Game review: Solitaire Hop!

I am really not good at games that require a lot of thought. Well, no. That's an incorrect assessment. When I play a video game, I'm usually doing it to relax so I don't want to play something that requires a lot of thought. However, I received an email asking me to try Solitaire Hop. I love receiving game suggestions so I gave it my best. My best sucked a lot.

Here is the game's description: Your favorite elements of Solitaire and Sudoku come crashing together in Solitaire Hop! You'll need lateral thinking and strategy to master "Solitaire Hop!"'s simple mechanic. Take 30 seconds to learn the rules and you'll be hooked!

I love Solitaire. I tend to break it out whenever I'm really bored. Sudoku though? Not so much. It's an OK game but I have other things I'd rather waste my time playing. But I'm not a terrible Sudoku player so I figured this wouldn't be too bad. As it turns out, I am so not the target audience here.

Let's see if I can describe the game. You are given a spread of cards. In order to clear the spread, you need to "hop" the cards next to each other but whether a card is "hoppable" depends on the card's value. You can only hop a card of equal or lower value than your selected card. This is where my problem lies. I can easily find cards of equal or lower value but then you get stuck if you have a card with nothing next to it. So instead of clearing the spread, I end up with an array of cards that aren't next to each other so they can't be cleared. It's just too much thought for my little brain. Perhaps I'd enjoy it if I was a bigger fan of Sudoku. (Sudoku fans? Give the game a try and let me know what you think!) I'll probably poke at the game some more over the next few days but I can't imagine that this will be something I'd add to my list of favored games.

Game review: Fashion Solitaire

I thought Fashion Solitaire sounded interesting so I gave it a try. Basically, you are given a deck of cards with various types of fashion on it. Some cards are dresses, some are pants/skirts, some are tops, some are jewelry and so on. Three models at a time are presented to you and you need to properly attire them with the cards you have available. As with all solitaire games, not all of the cards are available. You need to uncover the cards by using the ones on top. If you put a skirt on model #2, the card under that will become available to you. However, each model has a preference of what they would like to wear. Perhaps model #3 wants to wear something white while model #1 wants some jewelry. You get bonus points for fulfilling these wants. After each round, you get the opportunity to create your own fashions and you'll get more bonus points for using those cards in the game. This game was a lot more fun than I expected. To be honest, I expected something along the lines of Greek Goddesses of Solitaire but this was nothing like it. You end up being focused more on the fashion than the solitaire portion of the game. It's just as much fun designing your own pieces as it is dressing the models. Granted, the game had some annoying parts. For example, I got stuck when I needed some shirts for my girls but all I had available were pants and skirts. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to rearrange things to get the unavailable cards to pop up. So, while it was a little aggravating, I think it gave the game that needed bit of difficulty to keep it from being tedious. I might actually have my daughter try the game out. After all, she likes dressing up her dolls. This isn't all that different really. Dress up is always fun!

Game review: Greek Goddesses of Solitaire

Hades has kidnapped all of the Greek Goddesses. In order to save them, you must beat the God of the Underworld in various games of solitaire. I have to say that the game pretty much delivers what you would expect. Each goddess has a different variation of solitaire that you need to beat in order to rescue her from Hades. In between some of the levels, Hades tries to trick you with a card game. He shows you a card, mixes up all the cards and you need to pick the correct card. It's not particularly difficult.

Overall, the game is dull. It's fairly easy to beat Hades in each card game and when you do save the goddesses, you don't receive any sort of reward. This might be a nice change of pace if you play a lot of solitaire games but it's not something you'll be playing very often.