I'm a huge solitaire connoisseur and have Zachtronics to blame for it. Now the side-dish is the main course and it's fantastic. First of all it's convenient to have this collection instead of playing the games scattered across Zachtronics's catalogue. More importantly, it was a joy to try the games that were new to me. I was quite excited for the release of this collection and since then it's been a staple game that I frequently return to.

It might seem like a weird thing to be excited about, so I'll talk about why I like this style of game. I don't really see them as "time waster" games. To me the rules of each solitaire create an exciting puzzle, which itself manifests as an individual puzzle each time you play. This variety in deals is important for enjoying spending time with this puzzle, but the appeal is the journey of mastering the rules, not the instant gratification of winning an individual game

Trying to master a solitaire game so you can consistently win is an interesting challenge. It's a pretty complex problem, but approaching it through the frame of individual games makes it pretty easy to just try and experiment. My favorite part is how most of the skill I develop is more just vibes rather than hard knowledge. The ultimate goal is to develop impeccable vibes for a game, so you don't have to spend lots of time doing deep calculation.

One of the really fascinating aspects of this is that you always get to choose the amount of time you are putting into a deal. There's relationship between spending more time and winning more often, but it's satisfying to be able to play through a deal quickly. Sometimes I'll feel like thinking carefully, sometimes I'll be going fast {similar to this sometimes it has my full attention sometmies it doesn't}. All of these different vibes of playing contribute to the same skill level which makes a progression of higher winrates and clear speeds.

I think the constant decision of how fast you want to play adds a great push/pull to the journey with a game. This is one of the things I love about slay the spire as well

Solitaire feels like an intimating obstacle that you crack open, both in individual deals and the meta experience of the game. A deal starts super intimidating, but then working at it you start to make progress, and it usually becomes easier over the course of the game as you open up more space. A ruleset starts intimating, your first few games might involve an infuriating streak of games where you softlock yourself. Yet as you start to learn, then the game shifts from being a hard puzzle to a comfortable and easy thing.
My favorite part is that journey, but I also don't lose interest once I get to that state with a game. Here's where the push/pull of wanting high winrate but low time spent comes back. Even after I've cracked a game, it's satisfying to try to push that further. Right now I'm trying to practice the different solitiares in the collection so I can get a rotating winstreak on all of them, with the eventual goal of trying to do that in less and less time.

Here's my main criteria for juding a solitaire game
1. Presentation
2. how easy it is to softlock yourself: Generally the higher this is the more a ruleset appeals to me as a complex problem. I appreciate solitaire more if I have a lot of losses, if it's easy enough that I can win right out the gate then I probably won't find it that interesting
3. how often interesting decisions come up. Having diverse mechanics interact with each other often creates interesting decisions.
4. Novelty of mechanics: I want to be fascinated by the rules, or feel like I'm making different decisions that in other games I've already explored. There's a surprising amount of possibility space in solitaire games, enough that to me it's a genre.
5. Fairness. I want to lose to skill issue, not luck of generation.
Now it's time for my review of each solitaire game in the Zachtronics Solitaire Collection. I'll be posting them in ascending order, starting with the one i like the least and ending with the one I like the most.

Proletariat's Patience
It's cute that the royalty are just sets based of suit where the numbers are sets counting down. That's all this one does though. I found this game incredibly easy. I won first try, and didn't really even think that hard. I would say that overall this game just boils down to doing the "card shuffle". You're just moving stuff around and making progress. I don't feel like that many interesting decisions crop up during a deal.

I like how you don't really earn a surplus of space here, it's a lot tighter than some solitaires. If it wasn't so easy I would feel like i'm danger the whole game, which is a pretty rare thing for a solitiare game, where the deal usually follows an arc

Sawayama Solitaire
Presentation wise this one's pretty boring, just standard cards, obviously it's meant as an homage to old school preinstalled solitaire games. Theme is jphJam though. The big thing I don't like about this one is how it just uses normal playing cards and expected solitaire rules: stack with alternating colors decreasing value.

There's other versions with a much more fun novelty in their mechanics, and this specific style means you don't really have an abundance of options. Sawayama solitaire is more about making sure you don't set yourself on a losing line, often it's relatively clear where cards should be placed. I definitely prefer having more options and flexibility.

The most unique thing is it's implementation of the klondike style of drawing cards from a deck. It adds uncertain information, which yes does make it unfair but also gives the game it's most interesting essence. Instead of just making calcuation, you are often making strategic risk reward decisions. Information comes at a price of locking in previously drawn cards so you won't be able to play them in a while. {You draw from the deck in sets of three, always adding cards to the right of a line. You can only ever pop off the right most card from this line}. What really gives this mechanic a nice punch is that you don't unlock your FreeCell until you've exhausted the draw deck.

