Game Chest: Solitaire

As someone located on the fringes of games development, it’s very tempting to dismiss certain genres as being ‘easy’ to make.

Card games, for instance, seem like one the easiest – the rules are already written out for you, the graphics can’t be that different from one to the next, and it’s not like you necessarily need to program AI as there are plenty of one-player games to adapt.

Game Chest: Solitaire may fit all of these points, but the way it goes about bringing the three games – Klondike, Spider, and Tri-Peaks - to the small screen makes it obvious just how much work has to go into a title to make it stand out from the rank and file.

Two of the game types should be familiar to anyone who’s used Windows before, so I’m going to presume you don’t need me to explain Klondike and Spider here. Game Chest: Solitaire does offer up the choice of dealing one or three cards for Klondike, though. Spider remains as wilfully divisive as ever.

The third title, Tri-Peaks, is the relatively unfamiliar one. Looking a little like my favourite solitaire game Pyramid, the idea is to send cards from the play area to the waste pile by moving up and down the card order (disregarding suits).

It’s not half as tough as Pyramid, thank goodness, but winning all the time does mean it gets boring quicker than the classics.

The presentation of the separate games is excellent, with pyrotechnics and visual feedback accompanying every move you make.

Even the way the menus are handled is clever, taking the form of a chest that opens up with mechanical tiles representing the various games on offer.

Along with the now-obligatory stat-collecting for each individual game, Game Chest also introduces a ‘level’ system that allows for earning pins as rewards.

It may be just a number counting up, but combined with the obligatory Xbox Live achievements, it adds to the feeling that this is the complete package.

The only real disappointment is in the lack of games on offer.

While one can argue that three solitaire games will provide an almost unlimited amount of boredom-busting, the price still feels steep for what it is.

Yet there’s also very little chance that you’ll find a better presented and more feature-packed version of the three card games on offer anywhere else.