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For a while in the mid-1990s, meta horror movies were the genre everyone was talking about. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Scream, the Blair Witch Project – these films simultaneously examined and exploited genre conventions, seeking to scare audiences while also distancing them from the narrative action. You didn’t know whether to laugh or gasp in shock, you weren’t sure what was story or what was framing. Did that just happen or was it a dream sequence? You just had to go with it.
Now developers Grey Alien Games and Night Signal Entertainment have brought this multilayered approach to the card game solitaire, infusing a straightforward puzzler with a bloody gush of meta meaning and a dollop of nostalgia just for the self-reflexive hell of it. In Forbidden Solitaire, lead character Will Roberta picks up an old 1990s game called, yes, Forbidden Solitaire, in a charity shop vaguely recalling some internet myth about it being cursed. He discovers that the game is a sort of narrative card-battler set in a haunted dungeon filled with monsters and treasure – and then you, the player, are transported from his computer desktop into the game. So you’re both him and you.
In order to progress through the cursed building, and to fight the various ogres, serpents and witches, you need to win rounds of solitaire. These work in the classic way – you discard cards from the play space by matching them with the upturned card in your deck, removing anything that’s one number higher or lower than your current card, thereby slowly clearing the table.
But of course, it’s more complicated than that. When you’re fighting an enemy, Forbidden Solitaire becomes a deck building game like Marvel Snap or Balatro, with lots of jokers that add interesting wrinkles such as removing all cards of a certain suit. Successfully removing cards adds to your attack total, which then damages the other player at the end of your turn. When someone’s health total reaches zero, they’ve lost. These battles are absolutely engrossing, the various power-ups, spells and buffs ramping up the strategic complexity. Some enemies can curse cards, so that you take a health hit when you remove them; others can lock up cards so they’re out of reach. You need to manage your jokers well, and learn when to hit the reshuffle button in order to regain some momentum – and the challenge remixes with every new power brought to the table.
Compelling you forwards, from one battle to the next, is the game’s brilliant, incredibly authentic recreation of mid 1990s PC game aesthetics. The weird fonts, the garish low resolution VGA graphics, the synth-laden choral horror soundtrack, the glitch-laden full-motion videos (FMV), the blotchy images of adolescent gore. The developers have clearly feasted on contemporary horror titles such as Night Trap, Phantasmagoria and Doom, skilfully reenacting their tropes and foibles to much nostalgic delight.
And while you progress into the maw of the dungeon, unlocking new jokers and buying buffs and abilities from a shop seemingly staffed only by a disembodied eyeball, you’re aware that you’re in a game within a game. Will’s sister, intrigued by his charity shop purchase, has started researching the background of Forbidden Solitaire. What was going on at the developer studio, Heartblade Interactive? Why were the staff going missing? What was the mysterious family background of the company’s founder? Her investigations are relayed to you via instant messages that pop up on screen as you play, so you’re constantly pulled into the framing narrative, making mental leaps between the game, the 1990s and the modern day.
None of this would work if the solitaire experience at the centre didn’t hold you, but it does. The addition of new jokers, new hazards and fresh card layouts keeps you moving through the citadel in a compulsion loop that is almost impossible to extricate yourself from. Co-developer Grey Alien Games had success with its previous narrative puzzler Regency Solitaire but this one, infused with its playful sense of postmodern horror (no doubt brought by co-developer Night Signal Entertainment, creator of excellent horror adventure Home Safety Hotline) brings new dimensions to the concept of a puzzle game that is not really a puzzle game.
It is wonderful to see such a difficult and unwieldy idea executed so brilliantly. It has been a pleasure to go on this weird trip back to the crucible of PC gaming culture. You don’t have to be nostalgic for the period of fuzzy FMV and splatterhouse gore to appreciate Forbidden Solitaire – it works as a brain-teasing card-battler in its own right. But if you were playing games 30 years ago, when interactive horror meant bad acting, looming purple skies, pixelated images of decapitated heads and stories inspired by pulp fantasy fiction, Forbidden Solitaire is a wildly self-aware, multi-textured treat. Enter if you dare.
