Forbidden Solitaire

If you’ve been following my review journey, then you already know that I’m a big fan of Grey Alien Games’ line of solitaire games. No matter if it’s the more straight-forward iterations (like Regency Solitaire) or when they turn the card game into a competitive role-playing game, such as Ancient Enemy, I can’t get enough. With that said, I felt like their last game, Shadowhand Solitaire, was a big step backwards for the company. There were no surprises and I found myself practically begging the developer to shake things up. As it turns out, Grey Alien was listening, because Forbidden Solitaire is more than just another story-driven card game; it’s a breath of fresh air. It’s a game that takes both the developers and players out of their comfort zones, giving us an inventive new spin on the horror genre that will get under your skin with a meta commentary on the games industry that cuts surprisingly deep. Is this Grey Alien’s masterpiece? That’s what we’re about to find out when I review Forbidden Solitaire, out now on PC.

Where do I even start? The first thing you need to know about Forbidden Solitaire is that it’s actually a game inside of another game. You play Will Roberta, a regular guy who just got his hands on a long-forgotten computer game from the 1990s. That game is, of course, Forbidden Solitaire, a horror/card mash-up that Will thought looked cool when reading about it in magazines like Edge and Total, but was not allowed to play it as a kid. Now, as grown up, Will is about to discover why his parents didn’t want him to play that violent card game all those years ago.

In a lot of ways, Forbidden Solitaire feels like you’re booting up an old computer game from the 1990s. There’s the whirr of the CD-drive, the restrictive 4 x 3 aspect ratio and, of course, a whole bunch of cheesy full-motion cinemas. The game itself is basically the answer to the question: “What if Guillermo del Toro made Myst?” It takes us on a harrowing adventure through the Forbidden Dungeon, a dangerous maze full of deadly traps and even deadlier monsters. The prize? Immortality ... but there might be a catch.

As you might expect, all of the dungeon crawling is done through playing a game of solitaire. No matter if you need to open up a chest, sneak past a guard, swim through water or fight off a monster, you’re going to need to play a round of solitaire. But this isn’t your normal game of solitaire, because we’re playing by the Grey Alien rules that were established in games like Regency Solitaire and Shadowhand.

For the uninitiated, the rules are simple enough. While the card layout may look like a normal game of solitaire, that’s where the similarities end. You won’t need to worry about matching suits or moving cards around, because the only thing that matters is counting up and down. It’s frighteningly easy; if you draw an eight, then you’re looking for either a seven or a nine. This creates a fun scenario where you’re quickly creating a lengthy combo where you go from eight to nine to ten, then reverse the order going down to nine, eight, seven, and so on.

The solitaire will actually change depending on what kind of move you’re making. For example, if you’re trying to unlock a door or uncover a hidden item, then the goal will be to completely clear the board. In a situation where you’re trying to sneak past the guard, you’ll not only have to clear the board, but do it without the enemy seeing you interact with the cards. That means quietly clearing the cards that are just outside of its view, trying not to be seen by the guard.

When it comes to combat, things get a little more complicated. The goal here is less about clearing the board and more about simply creating a lengthy combo. The more cards you can combo together, the stronger your attack will be. Once you run out of moves, you’ll have to draw another card, giving the monster enough time to attack. The trick is using the non-numbered cards to your advantage. These not only include shield and attack cards that are pretty self-explanatory, but also joker cards that will give you a big advantage in every fight.

We’ve seen Grey Alien play with these types of magic spells and special abilities in their other games, but it all comes together in Forbidden Solitaire. This is where you can rearrange the hand, blow-up cards on the board, eliminate duplicate cards, give our hero another turn before the enemy strikes, and so much more. Between the ones you find and those you buy, there are dozens of these joker cards, each with their own perk. Unfortunately, the player can only hold four at any given time.

Now, this is only scratching the surface of what you can expect from the various rounds of solitaire. As you play through the adventure, you’ll stumble upon poisoned cards, cursed cards and even cards that will fight back. There’s no shortage of great ideas here -- some that came from past games and some that are brand-new to Forbidden Solitaire. Best of all, the different parts of the dungeon all come with their own unique challenges and obstacles.

If you played games like Ancient Enemy or Shadowhand, then you’ve already seen Grey Alien experiment with a lot of these ideas. Those were good games, but Forbidden Solitaire is the first time all of these ideas come together in what feels like an organic way. The adventuring has been streamlined, not to dumb it down, but rather to make it better. To get rid of the stuff we didn’t need, like equipping armor or getting into long conversations with snotty rich people. This is the game where all of Grey Alien’s best ideas actually came together and complemented each other.

It helps that both stories are genuinely interesting. On one hand, I loved how absurd the 1990’s style story is. It’s really just a series of moments, all strung together to get us to a round of solitaire. I started referring to it as a string of “OH NO!” moments: OH NO! That chest was cursed! OH NO! That dead corpse had a monster hiding inside its belly! OH NO! I fell into a poisonous swamp!

At the same time, there’s the story of Will, the guy actually playing this game. From start to end, his sister, Emily, is direct messaging information about the game. It starts out as old advertisements and magazine reviews, only to escalate into a bunch of news stories linking the game to a series of violent deaths. This comes in the form of both articles and videos, all of which helps to expand on the lore of this fictional ’90s game.

There comes a point where the meta story ends up being a lot more interesting than the dungeon crawling, especially when we start getting transmissions from the people who originally worked on the game. It’s clear that the developer has something to say about the ills of the game’s industry, and they do a really good job of weaving that meta commentary into Forbidden Solitaire in both obvious and subtle ways. This is one of those things that could have distracted from the other stories, but it ended up taking the game in a bunch of fun and unexpected directions.

It’s worth mentioning that Forbidden Solitaire is a collaboration between Grey Alien Games and Night Signal Entertainment, the makers of Home Safety Hotline. Beyond the actual solitaire, I’m not sure who contributed what, but I do know that this team-up led to something truly special. It brought out the best elements from both companies, resulting in an experience that is simultaneously clever and gripping. This isn’t just a dungeon crawler with a solitaire component grafted on; it’s a lot more ambitious than that. It’s an authentic ‘90s-era horror game inside of a scary story about the making of that game and its bloody aftermath. And yet, they somehow made it all work.

There really is so much to love about this game. I loved the gruesome enemies, the purposely cheesy writing, all of the fictional behind-the-scenes footage, the classic magazine reviews and the way all of these stories converge at the end. And more than anything else, this is a great solitaire game. Grey Alien has finally found the right balance of card game and role-playing, and the result is their best game yet. I was looking for a shake-up, and Forbidden Solitaire delivered in spades.