So there are 4 major axes on which you consider the decision of whether to draw more: progressing towads a milestone in flexibility, information, commitment, and setbacks to using important cards. Considering when to click on that draw button is highly interesting, and often means you have to be adaptable.

Also for what it's worth, this ruleset is leagues better than standard klondike. It fixes enough that I enjoy this one while hating standard klondike {and many other widespread playing card solitaires }

Cluj Solitaire
Not a fan of the pure black and white presentation, and there's no music 😔 . I do appreciate how the visual design is directly mixed with the mechanics, to the rules suits and color do not exist.

I love how this one has a lot of flexibility. It's the opposite of what i was talking about with sawayama. You often have multiple competing places you can put a card, so you have to think about which of those is the best. This is amplified to an extreme with the main mechanic here: You can place a singular card on spots that would be illegal for it. This flips the card into a different state: in this state you can only move it onto legal positions and you can't put an illegal card onto illegal cards.

I love this mechanic! It's essentially borrowing from your future self: it's a flexible tool that creates problems for you to deal with later. Deciding when and where to use this is fun, and it creates an interesting flow to the game. This is made more interesting by the fact that is really your only tool in your favor, but you have to be really careful not to create a poor game state.

The amount of space you have here is pretty tight! You're cleaning up and making new illegal cards all the time. Even when you finish a stack, it's an interesting decision of whether to move it to it's own column. Normally in solitaires this is something that's a priority and often a gimme decision. Here's it's trickier, because you can't illegally place cards onto columns with a completely finished stack {the cards fold into a facedown pile that become out of play, you lose that column basically}.

This and Proletariat's Patience have some similarties to me. This one feels like a straight upgrade. I don't know when I'd play Proletariat's Patience outside of going for a rotating cycle through all of them, considering that this one is a much more interesting "do the card shuffle"

Sigmar's Garden
This one has it's own nice little place in my heart. It's the one I've played the most {I have the 100 wins achievement for opus magnum}. I adore the presentation and style of this one. I love alchemy themes, opus magnum wins some free points from this as well. It stands out with mechanics that feel really distinct from the other solitaires I enjoy. It's pretty sweet to clear a board of marbles instead of making cards dance for me. I love the dialogue from sigmar's garden win milestones in opus magnum, served as a great motivation to grind out wins

There's a beautiful elegance to the design here. Unfortunately I think it's bit too easy. I know when I first started I'd sometimes softlock myself, but that definitely doesn't happen anymore. Maybe some of this is just getting tired of it, but i'd say Sigmar's garden is dipping to close to the mindless/time wasting for me. I'll always respect the beauty of it though, and especially appreciate how every single generated board is guaranteed to be solvable

Also fun fact: In the journal puzzles of Opus Magnum there's actaully a sigmar's garden 2. It introduces another mechanic, which is interesting, but i'd say it's not as good as the og sigmar's garden. It was more a novelty to play a couple of games off, and then go back too normal sigmar's garden.

Shenzhen Solitaire

Played quite a bit of this while I got into shenzhen i/o. It's funny to me that it's almost felt like sometimes doing circuit puzzles is the break from the challenge of learning this solitaire. This solitaire rules, I can see how the reception to this potentially helped Zach to decide that all future zachtronics games should have a solitaire.

It's a real solid design. The honor tiles and numbers are like seperate axes of progression, which are both in each other's way. I feel like this is what Proletariat's Patience wanted to achieve, but that is nowhere near as good at this.

The honor tiles do an excellent job of making this one tricky. They can't be stacked on each other, they don't go away until you've exposed all 4 of them, and sending them away costs a free cell. They definitely create a formidable challenge, one where it's easy to slip into a softlock.
My first few games of this was an infuriating streak of losses. I've started to understand how to win now, but I still occasionally stumble into a failstate. As i said above, this makes me apprecaite the game a lot more!. I feel like shenzhen solitaire has a nice subtle difficulty, more than what it seems, while not being oppressively hard.

To some people the flower tile may seem pointless. I would argue it's a very nice touch, it's a subtle nerf to the challenge of the game. Perhaps it's responsible for some fraction of deals jumping from impossible to winnable or that some deals are still possible to win if you had a smidge of skill issue. It achieves these things while not only persevering the aesthetic balance of the game, but actually contributing to it. The aesthetics value is not to be understated when studying game design

Cribbage Solitaire
I absolutely adore this one. A super pleasant surprise from buying the solitaire collection, since I hadn't specifically heard of or tried this one before.

