A Thoroughly Mediocre Solitaire Collection in Tasteful Pink
I will admit that playing solitaire doesn’t make me particularly amorous. I’d rather people stayed away while I was playing, thank you very much. But Suricate Software think otherwise and have produced another entry in their Jewel Match Solitaire series that is covered in embracing couples, love hearts and more pink furnishings than Barbie’s bedroom.
The well-worn Jewel Match Solitaire template is used again here. The majority of the game uses the Tri-Peaks Solitaire format, just with layout changes to make each level slightly different. For the uninitiated, that means clearing stacks of cards by creating chains of cards that are one up or one down from the one that was previously played. A King can remove a Queen or Ace from the playing field, for example, and the removed card can be used to chain with a card that is also one up or down from it. The stacks of cards deplete until none are left, leading to fireworks.
Love is a Many-Layered King
Jewel Match Solitaire L’Amour is wise enough to know that this isn’t enough. Not only does the layout of cards change with each level, but there are obstacles to be removed too. All of them have been used in other Jewel Match games. Chains can only be removed by uncovering hammer cards, and ivy needs a scythe. Iced cards need to be removed twice, and locked cards need a key.
My issue with these obstacles is that – ice aside – they all do the same thing. They’re all locks (in one case, literally) that need a specific key to open. You can put whatever fancy theming that you want on it: they work identically to each other. Which is fine, just a little limited.
To counteract these obstacles, Jewel Match Solitaire L’Amour lets you buy upgrades. This is accessed from a Shop with some really odd usability quirks. You only seem to be able to access it mid-game, and not from the level or main menu, when you’d expect it to be the other way round. It’s also entirely possible to miss that there is a large stock, since there are no scroll bars on the menu. But scroll it you can, and the shop lets you buy wild-card jokers, shuffles, lightning bolts that destroy cards, and permanent unlocks which let you find these things in the card game proper.
The Queen of Hearts
The upgrades are the best bit of Jewel Match Solitaire L’Amour, and it was these rewards that kept me playing. There’s a satisfying feeling of finally unlocking something and noticing the improvement immediately. Snagging some extra cards and extra gold per level should be your first purchases, and later levels practically force you to have them.
Do well in a level and you will gain hearts, which are used to create several fancy cosmetic mansions between levels. They don’t benefit you in any way – you’re mostly just outfitting them with lampposts, fountains and such – but I suppose it keys into the whole L’Amour thing and doesn’t damage the experience. But you will mostly want the currency for purchasing upgrades. That’s the good stuff. And, oh, you will want at least some stars based on your performance. If you don’t get any, you can’t progress. I appreciated that Jewel Match Solitaire L’Amour let you progress even if you didn’t quite clear the complete puzzle.
Periodically, you also unlock different solitaire variants, which you don’t get to actually play in the main game. I can see why that’s the case – they can’t have people learning new rules, after all – but I’d have liked the option to switch out some Tripeaks for a spot of Freecell or Whitechapel. Still, you can duck out to the main menu and give them a go. They lack stakes (a few achievements rely on you completing them), but they’re decently implemented, with rules (again, not communicating that they have scroll bars) that you can scan if you’re not quite sure what’s going on.
Less Might Have Been More
There are a lot of levels here; hundreds of the buggers. But that length is not supplemented with variety, and that’s the biggest caveat if you’re thinking about buying Jewel Match Solitaire L’Amour. You are going to be doing the same thing over and over.
Problem #1 is that Jewel Match Solitaire L’Amour doesn’t stagger any of its obstacles. By the end of Level 20 or so, you will have seen every ice, lock, ivy and chain. You won’t see a single new idea or mechanic for the next 200-odd levels. Which leads to the inevitable: fatigue kicks in, as the only real motivator is the game’s achievements and those unlocks.
Problem #2 is that around Level 120, the difficulty hikes significantly. Ice cards sit on other ice cards within a gigantic pile, which feels like cheating. There’s little strategy involved: you just need to be lucky enough to get exactly the right cards in the right order. The countermeasures are the upgrades, but it often feels like you need to grind on levels you’ve already done to get enough currency. Which means the late game feels a bit artless and grindy. The layouts aren’t clever, luck is essential, and you have to grind on unlocks to give yourself a chance.
That soft wall at Level 150 arrives about three or four hours into the game, though, so you’re getting a fair whack of content before progress slows. You probably know better than I do about whether the slow-down and subsequent grind will be a problem for you.
A Solitaire Game That is Middle of the Deck
Otherwise, Jewel Match Solitaire L’Amour is fine. The controls work reasonably well for a console solitaire game. It’s cursor based, which makes sense, but it raises questions of whether you want to be playing solitaire games on the Xbox at all. Touchscreens and a mouse seem like more suitable inputs for this kind of game. A controller does the job, but you are still dragging the cursor slowly from one end of the screen to the other at times.
Jewel Match Solitaire L’Amour didn’t surprise us once. It’s the Jewel Match Solitaire template, decorated by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. It’s the same power-ups, the same obstacles, and hundreds of Tri-Peaks puzzles. If you are a solitaire lover and can stomach the puzzles getting grindy and artificially difficult, then sure – there’s plenty here to play. In our case, that wasn’t enough to make us gooey-eyed. It’s plain and predictable, which made us do a bit of a swipe-left.
Important Links
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/jewel-match-solitaire-lamour/9p4g1lzvjbfl
