Load one of these collections on your Mac, however, and you’ll have access to not only a cornucopia of solitaire games but also plenty of computer-controlled opponents who offer varying degrees of difficulty for poker, spades, euchre, and hearts. In addition, you’ll enjoy gameplay hints, historical tracking of your wins and losses, customization options, and more. Many games also let you take on human opponents over the Internet.
Hardwood Solitaire. We have a winner!
Solitaire-y fun
All of us enjoy a game of solitaire when we want to take a break. Your iPod or iPod nano even comes with a copy of the traditional version, in which the goal is to move all the cards to the four piles at the top of the screen. If you’d like to explore 101 variations on the ultimate solo card experience, try Silver Creek Entertainment’s Hardwood Solitaire III, which also lets you customize your deck and playing environment, track your career statistics for each type of solitaire, get gameplay hints, and more.
GameHouse’s Hawaiian-themed Aloha Solitaire and Aloha TriPeaks titles offer new twists on traditional solo card games, complete with power-ups, difficulty levels, different types of configurations, and other options. The former combines mahjong and solitaire, challenging you to clear the screen by matching pairs of cards. You select them on the board or from the cards you draw from the stock deck.
Aloha Solitaire. An enjoyable cross between Mahjong and traditional solitaire.
In Aloha TriPeaks, you draw a card from the deck and select cards from the board that let you move up or down, regardless of suit. For example, if you draw a five, you can go up to six or down to four and then go up or down again from there.
A bonus meter fills in both games as you move cards off the board, but it depletes while you study the situation. Both games also feature power-up cards that give you special abilities if you can pair other cards with them. The powers in Aloha Solitaire include reshuffling the cards in the play area, creating a reserve pile that carries over to the next level and transferring a reserve pile to the stock deck.
In Aloha TriPeaks, power-up cards build the number of fans and reveals available to you. Each of the former lets you sweep a card off the board, which comes in handy when you have no more moves, while the latter lets you see all the face-down cards until you make your next move.
Ancient Hearts. A few points headed your way.
Hearts, spades, and euchre, oh my
While solitaire games are a fun solo diversion, at some point you’ll likely want to take on opponents. You’ll find plenty of action in the traditional trick-taking games known as hearts, spades, and euchre. Toybox Games wrapped up the first two in a collection called Ancient Hearts & Spades, which features a setting reminiscent of an ancient temple.
Card Games Guide
Check out our guide for a comprehensive list of titles.
Ancient Spades. Fill your bag with tricks.
Whether you choose hearts or spades, you’ll have access to three levels of difficulty, a three-round tournament, and speed mode, which covers your cards while your opponents play and gives you just four seconds to make a decision when it’s your turn. If you can’t figure out which card to play, the computer randomly chooses one for you, so think fast or the Queen of Spades might fall into your lap.
Silver Creek also checks into this category with Hardwood Euchre, Hardwood Hearts, and Hardwood Spades. Like Hardwood Solitaire III, these titles feature robust options for customizing your card decks, a variety of avatars (the picture that represents you), different choices for musical accompaniment, and more. All three also let you take on human opponents over a LAN or the Internet. You can chat with other players as well as zap them with Fooms, which are graphical effects that express admiration, displeasure, and other attitudes.
Hardwood Spades. Use a Foom to express your feelings during an online game.
Calling your bluff
The ultimate competitive card game is, of course, poker, which can almost rival chess in its nuances. Donohoe Digital’s DD Poker 2 and Masque’s World Class Poker with T.J. Cloutier both offer an abundance of riches for poker aficionados, including tips and tricks, gameplay advice, tournaments against live and AI players, multiple levels of difficulty, historical tracking, and more. You can also modify pot limits and other variables.
World Class Poker with T.J. Cloutier. T.J. offers some sage advice.
T.J. Cloutier is a well-known professional poker player who has won dozens of tournaments and has placed in the World Series of Poker’s top five finalists four times. He offers plenty of tips in World Class Poker, including video tutorials that explain how he would handle a given situation. The game even features more than 85 quiz questions in which he gives you the rationale for his answers.
Give yourself a few weeks with Cloutier and your friends will start wondering how you manage to clean up at the weekly neighborhood poker tournament. At the very least, spend a few weeks with Hardwood Solitaire III and discover a wider world beyond that old staple, Klondike.
Shuffle Time
