Mondo Solitaire

With so many card games available for iPhone, figuring out which is king can induce a headache. Thankfully, Mondo Solitaire gets our tribute by dealing a winning hand with an incredible slate of games and great features.

Over a hundred solo card games have been packed into Mondo Solitaire. It would be an understatement to claim it a good value because it's possibly the most gameplay you can buy for your buck on the App Store. From classic Klondike to match-making Angkor Wat to the challenging Tarantula, the range of games is absolutely staggering and it's the primary selling point for sure.

Each game comes with a full description and difficulty rating. You can see, for example, whether you want to try your luck winning a two-deck game of Emperor (pretty likely) or attempt a win in Black Hole (unlikely). There's even a breakdown of how chance plays into the game versus skill. To top it all off, a pretty little snapshot of the card layout is provided.

Mondo Solitaire obviously makes a fantastic casual card game because of the sheer number of variations and unified feature set. Even better, though, is how you're able to use it to learn new games you may have never heard of before. The simplest games take just a few minutes to learn with the provided description. Some of the copy is a bit heavy, making it difficult to follow, although you can gather the basic rules for most games without too much trouble.

There aren't step-by-step instructions for any of the game, however. This makes it challenging and occasionally frustrating trying to learn how to play some of the more complicated games. If you've never played Klondike, it's an effortless learning curve given the brief description and a round; however, trying to figure out what's going on in a game of Crescent without explicit instructions is an exercise in futility.

While you may not understand how to play, you'll have full reign of the cards thanks to highly polished touch controls. Mondo Solitaire makes good use of the touchscreen with a suite of sophisticated gestures that allow you to move individual cards, entire slates, and execute other various manoeuvres. A comprehensive tutorial complete with animated images provides a detailed primer on how to work with the digital deck.

Of course, there's the obligatory range of backdrops and card styles to personalize the experience. Slightly more than a handful of options is provided, which is just enough really to satisfy our demands.

There's no question that Mondo Solitaire trumps the competition on iPhone with its value. The immense number of games and finely-tuned features make it a great buy. Even though the lack of clear instructions makes learning some of the lesser known games difficult, the sheer value outweighs this relatively minor shortcoming.