Hempuli is best known for his work on the change-the-rules mind-bender Baba Is You, but he's quite a prolific developer of games. His latest is a collection of playing-card solitaire variants that just launched on Steam today. First debuting on itch.io last year, with the big Steam update today A Solitaire Mystery now features over 30 different gameplay modes, each a different solo card game and many featuring big thematic elements:
Solitaire (and advanced, thinky variants of it) have been in vogue in the indie games world for a few years now. Well-known developers like Zachtronics have released their own collections of interesting versions, and in general there's been a rise in interest in playing-card driven games lately (we likely have Balatro to thank for that). Meanwhile in the tabletop world, the audience and market for games designed to be played solo has been steadily on the rise since around 2020.
Some of the intriguing and humorous mini-games you can look forward to using your cards for in A Solitaire Mystery include:
- Planting a garden
- Counting in binary
- Performing alchemy
- Deducing the identities of royalty
- Fighting arcane creatures
- Playing poker
- Spelling words
- Helping animals cross a river
- Solving murder mysteries
- Aligning the planets
...and that's just scratching the surface of the 30 different games included, at least 7 of which are brand new for this update.
You can get A Solitaire Mystery now on either Steam or itch.io, with both platforms running an update-launch discount of 10% off for the next week.
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