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Comment by bbkane | Hacker News Reader

I love Solitaire - it's such a nice way to kill a few minutes while waiting for something else.

Unfortunately, many solitaire phone apps are filled with ads, slow, or have clunky controls.

A few years ago, however, I found https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.tobiasbielefeld.solitaire... . Its free and open source, and quite fast with nice shortcuts to move the cards.

I love this app and have played multiple Klondike/Spider Solitaire games a day using it. I wholeheartedly recommend it if you want a simple game of Solitaire in the same spirit as the post.

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Using a lightweight PWA (progressive web app) is also an option: https://FreeSolitaire.win (self-plug).

Doesn’t generate unwinnable games[1] & detects dead-ends. Works offline after the first visit. No ads until game over, and they aren’t obtrusive.

Often lauded on HN, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41972075 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42031052.

1: The probability that a random deal is unwinnable is ~20%. Wikipedia has a section on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_(solitaire)#Probabili...

Nice! I should add only-winnable generation to my own Solitaire, it's adfree, although it has extremely clunky controls.

Well, it was designed for the terminal, try the webconsole version here: https://rpigab.gitlab.io/solitaire-cli/

Source: https://gitlab.com/rpigab/solitaire-cli

First time I've played any game through the end just because I wanted to see an ad! It's really well made, gotta confess I went the CLI route because I don't know how to design GUIs with moving parts. Also, I wanted to play my game with controls tailored for the keyboard layout (ASDFGHJ keys control the columns if using QWERTY).

You can also try my own implementation of https://klondikesolitaire.com/. Ad-free.

Thanks! Looks nice, the DOM part seems to be very well made, I can't draw cards from stock on Firefox though. Dragging cards works well, it's just the click on stock that doesn't seem to register.

It works when I first load the page, then stops working after a new game.

Very nice but I keep losing my progress on a game with swipe gestures on android accidentally triggering back functionality when I pull a card from right to left, even with installed PWA version

Ah, thanks for letting me know!

I may have found a fix. I previously applied CSS `overscroll-behavior: contain` on <body>, it seems it also needs to be set on <html> (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/overscroll-... and https://stackoverflow.com/a/60565197).

I pushed that (supposed) fix, please let me know if that solves the issue for you (you may need to “refresh” by launching-quitting-relaunching the app.)

If not, please tell me what Android version and browser you are using, so that I can investigate more.

Wow, the dead-end detection + rewinding is amazing! Didn't know it was something I needed, but really appreciate it.

I’m glad you like it :-)

Ugh. thank you for posting this link, its going in my favorites for certain. Please link to where I can contribute!

Scratch that, just had to complete the first game!

For what it's worth, I was willing to contribute before the end of the first game. If that illustrates anything to you it's that you've got a winner on your hands :)

Thanks! I like the rewind feature. One of my key frustrations with the game solved!

Game is great, I might continue playing, but the fake update scam ads are predatory and frankly fairly intrusive.

Edit: screenshot: https://ibb.co/4RkTFzZ4

The X to close the ad didn’t work.

Thanks for letting me know. That’s not my choice but AdSense. However, I can manually disable ads like this one, I’ll look into it.

I just removed interstital ads.

Great game!

Thank you!

I highly recommend the Zachtronics Solitaire Collection. Greatly designed solitaire games. I play them every day on my commute to work.

I was gonna recommend the same one. I wanna add that Hempuli (Baba is You, Noita) also made a solitaire collection inspired by Zachtronics. It's just 3 bucks on his itchio and it's something I play while I have my coffee.

https://hempuli.itch.io/a-solitaire-mystery

Funny enough it has a "Royal Flush Solitaire" where you make poker hands and your goal is to reach 240 points.

Binary Solitaire and Transformation are my favorites.

The Solitaire Mystery is also the name of a very interesting novel that explores all kinds of permutations of the cards, suits, etc, etc, by Jostein Gaarder, author of Sophie's World.

