background and Egyptian-styled cards, offering a single pyramid deck in the free version and either one or two pyramids at once in the $5 version. That’s the single biggest change between them; both are based on the concept of starting at the bottom and eliminating sets of cards totaling 13 in value.
You also get the ability to pick the winning criteria—eliminate all cards or the pyramid only—in the paid version, while the free version doesn’t give you the choice; similarly, you can pick the number of redeals, the direction of the deck draw, and overlap matching in the $5 version. Both Pyramid Solitaire and Pyramid Solitaire Light are silent and otherwise plain.
Neither floated our boat, but the Light version is a fine introduction to this particular Solitaire variant given that you can’t (yet) find Pyramid for free elsewhere. We wouldn’t pay $5 for the full version, but give Light a shot if you’re intrigued by the idea of point-matching Solitaire. iLounge Rating – Pyramid Solitaire Lite: C+. iLounge Rating – Pyramid Solitaire: D+.
Sol Free, Solebon, and Wee Spider Solitaire
Perhaps because the price tags were so high for the paid versions of these apps, we were expecting quite a bit from Smallware’s Solebon Solitare ($10) and Wee Spider Solitaire ($5). However, we came away with the impression that both of these titles were overpriced for what they offered, and wound up liking the company’s Sol Free Solitaire (Free) much more.
Sol Free has three rule-limited versions of card games that are also offered elsewhere: the traditional Klondike, here restricted to the popular, easier 3-card deal rule, plus Baker’s Game and Demon versions of Solitaire. All of these games are offered on a relatively plain board that’s presented solely in vertical orientation. While Smallware’s presentation of these titles isn’t quite up to snuff with Apple’s latest iPod nano and classic version of Klondike, as it’s missing customization features, and the interface is tap only rather than drag-based, it’s very nice for a free game; this would be the one we’d grab right away to play Solitaire on the iPhone or iPod touch without shelling out for a more expensive version of the title. iLounge rating: B.
Solebon is supposed to be Smallware’s flagship title, offering a selection of 20 games on top of the same interface found in Sol Free. There aren’t any rule adjustments here, so one of the 20 games is the Klondike Deal 3 found in the free title, and another is the Deal 1 version. Again, the games are presented plainly on a brown background with no choice of art or cards, and there’s no audio to speak of apart from the sound of a shuffling deck. It just doesn’t seem like it’s worth paying $10 for the added titles; that sort of ransom would be far better spent on Mondo Solitaire or Solitaire City, less on Solitaire Forever. iLounge rating: C-.
Finally, Wee Spider Solitaire presents seven Solitaire games, though the number’s again a little misleading: Smallware includes three versions of Spider in that number. Unlike Sol Free and Solebon, these games are presented within a horizontal orientation only, and while you get very readable cards and a clean interface, there are again no settings here, no customization, and no dragging—just tapping. Wee Spider could and should really be blended into Solebon, then enhanced with a better overall interface. iLounge rating: C-.
Solitaire CAO
Though we don’t like to harp on how much demo-quality software there is in the App Store at this point, Solitaire CAO ($5) by Mike Orr is a poster child for this problem; it looks like something you’d see on a Windows shareware site. To its credit, it presents Klondike in vertical mode, allowing you to choose from several backgrounds and types of cards, changing both their fronts and backs.
While it plays a fine game of Klondike, the art, especially in the backgrounds, is really rough and amateurish. There are four mediocre backgrounds, 12 so-so card backs, and a large card icon graphic mode so you can see cards better. As with some of the other so-so Solitaire titles we’ve seen, the interface doesn’t involve dragging or other gestures, and instead relies only on tapping, which isn’t great. Once again, our objection to demo-quality games like this isn’t so much that they exist in the App Store, but that people are trying to charge $5 for them; you can do better for free. iLounge Rating: D.
Solitaire City
Another of the actually impressive titles in this collection is Solitaire City ($10) by Digital Smoke, though what’s good here is more under the hood than on the surface. Unlike most of the other games in this roundup, Solitaire City actually includes an online leaderboard, as well as in-game tracking of your best performances, preventing you from putting scores online unless they’ve been achieved under strict competition timing conditions. As Digital Smoke realized that online score tracking can consume a lot of data when you’re on the cellular network, the online leaderboard is now opt-in; in other words, it can be turned on or off.
In Office Space parlance, Solitaire City has just enough visual flair to meet our threshold for doing more than the bare minimum. The game has a nice particle effect system for glossing up the card piles, as well as seven backgrounds and three similar but slightly different card sets, a number that has increased from the original release. There’s no music, but there are card sound effects, and some nice dragging and dealing animations to keep the game interesting.
Other little touches are also nice. You get 13 popular Solitaire games to choose from, each with multiple rule options; all are presented vertically or horizontally. While Digital Smoke’s menuing and option selection interfaces could use a little bit of streamlining, the number of options is certainly appreciated. Solitaire City also offers a tutorial before any game you haven’t played before.
If there’s anything that keeps this title from being an absolute top option, it’s the high price, which at this point has us expecting more games, simpler options, and a bit more glitz.