Klondike Solitaire

Genre: Card Game (Solitaire – Klondike)

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Solitaire Deluxe Bundle – 3 in 1 along with Freecel Solitaire Deluxe and Spider Solitaire. It is also included in 15 in 1 Family Games Mega Collection along with 2048 Battles, Adrenaline Rush – Miami Drive, Airborne Grannies, Bubble Cats Rescue, Classic Games Collection Vol. 1, Classic Games Collection Vol. 2, Flowlines VS, Go! Fish Go!, Go Kart Mania, Jet Ski Rush, Ludomania, Pet Shop Snacks, Pocket Foosball, and Quick Golf.)

Klondike Solitaire, released on Nintendo Switch in 2019, is a version of the Card Game of the same name. As this game is a classic card game and likely older than anyone currently reading this review, I’ll be focusing mainly on the presentation, features, options, and performance of this game.

The presentation here is quite good, giving players a variety of unlockable skins for card fronts, backs, and tables, all with a fair amount of detail. The tables actually have nice lighting and shadow effects to make them feel like real places, with the tables I played designed to appear like different kinds of coffee shops or diners, complete with a murmur of diners in the room, and in one case, the lights of cards passing by on the night road presumably nearby. While this adds a nice touch of realism, it’s also a tiny bit frustrating, as these lighting conditions can be distracting, and the darkness of these locales can make the cards a bit harder to see. Also, as these skins are unlockable, I found it odd that the only table you have unlocked at the start is the particularly distracting one with the car lights flashing by. The game also has a variety of music that’s apparently public domain, but it’s still decent and there’s a good variety… although that is, again, after you unlock it.

Unfortunately, this makes for a bit of frustration, as unlocks are not selected by the player, but simply happen automatically at regular intervals when the player has reached certain point thresholds. Want new music? Too bad, card skin. Want a new table? You need to wait until the game unlocks it for you. At the very least, the game does still award you points even if you lose a game, something that’s important for a Solitaire game that is at times unwinnable.

In addition to the various skins, players do have some decent options to choose from for game variants – you can play with normal point-scoring rules or Vegas rules, and you can choose draw one or draw three variants. Unfortunately, that’s about it as far as options go – there’s no option to have the game automatically weed out unwinnable games, for example. Also, for those who have never played Klondike Solitaire before, there’s no tutorial, but there is a decent (but not great) “How to Play”.

The controls here are pretty good, although the game makes the odd choice to make players manually select whether they want to use gamepad or touch controls, rather than both being enabled at the same time. Both controls work fine, though moving the cursor around with the gamepad can feel a bit stiff.

The only other thing to address here is the price. At $9, this is a bit steep for a game that only includes one type of solitaire. Thankfully, this game goes on sale for $2 often, which is a much more reasonable price… but if you’re waiting for a sale, you’re better off going for World of Solitaire from this same publisher, which includes a comparable version of Klondike Solitaire (albeit with less impressive visual options), along with four other Solitaire Card Games, and it also goes on sale for $2.

However, if you’re looking for Klondike Solitaire and only Klondike Solitaire, then, well, Klondike Solitaire is a pretty good choice for you, particularly if you catch it on sale. There’s a decent selection of options here, a good presentation, and decent controls. There’s room for improvement in all of those areas, but overall, this is a decent version of the classic game.

tl;dr – Klondike Solitaire is a decent version of the classic game, with a good presentation, a good selection of options, good controls, and a good price (if you catch it on sale). Each of those things has room for improvement, but overall this is a better than average version of this Card Game.

Grade: C+

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