Keeping it short and sweet for today, I’d like to tell you about Eric’s Ultimate Solitaire. This is a collection of Solitaire games for your computer that will help waste great gobs of time. I know what you’re thinking, “I already have Solitaire on my computer.” Which is likely true. The problem is, it’s more than likely Klondike Solitaire. Klondike is probably the most well-known variation, but even with skilled play is very difficult to win. Heck, you can lose even if you make no mistakes. While Eric’s includes Klondike for completeness, it has around 20 more versions, with varying degrees of complexity and difficulty.
Of course, you could just buy a copy of Hoyle’s and a deck of cards for far cheaper than this game, but it has a few niceties that the deck doesn’t have. The game can be set to ‘auto play’. While it won’t play the game through by itself, the game can take the obvious moves and do them all for you. e.g. putting the next dozen or so cards on the aces on the top of the screen. Clicking on a card will show you all legal moves you can do, the legal moves will change color. By clicking on the wolf claw you can cheat (okay, you can cheat with real cards, too). And, perhaps most noteworthy, there is a silly cartoon wolf with a silly cartoon voice that talks to you through the game, offering encouragement, asking questions, and the like.
Try to get that out of a real deck of cards and a real wolf.
[...] Despite all of that I still played this game a lot. It’s mostly because it’s just about the only game that my laptop that I had at the time would run. So it was either this game or Eric’s Ultimate Solitaire. [...]