If you've bought a PC at any point since 1990, you're probably well-acquainted with Solitaire, Microsoft's built-in card game that's long been a source of willful distraction.
Now, you can be even more distracted on your phone - as if you needed more reasons - with Microsoft announcing that the 21st century version, Microsoft Solitaire Collection, is coming to smartphones.
The familiar PC game is derived from Patience. In addition to the version based on a standard deck of 52 playing cards, it also gave rise to peg solitaire. Microsoft started including the digital version with Windows 3.0, back in 1990.
The mobile version packs in five different twists on the core card game. Klondike is the classic formula, where you clear all the cards from the table using one or three-card draw, with traditional or Vegas-rules scoring. Spider presents eight columns of cards that you must clear with the fewest moves possible, and can be played with one suit or four. Freecell is a more strategic mode, which "rewards players who think several moves ahead, while in Tripeaks you must select cards in sequence and clear as many boards as you can before you run out of deals. Finally, in Pyramid the aim is to combine two cards that add up to 13 to remove them from the board.
There will also be daily challenges, which reward players with badges and other in-game rewards. Solitaire Collection also integrates with Xbox Live, with achievements to be unlocked.
The game is available for free download on Android and iOS now.
Microsoft has made the Premium Version of the game available for free until December 31. However, if you want to remove in-game ads after that, you'll need to pay up, as happened with the Windows 10 version.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
