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a game by Zach Gage; version 1.0.4
This games based on classic Spider Solitaire has a few changes that change game play strategy, specifically: fewer stacks, five in Flipflop vs. ten in Spider, the ability to move cards to other stacks without regard to suit and the ability to move a card that has a value one greater or one less than the card at the destination. Think of this game as Spider solitaire with these few rule and play changes and quirky humorous presentation.
To my pleasant surprise I found this game more fun than I expected, it has a very short and clear tutorial (so short that many first time players will not even recognize it). If you have played any version of solitaire on a tablet or phone you know how to use this app, it has no playability surprises, even those who have not played solitaire on a phone or tablet can figure out how to play by following the tutorial.
The subtle change in the rules will make you think differently about tactics and stratigy of play it took me a while to realize how this can help you win. I even one that three suited version (took me a while), I have never had the ability (or luck) to win standard Spider solitaire with anything more than two suits.
The ads in the free version exist at a tolerable level and I will probably pay the three bucks to kill them and unlock the full game. I found two bugs that detracted from me from giving this the highest rating: a ‘sticky’ card in one game, and I locked it up with mixing ‘undo’s’ and ‘help’. The bugs happened rarely (once each in all the time I tested it). I did find that the free version I tested did drain the battery of my iPad Pro at rate much faster than my other version of Spider solitaire.
As the word ‘Solitaire’ suggest in the game title, use this to pass (waist) time.
I found the simple controls intuitive (standard basic iOS controls: tab, and finger drag). The game made good use of the screen placing the two shown cards, undo area (button), help area (button) non played cards at the bottom, visible but out of the way of game play.
I found two bugs in my testing, unfortunately; I could not duplicate them after they happened once (otherwise I would have filed a bug report). The first bug concerns game locking-up when backing out a lot of moves using the ‘undo’ button, others have reported that when backing out a lot moves it will sometimes give a new hand from the deck. I do a lot undo’s when I play but I only had the problem once.
The other bug which happened once (I could not duplicate) concerns that at a position in the player stack I could not move a card to another position, cards placed after worked just fine and I could back out to clear the card at the position, but any card at this position remained stuck. Restarting the game fixed the problem but gave me a ‘Lost’ game in my stats.
OK, I found a new massive time waster, I will spend more time playing this game than I should. I found the changes implemented in this version of solitaire while not appearing overly dramatic or original (they have great subtle originality) added welcome challenges to the game. These changes allow me to play with more than two suits giving me more variety of game play and levels of difficulty not so dependent on ‘luck of the draw’. I will pay the three bucks for the game.