Whilst Forbidden Solitaire is a simplistic game at its core, the presentation and mechanical twists offer enough to keep it engaging throughout.
Being someone who was playing video games during the early days of CD-ROM (that’s Compact Disc Read Only Memory, acronym fans), Forbidden Solitaire caught my attention very quickly. Being a game themed around a long lost — not to mention cursed — CD-ROM from the 90s is interesting, as the concept of “found footage” in video game form is normally relegated to handheld camera or bodycam games. Whilst the gameplay doesn’t do a huge amount to push the envelope, the narrative and presentation certainly held my attention for its four-or-so hour play time.
Reminding me somewhat of the theming of Inscryption, Forbidden Solitaire has you discover a piece of lost media in the form of the titular video game. The main menu presents itself as a Windows style desktop, and thanks to some instant messages from your sister, you learn that that odd game you’ve just downloaded is one lost to history thanks to mysterious deaths surrounding its release. Not being one to pay any attention to that sort of nonsense, you load it up and start playing. It becomes clear through playing and messages you get sent from your sister and other parties, that things are far more dangerous than you thought.
The game within the game is a horror tri-peaks solitaire game in which you complete those popular mobile card games in which you play a card ranked one higher or lower than your current card until you clear the screen. Succeed and you progress, but fail and your character’s eyes explode out of their head with a cutscene in that unmistakable 90s prerendered FMV style. Mechanically, it’s not all that different to so many other games out there, but Forbidden Solitaire offers a few neat twists.
Whilst many stages are just completing these boards, some of them involve you fighting a monster of some sort. By chaining sequences of cards together, you’ll damage the monster, hopefully doing enough to defeat it. When you end your chain though, the enemy gets to attack back. Sometimes this will damage your health directly, others it will infect cards in interesting ways, such as poison that damages you every turn the card is left on the board, or locks that require you to remove a set number of a specific suit. You can tip the odds in your favour with special cards — which the game calls Jokers because Balatro exists — which manipulate the board in interesting ways. Some will simply remove cards, whilst others will set up chains of cards for you. The occasional boss will have jokers of their own that you can activate to give interesting results that I won’t spoil here. Those bosses have clever attacks that will force you to think carefully about when to create a long chain, and when to hold back for fear of suffering greater damage yourself. The battles were the stronger style of stage, even when a few in the late game drag on a bit longer than I’d like.
Getting long chains helps you earn money too, that you spend between stages. There’s a fun element to this as you pay to literally embed gemstones in your flesh that provide bonuses for future levels. I feel this was a little undercooked though, as I always had enough money to simply buy whatever gems were there, so there was little in the way of strategy or synergy, with it simply being a good idea to buy everything you can. A randomised element would be fun, or being forced to choose between two options with the other being lost. At least there’s a nice feeling of progress.
The downside to all this is that ultimately you are just playing solitaire, with all the pros and cons of that. Yes, it’s simple to play and certainly addictive, but it can also become repetitive. Forbidden Solitaire’s theming certainly helps with this at least. You’ll still be beholden to the cards you draw though, and whilst it often feels like the deck is set up for you to succeed, sometimes you’ll end up having to replay simply because the cards didn’t fall the way you needed them to. Honestly, this didn’t come up often, and I managed to reach the end in one sitting without too much difficulty, so it’s unlikely to be a significant problem for most players.
One other problem I had is that this is very linear. Early on it feels as though you might have a little bit of agency in how things play out, but the reality is that you just move from stage to stage. I suppose this does mirror games of the time, but a little bit of choice would have been nice. Yes, it isn’t really fair to criticise a game for what it isn’t, but Forbidden Solitaire really did feel like it could have had an actual dungeon to explore. On the positive note, there are two endings here, though it’s very obvious which one is meant to be the “good” one if you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention.
The presentation really does sell things. All of the art nails that 90s CD-ROM look, with janky looking 3D models that look like the cutscenes from a PS1 game. I especially liked the devs commitment to creating time-appropriate adverts and interviews. The sound works well too, and whilst I’d have liked things to be fully voice acted, what’s there is well done. Music is limited, but when it’s used well it fits the scene appropriately, though you’ll hear the same battle music quite frequently.
Forbidden Solitaire is a fun twist on a well worn genre. Whilst it can’t shake the potentially repetitive gameplay style that it’s built around, there’s plenty there to keep you pushing on to the next area to see what weird creatures the developers have dreamed up next. This isn’t going to make people that hate solitaire suddenly want to play it, but it does have enough of a fun theme to entertain those who just want something reasonably light to play whilst enjoying a bonkers story.
Forbidden Solitaire is available now on PC.
