In my Princess Bride review I mentioned that I play a lot of casual games. Fairway Solitaire is a good example. I initially figured I would play the demo for a half hour. Then three hours later I was short a few bucks and still playing. I am surprised by the amount of replayability this game has. It’s perfect for stress relief as the whole experience is calm and enjoyable.
The basic game mechanic is solitaire. You have a deck at the bottom of the screen and then stacks of other cards laid out above. Your goal is to clear the stacks using your deck cards. For example, if you turn over an 8 in your deck, you can clear a 7 or a 9 (if it is the bottom card of that stack). If you clear a 9, you can then continue by clearing a 10 or 8. Suits don’t matter. Once you either turn over the last card in your deck or clear the board, that round is over.
Okay, that’s the Solitaire part of the game. But what does the Fairway represent? Well, this game is golf themed. To be completely honest, the theme does not really affect the base mechanics. However, the game is so good at creating a feeling of golf that you really buy into it when you’re playing. Each round is a hole and you score eagles, birdies, bogies and so on based on how many cards are remaining on the field of play once your deck is done.

