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AcidSolitaire by Red Mercury
I love
playing card games. When I’ve got a few minutes to kill there is
nothing better than the being able to pick up my Clie
and find my current game of Solitaire up and running – without even
having to spread the cards out on my lap. (And it’s a good thing
since my lap seems to get smaller and smaller…)
Of all the
solitaire games that I have tried, the one that I liked the best was AcidSolitaire by Red Mercury. Not only does it make use
of the full 320x480 Hi Res+ screen on my NX70V,
but it offers numerous backgrounds from which to choose. These include
standard and textured colors as well as
downloadable image packs from their web page that contain images from the
orient.
The game play
of AcidSolitaire is just as impressive as its
looks. Based on the traditional Klondike
layout and rules, you start the game with seven piles of cards with the
amount of cards in each stack incrementing by one as they move left to
right. Only the top card from each stack is visible. All remaining cards
are placed face down in another stack (the Draw Deck) from which you draw
cards to play, either singly or three at a time. Cards from the draw deck
(or from the other piles) can be played on each other by placing a card on
the next higher card of an opposite color suite.
For example, a red 10 can be placed on a black jack and a, if you have a
red Queen at the bottom of a stack, you can move the red 10 and black Jack
at the same time to the Queen. The object of the game is to move all the
cards into individual stacks based on their own suite starting with the Ace
and moving up to the King.
AcidSolitaire makes this very easy to do by
automatically playing any cards you draw off the deck to their "home
stack" if there it is possible. Other game playing options include
double-tapping a card to automatically play it if there is a move
available, and auto-turning the card s off the Draw deck.
 
One very nice
feature of this game is the fact that it will display a notice when there
is only one move left to play in the game. Making that move, in some cases,
may open up other moves causing the notice to disappear. If not, the screen
will display a notice saying that you are out of moves and give you the
option to re-play the current game or start a new one.
The program
also keeps statistics on your games including the win/loss record for the
day, total game win/loss record, win and loss streaks, and how many minutes
you’ve been playing the game. (Don’t let my boss see
this….)
There have
been a few times since I started evaluating this game that it seemed to
lock up after winning a few games in a row. The screen turned black and
there was a tiny red item centered in the bottom
of the screen. As I watched it began to move up the screen and I realized
that it was a rocket. It gradually went up and exploded into fireworks with
a congratulatory message for winning three games in a row. While this is a
nice feature, I wish that there were an option for disabling it. The rocket
seems to move at a snail’s pace when you’re in a hurry to start
a new game.
As I said at
the beginning of the review, I found this game to be the best of any of the
solitaire games that I tried on my Clie and would
heartily recommend it to anyone.
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