Faerie Solitaire

Gameplay

The game is divided into a series of rounds, each round consisting of nine hands. Your goal in each hand is clear the play field of cards. To do so, the player must remove exposed cards either one value higher or one value lower than the card currently at the top of his deck. Whereas in traditional Solitaire the suits of cards dictated whether or not they could be used in a situation, the suits of the cards are irrelevant in this game. The player is rewarded with in-game currency for removing cards from the field of play, with bonuses given for creating card combinations of increasing length. In addition, removing cards also fills a large pink bar at the top of the play field. This pink substance is tallied at the end of each hand; at the end of the round of nine hands, if the player has accumulated enough of this pink substance (which ought to have a name, really), the player will be allowed to release a fairie held captive as part of the game's light fantasy plot.

The game becomes more challenging by adding specific victory conditions to a round, or by tampering with the arrangement of cards in the field of play. For instance, one round might task the player with achieving at least one combination of ten cards before the round's end. The player might also be tasked with accumulating a specific dollar amount in one hand, or completing a perfect round (removing all cards from play) within a time limit. The field of play becomes complicated by (seemingly arbitrarily) exposing some lower cards either face up or face down, forcing the player to guess what may be beneath a downward-facing card. In other cases, cards will be locked behind an Ice Wall that can only be cleared by the player activating a Fire spell card somewhere in the field of player. In yet other instances, cards will be be locked behind a Thorn plant that can only be cleared by removing an entire column of cards from play.

An example of play:

• At the beginning of a hand, the player draws a 7 from his deck. Exposed in the play field are a 4, an 8, a 7, a 6, a K, and a 5.
• An optimum play would be for the player to remove the cards in the following order: 8, 7, 6, 5, 4. In doing so, he has made a five card combination, perhaps flipped five new cards which could be used to extend the combination further.
• If no further cards may be added to this chain, the player draws a new card and begins the process anew.

System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
• Processor: 800 Mhz (minimum)
• Memory: 256MB (minimum)
• Hard Disk Space: 100MB
• DirectX®: 7 (minimum)