Graphics
Gameplay
Story
Sound
Developer
Gamehouse
Publisher
Gamehouse
Pros:
• Simple, clean, and pretty
• Very relaxing
• Great graphics
Cons:
• Sometimes a bit too simple
• It's still solitaire
It's Hawaii. It's a beach. The sun is out and it's a perfect day beneath a sky of blue. What do you do? If you answered "play a metric donkey-load of solitaire", then Gamehouse has just the game for you.
Beautifully Spartan and clean, this is the gold standard for solitaire style card games. Hawaiian Islands. Hula dancers. All the seashells you can shake a stick at. With a cold margarita and an open mind, it’s a great way to zone and relax. And the game is crazy beautiful. You could strip the cards off of these backgrounds and make better desktop wallpaper than anything you’ll find on cNet. Even the soundtrack of simple beach noises is strangely mesmerizing.
The gameplay is not exactly solitaire, though. It actually plays a lot more like Mahjong: All the cards are spread out on the beach and you are tasked with matching numbers instead of esoteric Chinese symbols. That’s good if you like numbers, not so good if you like Chinese symbols. On the positive side, this offers a lot more possibility for different maps and different variations than traditional mahjong or solitaire. That being said, they could have made a lot more maps: the game essentially has 12 levels of 5 layouts each. It seems it would have been easy enough to have a hundred or more levels, to add a little more value to the game. But that is a minor gripe at best. When it comes to casual solitaire this is about as good as it gets. Go. Enjoy.
Review by
Nick Kojima
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