Type ‘Solitaire’ into Google Play’s search bar, and Google’s digital marketplace will display hundreds, if not thousands, of different apps – many of which take different approaches to the aged-old card game.
Solitaire Arena, a new title from developer MavenHut, focuses on Klondike Solitaire – a simple, yet complicated, form of the game that tasks you with sorting a deck of 52 shuffled cards into their unique suits in order from Ace to King.
Solitaire Arena may sound like a lot of the other Solitaire titles that are available on Google Play, but it features a pretty unique tournament mechanic that makes it stand out from the crowd.
If, like I, you reshuffle your deck and start your game of Solitaire from scratch as soon as you make a bad move or realise you aren’t going to be able to finish your current game, you’ll find Solitaire Arena’s eight-player tournaments incredibly tricky.
Type ‘Solitaire’ into Google Play’s search bar, and Google’s digital marketplace will display hundreds, if not thousands, of different apps – many of which take different approaches to the aged-old card game.
Solitaire Arena, a new title from developer MavenHut, focuses on Klondike Solitaire – a simple, yet complicated, form of the game that tasks you with sorting a deck of 52 shuffled cards into their unique suits in order from Ace to King.
Solitaire Arena may sound like a lot of the other Solitaire titles that are available on Google Play, but it features a pretty unique tournament mechanic that makes it stand out from the crowd.
If, like I, you reshuffle your deck and start your game of Solitaire from scratch as soon as you make a bad move or realise you aren’t going to be able to finish your current game, you’ll find Solitaire Arena’s eight-player tournaments incredibly tricky.
Why? Because these tournaments encourage you to finish games. In fact, its impossible to complete a tournament and come out on top if you repeatedly restart your game. You’ll need a great strategy and just a little bit of luck to succeed in Solitaire Arena.
Solitaire also features a one-on-one mode that allows you to compete against other players from around the world in real-time using the same shuffled cards.
You can even see your opponent’s foundations as you play, so you always know how far in front (or behind) you are.
Solitaire Arena was inspired by its developer’s time in college. Each college dorm had a low-powered computer on which students would play Solitaire. The students (for bragging rights) would compare their high scores with each other, but some would complain because each players’ shuffled deck was different.
MavenHut has solved this issue by ensuring that players who are competing directly with each other begin with the same shuffle.
That being said, Solitaire Arena does feature several power-ups, which will improve your chances of besting your opponents if you use them at the right time.
There’s a Hint power-up, for example, which is pretty self-explanatory; and a Magic power-up, which will instantly help you get unstuck if you’ve backed yourself into a corner.
MavenHut plans to extend the life of Solitaire Arena with updates. Over the next few months, the mobile versions of Solitaire Arena will receive several features that are currently only present in the Facebook version of the game.
These include a feature that will allow you to play against the friends on your buddy list.
Solitaire Arena is available to download from Google Play right now completely free of charge. It’s also available to download from the App Store [download].
MavenHut made a conscious decision to release Solitaire Arena as a free-to-play title, as it wants as many people as possible to have the opportunity to play its game and kill some time when they have ten minutes spare.
Download Solitaire Arena from Google Play now [download]
