Solitaire
The solitaire. Seven columns, a stock you turn one card or three at a time, four foundations to fill from the ace up, and when the last king goes home the cards come bouncing down the screen. Free, full screen, and it saves itself.
The game
Klondike deals twenty eight cards into seven columns with only the top card of each face up, and keeps the rest as a stock. Build the columns down in alternating colours, move runs between them, turn the stock to find what you need, and send every card home to its suit. Drag a card or a run, or tap it and the game moves it to the right place. Undo is a tap away, a game you leave is waiting when you return, and a tally keeps your games, wins and times.
Draw one or draw three, and the scoring you prefer
Draw one is the gentler game, and most deals can be won. Draw three is the classic, and you can limit the passes through the stock to one or three for the version that bites. Standard scoring is the familiar forgiving count with a bonus for speed on a timed game. Vegas scoring buys the deck for fifty two and pays five for each card sent home, with one pass through the stock drawing one and three drawing three, and most deals lose money, which is the point. Tournament scoring takes the standard values, removes the floor, charges for every redeal and every undo, and adds a finishing bonus. Or turn scoring off and just play.
Cumulative Vegas plays each deal exactly as Vegas does but carries the money over: every deal you finish or walk away from adds its result to one running bankroll, which the score shows while you play, until you reset it in the table options or pick another scoring. For practice, the table options can also deal an open tableau, every card face up from the start; open deals are kept apart in your statistics and count toward no achievement.
What each scoring pays
The rulesets side by side. The Scoring setting picks one, and the Timed switch adds the last row.
| Standard | Vegas | Cumulative Vegas | Tournament | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Card sent home | +10 | +5 | +5 | +10 |
| Card turned face up | +5 | 0 | 0 | +5 |
| Waste card to a column | +5 | 0 | 0 | +5 |
| Card taken back from home | -15 | -5 | -5 | -15 |
| Buying the deck | 0 | -52 | -52 each deal | 0 |
| Redeal | Free, or -100 (draw three: -20 from the third pass) with the Redeal option | One pass drawing one, three drawing three | One pass drawing one, three drawing three | -100 (draw three: -20 from the third pass) |
| Undo | Free | Free | Free | First free, then -25 each |
| Lowest score | 0, or none with the Redeal option | No floor | No floor, the bankroll carried to the next deal | No floor |
| Timed play | -2 per 10 seconds, plus 700,000 divided by the seconds taken, for a win of 30 seconds or more | Not used | Not used | Bonus of 500 minus the seconds taken, never below 0 |
If you remember Solitaire on Windows
Solitaire shipped with Windows 3.0 in 1990 and stayed on every desktop for more than twenty years. It was there, the story goes, to teach a generation how to drag and drop with a mouse, and it became one of the most played computer games in history almost by accident. Everyone who used a PC in those years remembers something about it: the card backs you could choose, draw three when draw one felt too easy, the timer and the score ticking in the status bar, and above all the ending, when the cards leapt off the foundations and bounced across the screen, leaving a trail of themselves behind.
Follow Suit has that ending. The cards bounce and leave their trail, because a win in this game is supposed to look like one. The rules are the ones you remember, draw one and draw three, standard and Vegas scoring, a timer if you want it, and a choice of card backs. It fits a phone as well as a monitor, runs entirely on your device with no connection needed, and never shows an advert.
Anywhere, free
On a phone you can add the game to your home screen and it opens like an app. There is a desktop app for Windows and Linux for people who want it in the taskbar again. An account is optional and only saves your statistics and settings between devices. The same site has Freecell, and Spades and Hearts to play with friends by a four-letter code or invite link, all free.