A point salad with cribbage scoring, this one is unique in that you are trying to optimize for as high score as possible, instead of just win. It's also odd because it gives you predetermined deals that you are going through in a sequence, instead of randomly generating one. I have no idea how long this sequence is, or if these deals are handcrafted or pre-randomly generated. These oddities are a worthwhile tradeoff though, because you get to enjoy looking at the histogram of other scores. It's satisfying to see that I'm pretty good at this one. I usually score around the right tail, and the vast majority of people don't even hit the par score

The scoring for this one feels exceptionally natural to me, since cribbage is one of my favorite playing card games. When I first learned cribbage the scoring felt so arbitiuary and hard to remember, now with the experience of many hands played, the scoring combos just fly out of my head. Naturally, this makes cribbage solitaire very intuitive to me, it's an almost 1 to translation of the scoring from the the "play" phase of cribbage.

Cribbage scoring is so ingrained into my head that while playing this solitaire I can hear my voice from the games of Cribbage i've played with my dad: 15 for 2...24 ,a run for 3... 31 for 2.... . Fascinating how the experience in a game where players are constantly narrating the game state translates to me having an internal monologue here, which is normally a more uncommon occurrence in my head.

Cribabge is also just a really special game to me. The many hands I've played have all been with my dad. I learned cribbage because it was one of dad's childhood favorite games. I fell in love with it after my dad obliterated me, repeatedly, in my first pile of games. Cribbage seems very luck dependent at first, but it's amazing how it's really just skill issue. The first time I beat my dad in cribbage was way more satisfying then the first time I beat him in chess

Cribbage solitaire reminds me of my dad, both through the games we've played of cribbage and because he was in the airforce {the cards are plane themed}. I'm super excited to talk to him about cribbage solitaire next time I call him!

Cribbage scoring is already interesting: there's a lot of paths for you to evaluate since there's a good of variety of things that score points. This solitaire takes in a fascinating direction by adding a huge planning element to it. You have to balance each stack scoring well, with unlocking cards you need for great plays later. This makes the optimization challenge of the game pretty complex (in a fun way).

I really enjoy looking at the screen for this game and working out which line to follow. It kind of sits apart from other solitaires, because I feel like this a game that always deserves high bandwidth of attention directed at it, where part of the whole point of solitaire is supporting variable attention bandwidth.
If i'm taking cribbage solitaire seriously {which the predetermined sequence of deals and histogram encourages me to always do}, then I never make a move until i've calculated the full scoring stack. I can't really simply vibe and play with this one, but on the other hand the extensive planning is a huge appeal for me. This one lacks the push/pull of time spent vs winrate. It really only has one proper setting for the time I'm spending making decisions


I wrote a lot of words in my introduction about how I loved solitaire games because of the journey of learning them not the individual deals. Cribbage solitaire is the opposite of this: I love calculating through the nuance of each deal, and feel like I've already mastered it right from the start. {My first game of it I scored higher than ~95% of players}

I am starting to suspect a little bit of a glaring flaw in the game. There's some combinations of cards that are OP. This often simplifies the optimization problem more then I'd like, as it seems to me to be almost always correct to go for these OP sequences

In actual cribbage, these are balanced both by being rare draws that need luck and the fundamental game essence of Cribbage. The essence of Cribbage is that all of your scoring passes opportunities to your opponent. You have to not only consider what points you gain from playing cards, but what points you allow your opponent to gain. A simple example would be the common cribbage wisdom to never leave the sum on 21 after playing a card, because that opens up your opponent to play a 10 valued card to score 31 for 2, which is especially scary because they are highly likely to be able to do this {face cards count as 10, so about 30% of cards in the deck could score of this}.

Cribbage solitaire has neither the luck factor nor the essence of passing/recieving from an opponent. To me that's part of the appeal, since it uses the mechanics of cribbage for a completely different style of game. Yet it is unfortunate that in this context, there are OP scoring sequences. Cribbage scoring is a very specific beast, obviously designed for the game of cribbage. Cribbage solitaire translates it so completely that it hurts it's own design, especially since that scoring is meant to exist as something that is passed between players. That said, the amazing translation of cribbage scoring in cribbage solitaire is also one of the game's fundemental appeals. It's definetly a reason I've immediatietly grown to love it.

