Hello!

This week’s GOTW is Pyramid Solitaire Saga, which was released by King.com on Facebook in May 2012. 1.7m people played it yesterday, and 6.8m played it in the past month.

How does it work?

Remember when the only game you could play on your crunchy old PC was solitaire? Pyramid Solitaire Saga is a smart update of that same concept.

You’re faced with a set of overlapping cards, and have to clear the board by placing them onto the deck at the foot of the screen. You can only clear cards that are one higher or one lower than the top card on the deck – so if you have a 5 on top of the deck, you can clear a 4 or a 6. And the cards on the board can only be cleared when they are not covered and are not locked (e.g. in the screenshot below the red 5 is available, but the black 2 and the red queen are not). If you can’t clear a card from the board, you can turn one over from the face-down pile next to the deck, or use the joker and clear any card you want.

You score points for each card you clear, but you only complete the level if you clear the whole board. Some levels have a time limit; others have a limit on the number of cards you can turn over onto the deck. When you complete a level you’ll score one, two or three stars, and will earn a selection of jewels. Jewels can be combined to create boosters, such as an extra joker card.

How does it make money?

You can play for free forever, but when the levels get harder you might be tempted to pay for items that give you a better chance of successfully completing levels.

You can purchase boosters (single-use power-ups) and charms (power-ups that last forever). The latter are unusual in Facebook/mobile games in that they are not perishable + are therefore more expensive than most freemium purchases. For example, the Charm of Foresight (which enables you to see the next two cards in the turn-over pile) costs 119 Facebook Credits – almost $12.

You can buy boosters and charms at any time. But purchase options are also woven into the game so that they appear just when you need them. For example, in the screenshot above you can see that I only have three turn-over cards remaining (indicated by the little yellow ‘3’ at the bottom of the screen), and that I still have a lot of cards left on the board. That’s why two purchase options have just appeared in the top-left corner: one offers 5x extra cards for the turn-over pile; the other is a charm that unlocks all the locked cards on the board.

Why is it particularly interesting?

Pyramid Solitaire Saga is this week’s GOTW because it’s an excellent example of how classic parlour games are being adapted successfully for Facebook and mobile. This particular game has been adapted in two main ways:

1) Social elements – solitaire games have been around for decades, but this one adds social elements like friend invites and gifting lives

2) Progressive difficulty – instead of playing the same game over and over, PSS follows the same format as the other King.com ‘Saga’ games: it’s structured as a series of levels of increasing difficulty

So check out the game, and let me know what you think. I’m stuck on level 24 at the moment, so if you can beat that I hereby oblige you to give me some tips.

Feel free to suggest future GOTWs or people to add to the mailing list. And if you missed any of the previous GOTWs, you can find them all on the GOTW website.

All best,

Todd