Pyramid Solitaire Saga: King.com's answer to Solitaire Blitz on Facebook

Over the last few years, we've witnessed a few trends come and go in the world of Facebook gaming. Just a few years ago, most major developers had tried their proverbial hand at a city-building or farming game, but now, the trends have shifted more towards arcade style casino and card games. In terms of card games, one style in particular has found a following on Facebook - pyramid solitaire (look at Solitaire Blitz, for example). King.com carries on in this new tradition with the launch of Pyramid Solitaire Saga on Facebook.

Pyramid Solitaire Saga (phew, say that five times fast) takes place in and around the pyramids of Egypt, with each level giving you a set of cards to clear from your stone tablet. For those unfamiliar with pyramid solitaire, you'll have one active card at the bottom of the screen, and must then clear the cards above by clicking on cards one number lower or higher than that active card. That is, if a 3 is the active card, you could then click on either a 2 or a 4 to begin a run.

The ultimate goal in each level of Pyramid Solitaire Saga is to clear enough cards to uncover the golden scarabs, which normally rest underneath larger piles of cards. It's not necessary to clear 100% of the cards in each level to achieve this, but you'll probably get pretty close each time. You'll have five lives at your disposal, but will only actually lose those lives if you fail to reach the level's target score or run out of cards to pull from your deck before uncovering the golden scarabs.

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Points are earned by clearing multiple cards in a chain before needing to draw from the pile once again, but as with most games of this type, your ultimate success will depend more on luck than skill. So long as you're observant and exhaust all options before drawing your next card, the rest really isn't even up to you. Luckily, gameplay is made more enjoyable with some seemingly small design touches, like the ability to press the space bar to draw a card, allowing your mouse to never leave the top area of the screen. Furthermore, the golden scarab cards are clearly marked with golden borders, so you won't accidentally click on useless cards when simply trying to uncover them.

Rounding out the package is the ability to view your scores on each individual level alongside those of your friends on the in-game leaderboards, and the boosts feature that serves to change your game in some way (say, by adding additional cards to your deck). It would have been nice to see an "undo" button available in each level, in case you happen to draw a new card too early, but otherwise, Pyramid Solitaire Saga works well and is an entertaining (albeit slow-paced) take on the growing pyramid solitaire genre on Facebook.

Click here to try Pyramid Solitaire Saga on Facebook -->

Have you tried King.com's Pyramid Solitaire Saga on Facebook? Which pyramid solitaire game do you think is the best on Facebook thus far? Let us know in the comments!

 

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Source: http://blog.games.com/2012/05/18/pyramid-solitaire-saga-review/

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