Anniversary Update

A new Solitairica update? In 2025?!

Whether you are an old school player or someone who stumbled on the game in recent years, I want to start by saying thank you so much for playing Solitairica.

Solitairica's 10 year anniversary is coming up next year. After I got over the shock of that fact, I decided it is important to meet two goals for this milestone:

1. Catch up to modern standards on each platform

2. Be ready to work on future versions of Solitairica

The first step starts today on Steam, with the anniversary update, which is available on the beta branch now

Steam post image Steam deck using gamepad input

Some more background:

Solitairica was built in 2015 using a now ancient version of Unreal Engine. It was our first game, and first time using the engine, so naturally mistakes were made. Most of the issues are invisible to the player, but behind the scenes they have tied up our ability to grow and maintain the game.

Over the many years we worked on our second game ZOR, we improved massively in the technical arts of using Unreal. With that project coming to a close, and considering Solitairica's continued cult popularity, I have been working on a major overhaul of the Solitairica engine. Almost every core system has been rebuilt, with improvements and optimizations that will allow us to extend and adapt the game in the future.

While there are some select UX and visual improvements, this isn't a remaster with new artwork or reworked game systems as I believe in preserving the game close to the original state. There is some sparing tuning in only the most egregious spots like Barbarian difficulty and tweaking a few useless spells and items. That said, the new engine is buttery smooth, supports gamepad, is ready for translations, and improves on a bunch of minor issues that we weren't able to address back in the day.

Steam post image After 9 years of research and development, we bring you: Widescreen backgrounds

Due to the scope of the overhaul there will undoubtedly be some bugs that pop up, so the update will start out as an opt-in beta branch. We will continue to test and update it until it feels solid enough for full release.

I hope everyone dives in and gives it a shot! I will be monitoring the discussions and fixing the issues in the weeks to come.

Cheers,

Clint

Steam post image You can finally play with your feet up

Patch notes

New stuff

• Gamepad support

• Full steam deck support

  • If gamepad control isn't active by default, check the input setting for the app

• Optimizations

• Shaders compile up front and indicated in load screen (no stutters)

• Visual improvements

  • Excessive contrast turned down

  • Wide background art replaces magic portal frame

  • New title screen art and layout

• UX Improvements

  • Resuming game is now optional, use continue from menu

  • New map screen UX (Feedback wanted here!)

    • Battle button, hourglass UI

    • Inventory management uses a grid instead of a long horizontal carousel

  • Help/info screen reworked (more info, more relevant, available in map screen)

  • Kismet VO shortened, and can be muted in settings

  • Achievement description for "unlock warrior deck" changed to "complete tutorial" to be less confusing

Tuning

• Consistent energy gathering rules: If the card is face up, you get energy. If face down, you don't

  • This adds value to combining card reveals and piercing and area attacks

• Insight spell now reveals a single random face down card

• X-ray glasses reveals extra cards on start of battle not continuously

• Spectacles now reflect the blocked stun (free mind mirror)

• Barbarian difficulty tuning (evaluating in beta)

  • Cracked skull no longer triggers from deck card draw

  • Attack bonuses trigger at 3 health not 2

• Wildstone cost tuning (relying a bit less on emperor farming)

  • Cost of unlocks slightly reduced and rebalanced

  • Wildstone cards in emperor battle reduced

  • Wildstone cards in battles slightly increased