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Faeries are useful! They're good for healing Wanderer's Palace. They're good if you really
want to facecheck the ice on R&D but you don't want to risk a Neural Katana to the brainstem.
They're good for... um... really creeping you out if you've ever played Drakengard.
If you can't tell, I'm kinda chomping at the bit for the US release of Bravely Default.
So in the interim, I'm making do with... Faerie Solitaire. Which, I'll admit, kinda had me
puzzled in the early moments. It's just cards and solitaire, chaining cards one number higher
or lower than the last, the kind of thing anyone who's ever played Tut's Tomb back in
the prehistory of computer gaming is familiar with. So why the hell does this even have
to be a thing? The answer is simple: FIREBALLS.
It's solitaire, with fireballs. And cute pets to collect, hatch from eggs, level up as you
play, and then evolve to fill your monster-thingy collection. While the basic goal is to clear
the board of cards, just like in any good solitaire game, there's so much stuff around
the edges - quite literally, around the edges of the screen - that augments and enhances
the experience. I'd be scared to yammer on about a basic solitaire game for three minutes,
but Faerie Solitare helps me out by adding things like a combo meter, which yields extra
cash at the end of a hand, or a progress bar, which has to be filled to progress and which
yields extra cash at the end of a hand, or the whole fey enclave pictured here with upgrades
you can purchase to give yourself extra undo uses or other bonuses. Even during the gameplay
itself, you'll run across frozen stacks of cards that have to be thawed out by digging
up a Fire Blast card, as well as storable cards that you can save for a pinch or to
extend a combo.
That said, it's still Solitaire, and you're still going to "lose" a good number of hands.
The cards just fall that way. Fortunately, in the early stages of the 40-level story
mode, just dropping one or more hands isn't going to scuttle your progress. Each level
consists of nine hands, with one or more overarching challenge goals to meet. So just doing the
math... 40 levels, 9 hands each, that's... um... 106 hands! Or somewhere in that ballpark.
While the first several levels are stupid easy - I'd hate to see anyone who can fail
them - clearing the first "Stage" of five levels unlocks the five Challenge levels,
where things get significantly more hardcore. Now you're tasked with filling the progress
bar inside a minute while getting a 12-card combo AND at least three perfects. That's
a bit better. Faerie Solitaire gives me a bit of insight into what makes stupidly-addicting
social-casual games stupidly addicting, but without obligating me to bug my friends at
intervals or stop playing so I can let a stupid thing recharge or shell out real money after
the point of purchase... or, well, really anything that makes people look down their
noses at the current face of "casual" games. Plus, the presentation's higher-quality than
what you'd get on the bookfaces or the like, with a narrated storyline about... wizards
and such. But best of all, it's solitaire. You can hand it to your mum and you'll buy
yourself an hour of not having to hear about how much more successful your siblings are
and when are you going to stop having fun and be boring like the rest of the family.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've just been inspired to build an Andromeda Scheherazade deck.