In case you're curious on what I specifically consider OP {this will only make sense if you understand cribbage scoring feel free to skip the rest of this section}: You can make a run of 3 for 3 points, then add a card to it for another 4, and rarely another card for another 5. This is especially noteworthy with what i consider the key cribbage cards -5,6,7,8,9. Starting with 7->8 or 8->7 can lead to an immediate fifteen for 2. and then you can extend into a run twice, with either 6->5 ,9->6, or 6 -> 9 {the order matters because you want to score the run twice, not make a gap which connects and then scores one run. Also it's important to note order here in Cribbage solitaire because of the fundamental game mechanic of each column being a stack that you pop cards off of, each card you play slightly changes the cards you can play next}. Another {harder to achieve} power sequence is three fives. This immediately scores 8 points, 6 for triplet, 2 for 15. On top of that you have room to expand it twice to make a run, no matter what direction you go with each. If you're able to go down with the numbers {4,3,2,1} then there's huge potential. You could double score a run, or even triple score it: and that's after you already got 8 points from the start.

This double scoring run business is less powerful in actual cribbage play {although it comes up in hand scoring, because creating a run with one or two of the numbers duplicated in your hand to make another run is incredibely good}. Since if you make a run of 3, the opponent can score a run of 4, which then opens you up to score a run of 5 if you're lucky, and if we are getting ridiculous that could open it back up for your opponent to score a run of 6 off that {especially if the numbers are low}. Similar logic applies to going for 15 and pairs/triplets/quartets

Fortune's Foundation

To steal a joke from a steam review: All Zachtronics games have a fun solitaire minigame. We've come to expect it as the nice and creative side-course along side the main attraction. It is fitting then, that the solitaire collection also has a solitaire minigame.

Fortune's foundation adds quite a lot to the value of the solitaire collection. Even if you owned all the zachtronics games {you don't, lamayo who has mobius front '83 and molek-synthez}, this exclusive game is still an exciting new thing to explore.

and wow Fortune's Foundation absolutely rules. First of all it has an incredible presence. The tarot card theme is incredibly evocative. There's a lot of fantastic art, 22 major arcana and 3 suits of minor arcana. It has a long and wonderful 7 min soundtrack. It really captures the vibes it sets out too. I also love how it has a unique fortune telling message depending on which of the major arcana you take last. Seeing these is a great motivation for playing this game{I like these even more then the win milestone dialogue in opus magnum's sigmar's garden} It's also even cooler because there's a special challenge to intentionally getting certain ones

Fortune's foundation has a much higher scope than all the other solitaires. An initial deal is an intimating fortress, and you have to fight for each step of progress you make. Winning feels incredibly satisfying. Unlike other solitaires which are inherently bingeable, I'll play just one game of this one and feel like I've gotten in my fill. This isn't "i easily get tired of this", the game just does that great of a job of delivering it's arc

I also love the mechanics here. Having to create an ordered list of the major arcana, where you can always add to the top or bottom half is really fascinating. It also gives a really nice flexibility which then mixes with the huge scope to make even more to analyze and consider. Fortune's foundation achieves the magic trick of being difficult while also having tons of space to make different decisions.

Freecell use having the cost of blocking minor arcana from going into their foundations is genius. Traditionally in solitaire, both freecells and building up foundations are huge tools in the player's favor. This game has woven them together into one, making it much trickier to utilize. This cost is just excellent, it makes both of these mechanics each more interesting and adds a great punch to the game

Then is the fact that you can stack upwards or downwards. I love this freedom, and it further compounds the above mentioned magic trick. This drastically expands the decision space of the game and improves the flow. Yet Fortune's Foundation knows that great things come at a price... The monkey's paw tradeoff in the design of the game is that cards can only be moved individually, never as a stack.

This is another great way in which the game is difficult. Often in solitaire games, once you open up a significant amount of space the rest of the deal can become trivial. Here that happens way later, since you need space to manipulate stacks. Every time you move a stack you invert it. If you want to preserve and move a stack you need 2 open slots not one.

I also love the opening of this game. It feels like of all the solitaires it requires the most analysis before you make any moves. There's so much freedom, but also so little space. The one column that starts open is incredibly impactful, but you have to carefully consider or it won't be enough. I also appreciate starting with aces in the foundations {which conveniently means this game will never have to answer the question of kings cycling around to aces}

Fortune's Foundation is benevolent enough to give the player a singular reusable undo. The game blesses you with being able to immediately take back pure dumb moments after the ono second has passed, but you can't run from the game state you've created for yourself.

