Kings' Corners Review

Kings' Corners is a variant of Solitaire I haven't come across before. Hardly surprising given the huge amount of games that can be made from one pack of playing cards. While it's only now that I come across such a game, I wish I'd discovered it earlier as Kings' Corners is pretty good fun and requires more thought than many others.

The idea, as with many Solitaire games, is simple. A series of cards from a deck must be placed across one of 16 squares. The catch is that Kings can only be placed in the corner, Queens on the tops and bottoms and Jacks on the sides. Get one of those cards and have nowhere to put it, and it's game over. All other cards can be placed anywhere else.

Once the board is full, players must create pairs that add up to 10 by tapping them so that they clear. Once all possible combinations have been cleared, it's back to placing cards carefully on the board while leaving gaps for the royalty cards.

It's immensely simple at first but the more I found myself playing, the more I learnt better strategies to win at the game. It doesn't take long to play a game which is ideal when out and about, wanting to dip into a game for short sessions. Despite this brevity however, there's a pretty intelligent game within. Different levels of difficulty continue this trend. Hard introduces the concept of challenges that must be completed, while Easy gives the user a reserve slot to make things a little simpler.

Kings' Corners is very simple to look at and won't win any prizes for imaginative layout, even despite the choice of different backgrounds. While a fancier interface might have been nicer on the eyes, it's not essential as the crux of the game is the strategical thinking it encourages. It's a fun way to spend some time playing a card game, without retreating back to conventional Solitaire types.