Game Review: Faerie Solitaire
I’m a bit late posting this because every time I went to get another screenshot or check a fact, I got sucked into playing a few hands of Faerie Solitaire.
Faerie Solitaire from SubSoap is a new casual game, mixing a cute fantasy story with basic solitaire. I’ve said before that the best games have simple rules, with many variations and strategies. In Faerie Solitaire, you are given a foundation card, and you can either play one card higher or one card lower than the foundation card. A played card becomes the new foundation card, and you do it again. You could easily teach a child to look for a number one higher or one lower than the selected card.
As you play more hands, different hands have a different card layout, including special layouts with unavailable cards in thorn patches or ice. Special cards and events pop us randomly as well, offering bonuses and minigames. The random element made the solid solitaire game that much more addictive for me.
Because the hidden object games have a finite pool of backgrounds and items, it soon became more of a memory game than a hidden objects game. Which is great because I think hidden objects are overdone, they start to feel like filler because they’re the default of the casual games genre.
I sometimes find it annoying when there’s a lot of game to be unlocked. In some cases, it seems like a tacit aknowledgement from the developers that some parts of the game are good and some parts are lame, and to make the game longer, you’ve got to grind through the lame to get to the good bits. When I reviewed GardenParty World, I talked about how not needing a game for the system of working at a dull minigame to earn spending points. GardenParty World is hardly the only offender here, I was also frustrated by unlocking the chance to play indentical levels in Fashion Solitaire. But Faerie Solitaire had a system of power-ups and unlockable features that kept me excited about the next add-on without leaving me feeling like the developers had greyed out most of the game.
In their Faerie Solitaire press release, Subsoap promised strong production values. They delivered, there are no awkward cutscenes or grammatically painful instructions, the usual hallmarks of an indie studio. But what really ties it together is the movie-score music.
This is not an all-encompassing story game but I don’t think it’s meant to be. You won’t be daydreaming at work, thinking about getting home to play Faerie Solitaire. This is a quality solitaire game that had my boyfriend looking over my shoulder. Drawing in other people to kibbutz is a mark of a great solitaire game!
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Tags: casual, Casual games, ds, e3, EA, Faerie Solitaire, fantasy, fashion solitaire, game, games, GardenParty, hidden object, hidden objects, indie, music, my boyfriend, pc, Press release, raw, RoM, solitaire, Subsoap, war
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Links to this Post
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Faerie Solitaire Buzz | CasualInsider.com — April 9, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
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Simpson’s Paradox » Faerie Solitaire Review — August 18, 2009 @ 12:33 pm
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What’s New On ThumbGods : HyperGadget — January 23, 2010 @ 7:14 am
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