Solitaire Rules

The goal and objective of this game is to sort the 52-card deck (with the Jokers pulled out), into four separate Suits (Diamonds, Spades, Hearts, and Clubs). To sort the Suits into the Foundations, you need to sort the cards by the Suits in ascending order, starting from Aces all the way up to the King of the Suits. To achieve this one must move the cards around the tableau, stock, and waste piles, stacking the cards in color and numerical order, or as cards are discovered stacking them in the foundation piles. 

The most difficult part of designing this game was trying to figure out how our solitaire game would be different from the original version of Solitaire and the other versions of Solitaire. Solitaire is a simple game with very few ways to adjust and change the game to make it a new version of the game. So we studied different versions of the game and saw how they differed from the original version, and how they were similar. The biggest variation we saw across our research was the differences in the Tableau layout, The layout also influenced the names of the games such as Spider Solitaire (Solitaire with a Tableau with eight spots) and Klondike (Solitaire where the Tableau is set up like a mountain). 

The way we decided to edit and change the rules from Version 1 and Version 2 was by clarifying confusing bits and rephrasing certain rules. We also retested the setup of the Tableau, making sure that it wouldn't lock the game into an unplayable state. The main issue we had while rewriting and creating a second rule sheet was to make sure things were very clear and concise with no extra words that might confuse people.  

I believe our team worked very well together; all things considered. We met often for meetings to discuss the rule sheets and often messaged each other outside of our meeting times to discuss specific rules or clarify information that was needed to complete the original rule sheet. I feel as if we divided the work evenly, we discussed everything and wrote the rules based on the notes we took during our meetings and communications. 

I found the self-play test rather challenging because I didn’t have a deck of cards so I had to use a website which meant the game took much longer than expected as each card had to be individually clicked and dragged to each pile, and if you miss clicked you had to fix the pile by clicking all the cards in the proper order. This slow pacing, because of the website design, meant I could not test to see if the game fell within the 15-minute window. Despite being unable to test how long the game lasted because of the website design, I was able to finish the game and fully complete the four foundations. 

The largest thing I would change about the design process in the next version of the rule sheet is possibly fully rewriting the rules, not necessarily changing them but reorganizing how they look on the official rule sheet.