Forbidden Solitaire Review

Computers and the early internet of the 1990s were from an era where you couldn’t prove a lot of the urban legends or myths that were being spread. One of the more common ones were that you should never mix pop rocks and soda. Another was that you shouldn’t flash your high beams at a passing car that has their lights off as it it’s considered a gang initiation and you could get shot. Forbidden Solitaire is seemingly a relic of lost 90s CD-ROM games from the time where controversy and mystery surrounds its ominous existence, offering an immersive solitaire adventure that shouldn’t be missed.

After messaging your sister about finding a long lost CD-ROM game you never got a chance to play, you get to do so finally in 2019. Immediately the game takes hold as you ignore your sister’s warnings and rabbit hole findings. If I can avoid spoiling one thing, it’s the interface, nostalgia came at me hard navigating this 1995 CD-ROM game, much like how Hypnospace Outlaw handled things, and it goes a long way if you around in that time. Grey Alien Games are no stranger to solitaire games, but this is by far my favorite, as it blends horror and dungeon-crawling in a hellish hybrid I couldn’t put down, much like Will, the character I played.

It took me just over five hours to complete the campaign, experience multiple endings, and watch the credits roll. I got 25 out of the 30 achievements without trying, but it seems possible to get them all in a single playthrough. There are 60 levels in total, and time evaporated in a blink. The difficulty ramps slowly and surely, and by the end of the game you really need to employ every card, gem, and tactic to be successful. It’s unfortunate that when things are all done, there’s no way to replay levels or just play them randomized or sequentially. I’d really like to see an endless mode, even. But I’m not sure if any of those things would disrupt the spirit of this game and the era it evokes. That said, I was left satisfied and simply wanted to start the game over to experience it all again.

While this game adheres to the concept of solitaire, you won’t play it in the traditional manner. There are several types of card encounters, there are non-combat scenarios where you’ll have to open a door, find a mechanism, or search a corpse. The fail state here is simply running out of cards before clearing the deck. There are stealth scenarios where an omnipotent being is watching your cards, initially with a yellow stare. Eliminate a card within its view, and you’ll alert it, now with a red glare. Eliminate another card in its presence, and you lose. It’s really clever to play the game around such a restriction that offers a lot of tension. Lastly, there’s card combat where despite the solitude of solitaire, you are using your deck to fight an opponent to the death, and that death better not be yours. You’ll use several tricks and growing abilities to overcome them, but ultimately you want to be as clean as possible in eliminating cards in order to build up a multiplier that can do significant damage and you trying to avoid as much damage as possible.

The story that starts this game does continue in the fictional CD-ROM game found within Forbidden Solitaire, and new findings are story beats are uncovered at specific moments, and is overlaid so well that nothing feels jarring or out of place. Immersion is never broken, and does just such a great job at keeping you invested. This game does have its scares, but never did the “jumpscares” actually get me to jump or jolt, they are rather subdued for what they are, though they can be turned off in the settings. I enjoy all of the artwork and early 3D modeling that exists here that was a special kind of magic we lived for in the 90s, and it works so well here. There were so many times I was convinced this was a real game made playable for modern machines.

Card games have really done a lot to make Jokers more than how they are on paper. In Forbidden Solitaire, there are Jokers that can be be considered helpful, but there are ones that are hurtful too. Thankfully there’s no randomness, once you learn what they are and what they can and cannot do, you’ll know how to work them to your advantage. The helpful Jokers are ones that can clone themselves to be like one of the ones in your hand, can destroy a card and few below it, change all the suits to match, surface all playable cards to be played in succession, and more. You’ll be at the mercy of the hand you’re dealt, but you’ll have so many ways to deal with it better than a traditional game of solitaire due to the twenty-plus Jokers.

Very early on you’ll be approached by an eyeball in a wall like it’s some sort of gory hole to purchase gems that can be slotted into rings or directly into your hand. You’ll want to spend your hard-earned coin on these gems because they’ll do things like let you undo bad moves, give you more health, and so much for. There are even gems that can be used only once, and will break once they used for the first time. With over twenty-five gems to collect, you’ll an amass what can only be described as a gruesome infinity flesh gauntlet in no time.

No 90s CD-ROM game would be complete without some cheesy FMV, and this game has it in spades over the course of the game. This is interspersed with “real-world” news interviews that helps cement the fact that something tragic happened during development and after it released, and many parents worked hard to bury this game in a new type of “satanic panic”. There’s such an an attention to detail here, and the pairing of Grey Alien Games and Night Signal Entertainment works so well.

Along the way you can review all the messages you and your sister transmitted, though it is mostly a one-sided conversation. But perhaps most importantly, there’s a statistics screen that lets you see things like total wins, record combo, highest multiplier, most damage blocked, and fewest combat turns taken. It’s not so much that the game surfaces this information, but more how it does.

Forbidden Solitaire is a linear experience that has a lot of replayability because of how wonderful its systems and levels are. Yet I’m just wanting more because of that greatness, hoping there can be DLCs (or more appropriately “expansion packs”) that are able to explore the cryptic history of its development even further. As it stands though, this is a compelling package and is more than “just solitaire” that cannot come more recommended. While it revels in being a forgotten, discarded, and controversial game with a storied past, Forbidden Solitaire is one you’ll definitely remember.