I got The Complete Book of Solitaire & Patience Games by Albert Morehead & Geoffrey Mott-Smith, and this book reads like an official rule book. I use it to learn new games and memorize the rules, so I can play them by heart. I also read a few ebooks on solitaire to get started. However, I got Classic Games Overload: Card & Puzzle edition in January 2014 and that’s how I learned to play Klondike and other games.
Anyway, playing on 3DS is different than with real cards. With my mini cards I shuffle by putting the cards in several piles to randomize them and doing the Hindu shuffle, which I learned from a video. They are too small to do the riffle shuffle. On an electronic solitaire game, I imagine the deck is shuffled randomly using some type of permutation. It must pick one card from the 52 card deck to be the first card, then pick a card from the remainder of the deck to be the next card, and so on until the whole deck is randomly dealt. The computer shuffles instantly, which makes it easy to jump into a game at any time and keep playing if I want to start a new game. Playing electronic solitaire also naturally enforces the rules.
For the rest of this blog post I will be mostly talking about solitaire in the context of the 2DS/3DS. There are a handful of games available, but the most comprehensive of them is Classic Games Overload. It features 202 variations of solitaire, and that was quite overwhelming at first. There is also a budget game available called Best of Solitaire which appears to use the same engine and has 101 types of solitaire.
Classic Games Overload groups the games by families. Most of them are building games that are synonymous with solitaire, such as Klondike and FreeCell, which are at the top of the list of solitaires by popularity. In the Klondike family there are 28 varieties, and some of these I have tried include Agnes, Gargantua, Easthaven, Gold Rush, and West Cliff, which has a 90% chance of winning and is pretty fun. I win often enough, and I feel a solitaire player plays games they can sometimes or often win, much like any player of single player games.
In some cases, the games have actually nice rules that enable the player to win more often. In Pyramid there is a 7 card reserve and 2 redeals (cycling through the stockpile). A game that could have a 1 in 50 chance of winning becomes as high as 80%. In Eagle Wing, it allows the player to stack up to 3 cards on the wings, raising the chance of winning from 1 in 20 up to 50%.
However, in La Belle Lucie and Trefoil, according to my rule book the player is allowed an extra draw towards the end, which sometimes allows the player to win a blocked game. This extra move has not been programmed in Classic Games Overload, making the games a little harder. These games require me to think and look at the cards to find the ones I can safely play on each other. These games are in the Fan family, and the whole deck is laid out in the initial deal in fans of 3.
I like games that are built down in suit, as opposed to alternating in suit color, because they play elegantly and with less clutter. Another such game is Storehouse, which is a variation of Canfield that has a reserve of 13 cards and is built down in suit on a 4 column tableau. It’s simple and fun, and sometimes comes down to luck, but also relies on paying attention to the cards, which is why another name for solitaire is patience; also probably because some games may take many tries to win.
I had better luck playing Baker’s Dozen with real cards than I did on my 3DS. However, Spanish Patience is a variation of Baker’s Dozen that builds regardless of suit on the foundation, which does make it a little easier. In other words, a 2 of Hearts could go on the Ace of Spades. It doesn’t matter. Bristol is another game that is built regardless of suit and can be won most of the time, which was invented by Morehead and Mott-Smith and is quite nice.
Some of the non-building games include Aces Up, where you discard lower cards of the same suit; Aces Square, where you discard pairs of the same suit; and Elevens, where you discard pairs that equal 11, and discard J, Q, K together as one. Some games like Nestor and Monte Carlo have you discarding pairs of the same rank, quite simply. These non-building games are all laid out differently, and all depend on a lot of luck.
The most well known 2 deck games are probably Spider and Forty Thieves, aka Napoleon at St Helena. There are many variations on each of these, and playing on the 3DS is convenient since I haven’t actually tried playing with 2 decks of physical cards yet. I prefer Spider one suit; I’ve completed it 5 times.
Classic Games Overload also features family games, casino games, and puzzle, tangram, and mahjong games, but for myself, the main draw is the solitaire games. There are many variations, and it can be played with either the stylus or the buttons.
Now on to the other solitaire games for 3DS.
Pocket Card Jockey is a solitaire game with the story of horse racing. The solitaire is a variation called Golf, which is where the cards must be discarded up or down, one after another, until as many of them are gone as possible. The amount of cards can be affected by where you move your horse, and there are some special abilities too. It’s clever and casual, but I wish there was a bit more variety.
ARC Style Solitaire is a game that features two variations, Klondike and Monte Carlo. I really like the look, sound, and feel of this game. The cards and the table are customizable. The song that plays sounds like a medieval waltz. Klondike can be played in 3 different ways, with 1 card draw, 3, or 3 with a limit. I play with the buttons. It also offers you an SOS move to help you win. This game is where I first heard of Monte Carlo, and I like it because it’s a basic matching game that is very dynamic since the cards move when you can’t make anymore matches. Arc style solitaire is a good game, but it only has two types of solitaire, and there isn’t much more to do once both games are complete.
Touch Solitaire is a DSiware game and honestly, there is almost never a reason to buy DSiware when 3DS games are available. However, this caught my attention because it is published by Nintendo. It is playable and has Klondike and Spider. The easy version of Klondike allows the player to move any card into an empty space, while normal is just a standard 3 card draw. Easy Spider is a one deck version where you try to make a sequence of one suit from King to Ace. So it’s kind of like Will o’ the Wisp, which comes from Spiderette, which is a variation of Spider. I beat normal and unlocked hard, which is a two suit version of Spider with 2 decks.
5 in 1 Solitaire is another DSiware title that features Gaps, which is why I bought it. The game of Gaps lays out the whole deck in 4 rows and then removes the aces. The gameplay involves filling up the gaps left by the aces. The other games included are Klondike, FreeCell, Spider, and Golf. Again this is DSiware so there’s almost no reason to buy it.
Finally there are two other games that include solitaire, but it would not be the reason most would buy them. Brain Age: Concentration Training includes Klondike, Spider, and Golf, as well as Peg “solitaire,” which is a different game entirely as it doesn’t use a deck of cards. The Brain Training solitaire games are kind of the same as Touch Solitaire, the DSiWare I mentioned earlier, and relatively easy. Lastly, 3D Game Collection includes FreeCell among its many board games. I think I prefer Eight Off, which is the build-in-suit game that FreeCell is based off.
I’ve been excited to play solitaire during the day with real cards. Most games take less than 10 or 15 minutes. Playing on 3DS is also a great way to stay entertained and busy and learn new games. It is a do-it-yourself hobby that is almost like a mental exercise, and every time is different. My favorite on the 3DS is Classic Games Overload for the amount of content, but the other ones on 3DS are also good, and I’m going to keep playing whenever I can....
