Things To Do In Los Angeles: Forbidden Solitaire Review: I'll Tell You When My Hand Has Had Enough

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Forbidden Solitaire Review: I'll Tell You When My Hand Has Had Enough

By Jonathan Bilski

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My poor hand! Not the cards I was dealt in Forbidden Solitaire, out now, that perfectly captures PC games of old, but my left hand inserted with all kinds of rubies and diamonds. A Lucky's Charms box of colorful gems will be sticking out of what looks like a very costly visit to the emergency room by the end of the game. And, I loved every minute of "slotting" in another bauble in this CD-Rom inspired card-slasher, fantasy/horror game with memories of Inscryption coming to mind when I played.

Forbidden Solitaire is not just the game, you get the game and a story with it. You see, as it goes, you pick up the game from a Good Will-like store and brag to your sister about getting it and starting playing it. A long the way you learned it got banned by parent's group in the 90's...and maybe for good reason. So, you've already gotten a hook in you, before you have a crystal in your poor, poor left hand. And, even before the stuff before the cult stuff starts up, but maybe you should heard that from the game.

Booting up the game. Which you do, As you enter a character's PC. Woah. You're back in a different time. The graphics, the sound effects. Oh 90's PC gaming. It's pulled off so well, yet knowing that the games gonna run well on a modern computer puts my heart at ease. Sorry, just... For someone who played stuff on older PCs...it sucked. This didn't.

The solitaire portion flows easily in as you have to battle dark forces in an ever-changing fortress/keep. In the game within the game, you're trying to unlock immortality...through, of course, solitaire, ahahahaha. You've got to love that concept.

There's two modes of solitaire exploration and battle. In battle you can die from losing health. In exploration. You can die from running out of cards before finding or unlocking what you need to. You'll buy different Jokers/modifiers to help clear/find cards pull off combos etc. Just meet that weird eyeball guy in the shop. He also sells those sweet, sweet power-ups to embed in your left hand.

I just need one more. I don't have a problem! My hand always looked this stylish and infected!

There's fun little change ups here and there to make the game harder like adding maggots to cards that eat away at health or freezing cards that then making them unusable that make you have to rethink and strategize and hopefully have better jokers.

In between the solitaire there's some truly ugly 90's era PC graphics that get the job done showing off as you descend into the madness on your in computer game quest. Add, another layer to that as your sister starts tracing some bad goings-ons at the company that made the game. She messages you during game-play pausing it reminding you there's more to this.

The game does remind you, "Hey, you're just playing solitaire, right?" "Right?"

Night Signal Entertainment who gave us Home Safety Hotline teamed up with Grey Alien Games who specializes in making solitaire games. Together they made the perfect baby that is this game. Having a realistic gameplay element with solitaire from a game that seemingly existed from the 90's and all the spooky stuff that I don't want to ruin that Night Signal brings to the table is kind of amazing here.

It took me roughly about 10 hours to beat the game. In that time, I thought the story and game-play was well-paced. A game worthy of playing nightly for an hour or two.

Forbidden Solitaire totally hits you for what it wants to be, a weird game, well-made and a story that's a perfect creepy pasta for the digital age. It's earned it's place with Inscryption with a creepy story all its own. I've loved the effort to emulate the 90's and the time to make a solitaire portion so playable that teamed up with a publisher known for it. I don't want to divulge much of the story, because you finding it out makes it the best part. Got to hand it to them over at Night Signal Entertainment it was hard to put Forbidden Solitaire down.

*Yes, Fangamer or some other game merch site should make temporary tattoos/stickers of the gems you insert into your left hand from this.