Forbidden Solitaire (game review)

★★★★½ Forbidden Solitaire presents itself as an over-the-top gory horror dungeon crawl from the 1990s where the mechanic is playing card games to fight monsters. But it’s framed as a flashback: you’ve found an old CD-ROM of a forgotten (and rumored to be cursed) video game. As you play through it, your sister sends you messages about how she’s found old news articles, video clips, and more revealing a rash of creepy deaths (all with missing eyes) connected to the game, including its lead developer’s suicide. It nails the esthetic of 1990s pixellated gore, fitting right in with the Catacomb Abyss-to-Doom look with a side of The 7th Guest. (That reminds me, I need to dig out that soundtrack again.) The playing mechanic is fairly simple: each encounter is a new solitaire layout, monsters can lock or alter cards for the worse, and you can use joker cards for various effects like healing, clearing extra cards, reshuffling and so on. It’s easy to pick up the house rules, and fun to play…