The all-popular virtual card game pastime has now been ported to our pocket smartphones. The ubiquitous pre-installed windows game is now available on the Android and iOS platform as “Solitaire Collection”
Users can download the app for free, both on Android and iOS and one month of free Premium Edition access for everyone who installs the game before December 31, 2016. The app is going to follow the ever-growing “freemium” model; allowing users access to all the basic features while reserving the ad-free experience and other bonuses such as card themes for paying users. After the first free month, players will have the option to continue Premium Edition use for $1.99 per month.
Microsoft first bundled Solitaire with Windows in 1990 with the release of Windows 3.0. The game was developed by intern Wes Cherry in 1989, but it wasn’t just for entertainment. Solitaire was intended to give users a way to practice basic tasks in a graphical user interface (GUI), which was still very new to most people in 1990. The simplicity of Solitaire, which requires users to drag cards using the mouse pointer to form sequences have lead to its worldwide popularity. To this day, it’s one of the most played games on Windows.
The modern Solitaire Collection includes the classic Klondike, and other variations such as Spider Solitaire, FreeCell, Pyramid and Tripeaks. It also offers daily challenges.
This is the first time that a game that has existed on Windows for 25 years, has made its entry into the outside world.
You can download the Android version of the game from Google’s Play Store and iOS version from Apple’s App Store.
Even though there are many versions of the game available on Play Store and App Store, Windows claims that their version of the game is the definitive “World No. 1 Solitaire game.”