Zachtronics Solitaire Collection inspired me to begin experimenting with Solitaire variants, and hopefully Balatro's well-deserved success will stoke people's curiosity in similar titles.

For now, my web prototype lets you choose the numbers of suits, colors, ranks, columns, and multiples of cards drawn from the deck. It's a start. I invite HN to explore the Klondike Extended Universe:

https://rezmason.github.io/patience

I LOVE that you let the player tweak those variables in the mechanics. Many of us want to be able to relax with a nice comfy game for half an hour, and "comfy" means setting the difficulty just right.

My partner used to relax with Flipflop Solitaire[1], which lets you choose how many suits there are in the deck. These days they play lots of Balatro with the checkered deck[2].

[1] http://www.flipflopsolitaire.com/

[2] https://balatrogame.fandom.com/wiki/Checkered_Deck

Thirding this recommendation, Fortune's Favor solitaire and Shenzen solitaire from this collection are some of my favorite variants ever. Either of them would be worth the price of admission alone.

I absolutely love the Zachtronics solitaires. I play at least one a day on my phone. That said, I wish they were slightly better designed for phones, since the text/images and touch targets can be a little small. It's too bad Zachtronics is no more -- it'd be nice if they were able to do some UI updates.

I have the same gripe about Balatro. Tons of hours on computer, was super stoked for it on phones. Too small for my old eyes.

I heard from an obscure source (a former Zachtronics intern in a stream chat) that they're currently building a new game

Since Zachtronics only ever had one intern, I heard the same thing from the same source (but through different means)!

This is why I play it with actual physical cards. I learned it as kid so partly it's a comfort ritual, and partly the tactile interaction is very soothing.

It also "forces" you to keep playing when it gets tough, as a complete shuffle plus new setup isn't just a simple click away. It's also nice to get off the screen for a while.

I recently bought a smaller deck of cards, like half or three quarters of the size of a normal deck or so. Makes it easier to play without needing a huge table.

That's long been my favorite Android version of klondike too.

But my favorite favorite remains the old Windows 95 Solitaire. I keep a copy around even on Linux through wine to play sometimes on PC. The main reason? I still love the ending animation of all the cards springing down without clearing the background. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uev21NTzom8 I don't understand why no other version seems to want to implement this ending animation, it's the best one of all time.

I was horrified to find Microsoft removed a simple Solitaire with a junk app full of ads (I hadn't looked at Solitaire in years). Perfect example of enshitification.

It did have the benefit of me deciding I'll never purchase another Windows computer ever again and my family just doing physical card games.

If anyone is using iOS, please consider our app [0]. It only has banner ads at the bottom that does not block game play.

Other features include history of all your plays, statistics, and ability to play older hands again.

Another detail that might be relevant to HN audience is that it is built using 100% SwiftUI.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-solitaire-app/id1613070030...

One nice side benefit of DNS-level adblocking (pi-hole, etc) is that a lot of mobile games never end up showing ads. It doesn't always work perfectly, but in particular I play a euchre game on my phone that frequently asks me to "pay X to play with no ads" and every time I think "What ads?"

That said, sometimes I pay to support the developer if I like the game. Sucks when a game I like doesn't offer the "remove ads" option.

Was looking for this on iPhone as well some weeks ago, and came across a Solitaire that is included in Apple Arcade that works really well, doesn't have any ads or other distractions, just plain Solitaire.

And another bonus is that Balatro (which the submission author created) is included in Apple Arcade too, which was the original reason I got Arcade.

Apple Arcade is great for avoiding all the adware and in-app payment crap.

> Unfortunately, many solitaire phone apps are filled with ads, slow, or have clunky controls

Here's one written in C# and compiled to WebAssembly:

https://solitaire.xaml.live/

Source code:

https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Solitaire

I wrote a cat-themed web version a little while ago for fun.

It's not overly configurable, but there are zero ads, trackers etc. and it's very lightweight with hopefully no (significant) bugs.

https://www.solitairecat.com/

This is the one I use too. I like how many variants it has as well.

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