Solitaire Pop Review

How do you take an unashamedly solitary experience and make it just that little bit more whizz bang?

Solitaire's leap from card game to PC classic in the last two decades may well have expanded its audience – my mother devotes as many hours to Spider Solitaire as your average World of Warcraft player, for instance – but the glitz and glamour of new technology hasn't actually altered its appeal.

It's still essentially a one man job in whatever form it takes. There's no teamwork, no sense of competition. It's just you and your wits.

Perhaps a change of scene would do the trick, then?

Solitaire Pop, though still essentially about linking chains of cards from top to bottom, takes the concept and plops it onto a grid based format. Every card is on show from the word go, and every one is available for an immediate link up - at least in theory.

Solitaire Pop's fresh take is rather loosely linked to archaeology, each dig you undertake around the word revealing 30 tiles that conceal treasures that can only be unearthed with successful chains.

But forming said lines is actually no easier than in a standard game of solitaire, with connections having to be made between adjoining tiles to form a sequential chain.

Each card you highlight brings those around it into play, the idea being – at least in Expedition mode – to clear each and every card from a standard pack of 52 in a chain at least once.

Where Solitaire Pop attempts to bring a new edge to play, however, is not in this tile based setup, but rather in the power-ups and bonuses that begin to litter the grid the longer you play.

Double or triple score multipliers help you rack up a healthy total, while bombs that blow up corresponding cards, and handy Joker cards that can act as any suit, help to balance out the negatives - tiles that need to be linked up three times before they can be cleared, for instance.

That said, while Challenge mode mixes thing up a touch further by only counting cards whose predecessor you've already cleared (3 of spades, for instance, only registers if you've already checked off the 2 of spades), Solitaire Pop actually isn't any more exciting or challenging than any other form of the game you might have taken on over the years.

Indeed, it's surprising just how similar it feels to the standard game once play is in motion. Matching up chains may be different in practice, but it's similar in terms of difficulty.

Like all forms of solitaire before it, Solitaire Pop is another one man wonder.

As long as you're not expecting much garnish, there's little to suggest you won't find its particular dig for victory enjoyable.