Solebon Solitaire - 50 Games

I have been playing Smallware's Solavant Solitaire for years, it's a wonderful implementation of "hard" solitaire games, that emphasises clarity and smooth, graceful animation over flashy, distracting graphics or effects. I'm delighted that their taste and style has transitioned so well to the iPhone's touch screen. In particular, the card faces are designed to be highly readable, and the animation effects are as smooth as anything I've seen on the iPhone. These aspects of Solebon are not just style/taste decisions, that you may or may not like. On a screen as small as the iPhone's, it's very hard to display a full deck of cards (or two!) and have them be readable and manipulable with your finger. Solebon's graphics are lovely, but readable even when you have all the cards on-screen. And the animations help you see the effects your moves are having on the playfield. Clean, subtle, graceful, playable. One hint to new players: You might think that you drag the cards with your finger tip, but that's too hard to manage, you can't see the card your finger is on, and your hand obstructs half the screen. So instead, you first tap the card you want to move, and it (and any "attached" cards) will glow. Then touch the destination, and watch the whole stack move over. (Also, if your stacks get really deep, you can drag the playfield up and down to see what's below.) OK, enough raving, back to my game of Yukon!

The most annoying thing about this app or the ONLY annoying thing about this app is it constant desire for reassurance at the App Store for reviews. Otherwise there is not a Solitaire app in the store that comes close to this for ease of use and making a Solitaire interesting. Please stop asking me to tell everybody how great this app is. ********************* All complaints handled. Recommend without reservation. ******************👍👍 Still same complaint but very minor. I have use this for years and I guess my only complaints are relatively minor one complaint is sometimes I think I broke a high score and I'd like to be able to see whether or not I did ... the screen goes dim and you just can't see if you did ... anyway but does keep track of stuff ... I like it. I recommend with no hesitation. Updating my review. I am enjoying playing ever since the latest upgrades. Still have my minor complaint about not knowing if my last game broke a record. But like last time, I recommend with no hesitation. ———————————————— I don't think it's possible to improve this anymore and this app is complete please stop upgrading it and changing it and asking for more compliments. OK I get it it's a great app it does more than possible when other people could even think of yada yada yada.

Update: This developer is extremely responsive. I complained to them directly and they researched the problem. It turns out the update changed the card face which made it unplayable for me. They kindly guided me on how to get my old card face back. The cards have been slightly enlarged which I haven’t gotten used to yet but I’m back in business. I can’t say enough about how kind and responsive this folks were. They have set a high bar for others to follow. Original 1 star review and complaint: The solitaire I’ve been playing and enjoying for quite some time just became unplayable to me. Without warning the look and feel changed making it unusable. Can I get my old look back? Please?

ask user to change the rating

UPDATE 2: Great, so you are finally admitting that the cards are not the “exact same.” Why have you been gaslighting your users? Frankly, it’s unbelievable. And still no comment on the bloat or slowness. I’m taking a star away for the poor response from the developer. UPDATE: Firstly, the cards are NOT the same and if you need screenshots to prove it, I will happily provide them. I do not understand why you will not accept that your long-term users have an issue with this release. I would be willing to bet that most of us spend more time in you app than you do. Secondly, you did not address my other two issues: bloat and slowness. This update is a huge step back and a correction is needed. The 9.0 update is very disappointing. The app grew from 46MB to 145MB just to add many unnecessary features. Cards are uglier now, and the app takes significantly longer to load. Gameplay is still OK, I guess, but the experience is aggravating now. Another example of a developer ‘improving’ an app that didn’t need to be improved.

I’m still happily sitting on the last 8.x version of this game and watching the reviews in horror. Seems like the vast majority of people here hate the new version and would gladly revert to v8 if they could. Obviously, virtually nobody is happy with “Classic” mode which is nothing like the classic version of the game. You’re not going to get around that by pasting the same tired “use classic mode; it’s the same” response. There’s an easy fix for this that should make everyone happy. Re-release the old 8.x version as the last version. Then release the modern version as a separate app with an new identifier. Create a bundle of the two with the bundle price being the same as the single game price, and you’ve got a free upgrade path for the people who want it. Meanwhile the other 90% of us can keep the game we bought and actually enjoy playing. Win-win! Developer response: Apple says you’re on the current version, so I can ignore the rest of what you said *la la la I’m not listening* Or maybe my kids’ iPad auto updated, and Apple only shows the latest version installed. I’m not sure how that invalidates the rest of what is being said by so many people. Original 5-star review: I play thousands of hands per year in this app. Simple and perfect.