Penthouse Solitaire

Solitaire is one game that can appear almost impossible to newbie players. In avidly trying to progress by slapping-down cards, you can easily draw your way into an impossible hole, from which the game becomes unsolvable.

Being a relatively inexperienced solitaire player, one with many memories of restarting the classic Windows version in frustration, Penthouse Solitaire actually took a fair while to review. How could I write a review without at least winning a few times, after all?

Doing so was no great sacrifice though because, even if it is an adult title, Penthouse Solitaire still offers a very solid rendition of the classic card game. In fact, it offers three variations on the game, although the core aim of getting all the cards organised into four suit-based piles at the top of the screen remains throughout.

The 'Easy' mode lets you rifle through the remaining cards in the deck one-by-one as many times as you fancy. 'Klondike' orders the remaining deck cards into groups of three, but only lets you pick the top one. This means you'll need to employ a far more considered strategy to avoid getting stuck.

Even harder than this is the 'Vegas' variant, which is only really suitable for experience card shufflers. Here, you can only go through the card deck once, making for a very challenging game.

As in just about every adult game, there are images to unlock along the way. They're a lot less hardcore than many that we've looked at in the valiant pursuit of giving you the best games coverage we can, and they could quite easily have been taken from a lingerie catalogue rather than a top-shelf smut rag. The images are of fairly high quality, though, even if they don't fill the screen.

They're unlocked each time you place all of your aces in the top piles and whenever you complete a game. Obviously, after repeated play there simply won't be any more images to unlock, but they should at least last for the first couple of hours of play for the less experienced player.

Much like unlocking any sort of achievement, these images are actually very welcome, and offer a little sense of triumph that is rare in these sorts of image-unlocking titles. Normally, these games splurge their wares in your direction within the first 15 minutes of play, so it's good to see one that is a little more coy about exposing itself.

Aside from the adult images, the visuals are pleasantly clean, making the card suits and numbers easy on the eye and not at all squint-inducing. Penthouse Solitaire still lacks the gloss of a high-end production like Platinum Solitaire 2, but it's a reasonable looker nevertheless.

Likewise, it lacks the more creative game modes of some rivals, but for a casual bout of solitaire now and then, Penthouse Solitaire is a winner – one that's enhanced by its adult content, too.