Kabafuda Solitaire

Kabafuda solitaire my beloved. This one is both my favorite and most played solitaire. I kept Eliza installed on my pc long after I finished it's excellent story, so i could occasionially open kabafuda solitaire. Then Last Call BBS came out and i played quite a bit of it there as well. Now I've finished my triforce by collecting my 3rd Kabafuda solitaire. It's inclusion in last call BBS does make me suspect that the release of the solitaire collection was impulsive or uncertain.

The core thing I love about Kabufuda is it's difficulty. I've played a lot of it and don't feel like i've mastered it. I still have games where I stumble into a softlock. It feels like i should be better at it with how much i've played . It's part of why I'm fascinated with it. I feel like i should have cracked it with the level of understanding and practice I have, yet it is still elusive. The puzzle created by Kabafuda is incredibly complex, and i enjoy that both in the meta of learning it and the joy of playing one deal.

The reason Kabafuda is so hard is because it is so tight with space. It forces you to have to consider carefully , often with way more depth then other solitaires require. I consider expert the intended game, and even when i'm setting out to simply vibe I don't play lower difficulties. {Although when i have to play them to unlock expert after buying a new version of kabafuda it is satisfying to see my skill translate into them being trivial, while the leap from two to one slots is enough to be the hard game I know and love}.

The unique way in which Kabafuda has designed it's tightness of space, is that you often don't gain or lose space. It's the closest a solitaire gets to conservation of space, all progress comes at a cost. No space where you can move things is truly "free". It reminds me of those evil sliding block puzzles, where you gain progress by manipulating what is blocking what, and creating new space

I love the goal of making matching sets. It's a lot more intuitive than creating increasing/decreasing stacks. I never understood traditional solitaire until I took the time to learn it. I feel like someone watching Kabafuda could understand the goal pretty soon. This design also radically narrows the possibilty space. Each set only has 4 cards, which both makes it hard to move/place individual cards and hard to finish sets.

Each size of stack has it's own "character" to me
1- Incredibly flexible, which is great because there's a lot of them in your way You're free to move it around and it's not that hard to get through. Unfortunately it's the farthest away from what you need it to be
2- Kind of annoying. Manipulating these through free slots is expensive. Passing through them often has a cost. Mishandling these can lead to unideal game states. Unfortunately you'll be creating tons of these 2s as you play
3- Highly cursed. It is now very hard to get to any cards under this set. It's also hard to move it, since you either need to expose the last card, or have a free column availble. Choosing the latter is just delaying the inevitable, since now to use that column again you need to expose the last card. 3s are often responsible for creating catch 22 game states. Beware of having multiple sets of 3, where each one is covering the last card in the other. Unfortunately, these are part of the journey to make 4s
4- You did it! but wait where do you put it. Is it worth sacrificing a free cell? Are you able to unlock another freecell? Is it worth sacrificing a column? Even as you've achieved an important milestone in your goal, it's still a strain to have space for it. Often you have multiple 4s that haven't yet been scored, it is interesting to decide which suit is the most important. You have to be careful of where you build stacks and where you finish them. Once you've made a four, if it moves you are forever losing one section somewhere

The nuance in the tradeoff of deciding to place finished sets in columns or freecells is really interesting. Losing a freecell really hurts. Even if choosing a column unlocks a freecell, it's not net neutral. Columns allow you to place non 4 stacks, sacrificing that should not be taken lightly.

Finally I love the aesthetics of the kabafuda cards. A kabafuda board is highly readable. Every suit is very distinct. They are so varied that each suit forms a little of a character to me. I love how to the mechanics they are all equal, so it is purely the decisions of my past self or random generation which have made me have to value them differently. The designs on these cards are so interesting that I would enjoy having a physical kabafuda set, just for it's novelty and presence.

Final Observations
Final observation
Playing through and writing about the Zachtronics Solitaire collection has given me the interesting realization that each of these games embodies a different focus/aspect of game design

Shenzhen solitiare is about unity and balance, especially aesthetically.

Sigmar's Garden is about elegance

Proletariat Patience is indecesive. By not committing to anything strongly the end product is not that interesting

Kabafuda Solitiare is about the tightness of a strict challenge. It knows it's job is for you to find the fun in trying to face and master it. It's unforgiving, but that's because it doesn't want to ruin the purity of it's challenge.

Cluj Solitaire is about player expression and freedom.

Cribbage Solitaire is about calculation and planning.

Sawayama Solitaire is about exploration and uncertainty

Fortune's Foundation is designed with the cruelty game designers are specialize in, but it's all in service of giving you the satisfaction of conquering it.