While playing The Solitaire Conspiracy, I couldn’t help but wonder which other table game classics would benefit from the treatment that the Single player card game receives here. Ladies Based On History? Chess with hero figures? Mancala with a ranking? The recent project from Bithell Games reinvents Solitaire as a Spy tool. And although the story of the FMV that frames each hand is quite predictable, the mechanical effects of this vanity make it a fantastic interpretation of the traditional card game.
You are an unsuspecting spy who has been kidnapped and put to work by Protega, an intelligence organization that works outside the borders of a nation’s government. Protega is represented for her by Greg Miller from Kinda Funny as Jim Ratio, her manager and constant companion throughout the campaign. Ratio tells them that they must eliminate a secret character called Solitaire, who has cut off Protega’s communication tool with his agents on the spot. It is your Mission to regain control of this Spy network.
Your spy work takes place through solitaire games. According to the credits, the versions of the game that the Solitaire plot is inspired by are besieged castles, as well as streets and alleys. Although less popular than Klondike or Spider, these variants are intuitive enough and easy to learn. The table consists of three columns with four rows each. In the middle column, you place the ace for each suit currently in play and build on it until you reach the king. You draw these cards from the outer columns, where the cards are dealt in batches. Unlike some other popular Solitaire variants, you can only move one card at a time instead of taking the farthest card from each other and moving the stack. However, you can place any card on any pile, regardless of its color, as long as the numerical value of the card is less than the top card of the desired pile. These basic rules are quite simple and will be easy to learn for anyone who has ever played Solitaire with one or two hands. But this simplicity offers Bithell Games a solid framework to develop its unique Version of Solitaire based on heroes.
As you progress through the game, you will unlock new combinations. But instead of the traditional hearts, diamonds, crosses or spades, each set of illustrated cards represents a new team of spies at your disposal, each with revolutionary abilities. They start the campaign with only one team, the Mantis, who, according to Ratio, “are messy, but they get the job done.”Play the King, queen or jack of that suit on any pile of cards and you will cause an “Explosion” that distributes the cards from that pile among the other seven piles in the deck. If you need a card from the bottom of a pile, Mantis can make it easier to access, but The Explosion will have an impact on the rest of the board.
You unlock new teams with unique abilities every few levels, and this hook got me interested in The Solitaire Conspiracy’s five-hour campaign. Learning the ability of each team is exciting and satisfying. After playing with Blood Legacy, a team that reorganizes a stack so that the highest cards go up and the lowest go down, I was delighted to finally unlock Alpha Division, which does the opposite and greatly facilitates access to a 2 or 3 buried at the bottom of a stack, for example. Each team has its own use, but it’s up to you to determine the right time to use its special abilities. For example, Humanity+ explodes each suit on which you play it and redistributes the sorted cards from the central pile to the flanks. These cards should be handled with caution, especially in the countdown, a timed mode in which you gain seconds for each card played. By repeating the exploded cards, you will not save time, so playing a Humanity+ agent incorrectly is a surefire way to waste time.
As you play, you gain experience and move up the ranks. After each level reached, Ratio gives you new instructions and/or an encouraging conversation. Often you win a new team and unlock new missions. Once these are completed, you can come back for more missions. All this is in search of Solitaire. Ratio tells you that when you reach level 15, you will be ready to take it and return control of the stolen network to Protega.
As a Ratio, Miller is a bit distracting here. In a rare acting role, the busy host spends most of his time monologizing the player. Miller has built a large following with his energetic cuteness, and it shows for much of The Lonely plot. But when he goes into very serious Spy mode, he is less credible and speaks with a truncated intensity that seems unnatural to his casual attraction. The small cast is completed by the British actor Inel Tomlinson, who plays Diamond, another spy who is often at odds with Ratio. He’s fine for the most part, but he doesn’t have much to do.
This is really the main problem of the campaign. It works well as a five-hour introduction to the great Solitaire version from Bithell Games, gradually teaching you the unique mechanics of each team before launching into the timed countdown mode and its mouth-watering leaderboard. But as a bit of FMV storytelling, it’s far too static to work well as a Spy thriller. It mostly looks like a dress rehearsal via a Zoom call.
Outside of the campaign, however, the Solitary plot benefits from not having to divide its objective between the story and the Gameplay. As a pure Solitaire experience, this is a great inventive interpretation of the game that s of players know so well. Skirmish allows you to create custom games and select up to four teams that you want on your side. This mode is ok, but it has a weird quirk that takes you back to the home screen after a completed match instead of returning to the team selection. This has the implicit effect of giving the impression that you should only play one skirmish game at a time.