

Klondike is the same game played countless times over where you alternate red and black descending numbers on the playing field, and have to find (and build up on) the four aces.įreeCell again has the build on red and black principle, and find the aces, but limits you to four 'spaces' to move cards around in. I suspect that most players will default to Klondike and FreeCell as their card games of choice. Five Solitaire games are included in this bundle, all of which will be familiar to the digital patience player. From there the usual menu choices are available. The menu charms are hidden away, but a quick tap on a 'dead' part of the screen will see it return. While some games suit the portrait mode, with long sequences of cards running from the top to the bottom of the screen, others, such as FreeCell, work far better in landscape than portrait. Thankfully, this game is not locked into landscape mode (in the way that the Mahjong title is forced to stay in a single orientation). That said, Microsoft Solitaire Collection does not carry the same cross-platform baggage as the two previous titles. As one of the earliest sanctioned batch of apps from Microsoft that are 'multi-platform' in the Windows world, mistakes are going to be made. It's an interface that is partially compromised on Windows Phone because it is ported from Windows 8. All three of these titles, developed by Arkadium, share a common user interface and attributes. When it did arrive last month, it was joined by Mahjong ( reviewed here) and Minesweeper ( reviewed here). It was included 'out of the box' in Windows Mobile, and looking back, it's unusual that it has taken so long to arrive on Windows Phone with Redmond's blessing. Solitaire has a long history with Microsoft, being present in almost all the desktop GUI's since a mouse was introduced, to help give basic training on clicking, dragging, dropping, and window management.
