Soliterra
Let’s kick off Powerdive Games Week with their latest – solitaire roguelike Soliterra. Unlike some of the other card games I’ve played for the site recently, this one isn’t worried about the suits (which can be hard to discern on the tiny screen). Instead, you just need to worry about the numbers, and luckily those look pretty clear in one bit.
Ever played Klondike, or the classic Solitaire game that came included on every Windows PC back in the day? It’s got a subscription now and is just another example of our failing capitalist society, but Soliterra isn’t like that. Well, it is like the card game, but there’s no subscription fee to be found here.
You have many piles of cards, and you rearrange them one at a time by stacking them in descending order. Suit doesn’t matter, and the ace wraps around to a king, so you can start and end at any point. Each pile can only hold 10 cards, and if you hit the bottom, it’s game over. There’s no time limit, so it’s all about how well you can stack. Clear a pile to get another row of cards, either on the top of what you already have, or underneath, depending on what mode you’re playing.
When I played the “deal on top” mode, I kept thinking, “Oh no, it ruined my plans!” every time I got a new deal. But then when I tried the “deal underneath” mode, I got mad that new opportunities weren’t presented by new cards. Both have their thing and require different strategies, and it’s wild how different the game feels depending on which mode you play. There are also worldwide leaderboards where scores top 1,000 points, but you’ll be lucky to break 100 on your first few games.
There’s also an Easy mode that has jokers mixed in – you can play anything on them, but you can’t play them on top of anything else (except other jokers). It adds a whole other curve to the game and in some cases doesn’t make it feel easier at all! But it gives juuuuust enough variety to switch up the whole feel of the game.
It's a lot of luck, and a lot of strategy, and it’s a very easy way to waste an entire afternoon. Sometimes you just want to feel a Moment of Zen™, and this is the perfect game for it.
(Released July 11, 2024, on Itch and August 27, 2024, on Catalog. Copy provided by developer.)