Faerie Solitaire Remastered Reviews

[h1]Barely solitaire[/h1] I've always been a big fan of solitaire. It's like an escape room, except the room is a deck or cards, and the win condition is revealing them all. You let fate take the reigns and with a little luck, calculated risk and skillful execution, you can (almost) always finish a game. [i]Faerie Solitaire[/i] is definitely a card game which bears a resemblence to solitaire, though the longer you look, the more uncanny it grows. [i]KEY DIFFERENCES[/i] [Olist] [*]Once you have passed through the deck in its entirety a single time, the game is over [*]You can play one lower [b]or[/b] higher than the previous card [*]Cards do not stack on top of each other in lines descending in value as the game progresses [*]The starting base formation is not always made out of simple straight lines of cards, one or more cards often stacked over two cards [*]There are various powerups to burn cards and modifiers which change cards or add special conditions [*]You keep finding eggs and chopped logs underneath your card stacks for some reason [/olist] When you really inspect the design of Faerie Solitaire, it has only a couple things in common with the classic game upon which it is originally based; there's a deck and you can play cards based on some sort of numerical sequence. "Yeah," I hear you ask, "but is it fun though?". Well, dear reader, answers to your question and more can be found in a section of this review that I call: [i]YEAH, BUT IS IT FUN THOUGH?[/i] The short answer is [i]not really[/i]. It's certainly addictive and can occupy a lot of time, but it becomes absolutely mind numbing, especially since there are so many levels in the campaign with sparse and inconsequential tweaks smattered throughout. By design, there is more luck involved than solitaire, as the more stringent win condition (finish the hand before the deck runs out) forces you to build up a late round dependency on certain cards appearing, more often than not leaving you with one last card left to burn and a deck full of cards that you have no use for. The difficulty curve resembles what would happen if you gave a toddler a crayon and let them go wild on a sheet of A4. Levels vary from a total cakewalk to seemingly impossible, with little to no consistency as to where the harder levels might appear. It feels like some levels were untested(?) as the hand limits seem unreasonably stringent in certain stages. The secondary 'pet' aspect of the game adds almost nothing as your mythical pet barely even acts as window dressing, being little more than .png in your 'hatchery' which is just a gallery of still images with themed backdrops. Getting all the pets is a massive grind, as you need to: [list] [*]Get dropped the eggs for the pet (which is rare) [*]Activate the egg to wait for it to hatch [*]Hit the 'evolve' button and wait for the pet to gain enough exp to evolve (essentially just wait again) [*]Once the pet has the required exp you may evolve it, but you must use resources (another random drop) [*]Wait for enough random resources to drop to evolve your pet [/list] CONGRATULATIONS! You have now attained 1 of 30 available pets in the game. If I don't suffer a psychic break and become The Joker as a result of this grind, I'll perhaps get all the pets, but it [i]really[/i] doesn't feel worth it unless you're an achievement fiend like myself. Overall, this game is about as productive as doomscrolling for 12 hours straight, but at least you get achievements and a minotaur sprite for wasting your life. 2.5/10