If you've stumbled across this store page then you can stop looking; you've found it. You have found the oasis in the vast desert of low quality freeware and asset flip shovelware card games trying to make a quick buck. The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection might just be the only solitaire game on Steam that's actually worth a damn, containing eight high quality solitaire variants that all feature their own unique spin on the classic card game. The main draw of this collection for many is going to be Sawayama Solitaire , which offers a unique variant of the most popular and classic form of the game by giving players complete information of the tableau. What this means is that rather than having only the top card in each column revealed, every card is revealed from the start. Even though you can see every card in the tableau, you can still only move the top card of each column or stacks of cards that are correctly sorted following the standard rules. You can also freely move any stack or single card into any empty column rather than just kings, and taking advantage of this aspect is critical in winning the game. Cards from the stockpile are revealed three at a time and this cannot be adjusted. You are also only given a single pass through the stockpile; so, every time you draw cards, you're burying any unplayed cards under an increasingly larger pile before you'll be able to access them. Once the stockpile has been exhausted it turns into a free cell that you can use to store any single card; you'll need to take advantage of this in order to win the game. Sawayama Solitaire feels more strategic than a typical game of this variety, and it's also quite challenging, though I've run into my own fair share of unwinnable games—either due to mistakes or perhaps an impossible shuffle. None of the games in this collection save for Fortune's Foundation have an undo button, which is an intentional design decision, so one bad play can result in a quick game over. You can easily start a new game at any time, but I wish the games in this collection contained a reset function that allowed for retrying the current shuffle rather than giving a new one—I'd like the option to know whether I lost because I made a mistake somewhere or because the shuffle was literally impossible. The lack of such a feature is this stellar collection's otherwise greatest weakness. The other title in this collection that really drew me in personally is Cluj Solitaire which uses a Russian style deck, so there is a bit of a learning curve there. Once I had that down I quickly became addicted to this variant's unique gameplay mechanic of "cheating". Basically, you're allowed to freely move any singular top card onto any other column, but doing so locks it into place until you move it back to a correct position. Basically, you can't cheat move a single card twice in a row, and you can't place any other card on top of a cheated card, so once you've placed it in an incorrect position it can only be moved back to a correct one, and it will effectively block that entire column until it's been removed. Using this mechanic is essential in most games, but using it without correctly thinking ahead can quickly result in an unwinnable scenario. This variant doesn't take suits into account and emphasizes this aspect with a uniquely minimalistic art style and a foreboding dark ambient accompaniment that I really enjoy. I found myself most often entering a zen-like state playing this game more than any other in the collection, quickly shuffling cards around on sheer instinct. Once you place a completed arrangement of cards onto an empty column that column will close and will no longer be usable in any way, so you have to strategize around this. Although I've played the Sawayama variant more, I think Cluj is personally my favourite game in this entire collection. It's just so good. There are still six other games in this collection and I won't go over them all in extensive detail, but I've played all of them at least once—other variants that I see myself enjoying more over time include Kabufuda Solitaire and Proletariat's Patience , which share a similar style of card sorting gameplay to Cluj, though I found some of the designs in Kabufuda a bit too similar to one another and difficult to tell apart at times, especially when in stacks. I think the visual design here could have been a bit better to help players tell how many cards are in a stack. I found myself making mistakes here primarily due to the sometimes confusing visual design, though I imagine this will be less of an issue the more I play it. Fortune's Foundation is one of the harder games in this collection and I've enjoyed what I've played of it so far. It's quite tough at first but incredibly satisfying to win once you've finally cracked it open. I can see this one giving this collection some pretty long legs. Sigmar's Garden is perhaps the most unique game here in the sense that calling it a solitaire variant feels like a bit of a stretch—it's a tile matching game that makes no use of cards. At first glance it appears to be fairly convoluted, but it seems to have a lot of potential once you take the time to learn all of its rules. Lastly, we have Cribbage Solitaire . I've spent the least amount of time with this one and it hasn't really done much for me, although I attribute that mostly due to a lack of interest in cribbage than any fault of the variant itself. This is the one I'm least likely to return to any time soon and even if there is a game or two in here you're not fond of, this collection is likely to have others you like so much that you won't be bothered by one of two of the less compelling offerings. If you enjoy the simplicity of sorting cards then The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection is absolutely worth a look. The audiovisual presentation is great, with each game offering its own distinct theme. Every variant has high quality art and thematically fitting music to go along with it. I've occasionally found myself humming the tunes from Sayawama Solitaire and Fortune's Foundation as I go about my day since I've started playing. I purchased this collection at a 50% discount but I genuinely feel that it's worth the full asking price; Fortune's Foundation alone could have easily been sold on its own for a similar asking price but instead of that you're getting eight high quality games for a more than fair price. This collection has made the standard, free online versions of solitaire feel rather boring to me now. It may not have all of the convenience features of regular online solitaire like undoing moves and resetting games, but if you're interested in this collection then don't hesitate; it's absolutely worth it and hopelessly addicting. You're bound to resonate strongly with at least one game here and all of them are deeply strategic and entertaining in their own right—this is the only card game collection on Steam that you need in your library.
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