Forbidden Solitaire Review (PC)

Forbidden Solitaire injects a meta-fueled, nineties-soaked piece of code into the bloodstream of a friendly CD-ROM—a supposedly “cursed” game that, at least according to the internet archives, has been known to kill its players. So, imagine my surprise when I found a copy of it at a local thrift store. I should have left it to gather dust. Yet, there was something that piqued my curiosity—an itch that yearned to put the notion of it being a soul-snagging application to bed. A friend warned me not to boot it up. Intrusive thoughts and a lack of superstition, however, had gotten the better of me. I wanted to return to the nineties, and I wanted to see if the so-called Forbidden Solitaire could kill as well as it could rewind time.

As a child of the nineties, it didn’t take all that long for the nostalgia fuel to inject itself directly into my veins. The abysmal aspect ratio; the low-poly visuals; the exaggerated narration; and the unapologetically intrusive walls of text that bled Times New Roman. Simply, it was like taking a walk back down memory lane—to a time period where everything was shoddy, yet oh-so-inviting and pulpy to the touch. I loved it. The ultraviolet extracts of a dungeon caked with mythical creatures; the booming voice of a narrator who couldn’t help but overcompensate for the lack of technical polish and graphical complexity. It felt like home. It felt like the nineties.

Between slipping into the FMV-crafted cesspit of an old and seemingly broken CD-ROM, I often found myself being dragged back to confront the present. A chat bubble would appear on the desktop, and small blocks of text would appear to interfere with the nostalgia voyage and to eradicate the immersion.

‘You’re not still playing that game, are you?’ A concerned friend would ask me that same question like clockwork, as I, being lost in the past, would immediately close the tab, not thinking twice about the attachment of a newspaper clipping depicting the death of a former player. I didn’t have time to dwell on the caveats. I had a game of Solitaire to beat, and not to mention a whole bouquet of layers of monster-filled dungeons to sink my teeth into.

Solitaire was familiar—comfortable, even. It didn’t require a left leg to grasp the fundamentals of a classic card game in that regard. In fact, most of Forbidden Solitaire was about as to-the-letter as solitaire-based games could get, in that it often required the player to formulate a foundation pile, a collection of suits, and to employ the occasional gamified point module. It was simple, familiar, and teetering on desktop-based Windows 98-like nostalgia. Progressively difficult at times, for sure, but overall rather easy to learn and swat on the fly.

If it wasn’t brief spells of quick-fire solitaire that was weaving the experience together, it was the fragments of modern horror—the conversations, the newspaper reports, and the attachments that led me to believe that I was venturing down a path that I couldn’t quite come back from. It never felt as if I was beating the odds or getting closer to the end. Rather, it felt that each small victory was a step in the wrong direction. The game harbored more secrets than creatures, and it wanted me to unlock the doors to unveil the truth.

Suffice it to say that, PSX fans are bound to find a worthy portal to the past in Forbidden Solitaire. The gameplay might be relatively simple—to engage in short bouts of solitaire to unlock doors, confront enemies, and to progress deeper into the dungeon—but the general composition, on the other hand, is both nostalgic and deeply rooted in light lashings of horror. Scary? No. But surprisingly eerie and, to an extent, disturbing. Frankly, I couldn’t have asked for anything more. It was thick, pulpy, and bursting at the seams with all of the B-movie puffiness that I had come to love during the nineties.

While most of Forbidden Solitaire is caked in a traditionally shoddy skin and stills that befit the time period, the game itself plays rather well, with smooth card-based gameplay and a firm but fair balance that makes the experience a lot of fun to shovel through. With a helping of pixel-crafted jump scares and some modern-day VHS-like footage to grease the hinges, the game presents itself as a well-rounded love letter than just so happens to capture the best of both worlds. Is it brilliant? No. Is it the best thing since Solitaire? No. Yet, it does add a new layer to a familiar blueprint — and that counts for a lot here, truly.

As with most odes to the old faithful of PSX, there is a sense of shoddiness here that you can’t quite explain. If you’re a fan of old-school CD-ROM horrors, then it’ll feel like a home away from home. But for those who expect more, it might fail to showcase its greatest value in the deck that it offers. But that’s sort of what makes it so darn good: the fact that it captures the essence of its chosen subject. It might not be perfect, but it does hit the nail on the head with its infusions of nineties jank and B-movie pulp. Sometimes, that’s all that you can ask for.

Verdict

Forbidden Solitaire blends the nostalgic rust of an old-school Windows 98 CD-ROM with just enough modern visual meta elements to deliver a compelling deep dive into the back corridors of a familiar card game. While rather short and without a great deal of depth in its gameplay department, the game itself represent the best of old-fashioned desktop games — and that counts for a tremendous deal here, truly. And therefore, I can’t help but sing its praises. Sure, it might be lacking in modern-day innovations, but to be honest, I don’t want modern. Frankly, I’m more than happy to be able to spend three hours reliving a day from my childhood. Forbidden Solitaire, thankfully, delivers that same invitation.