Game Review: Treasure Solitaire

One of the 2023 traditional deck contest's toughest offerings is Treasure Solitaire, a puzzle game that plays like a Flash puzzle game but is not as forgiving.

Themed to treasure hunting, you start with some rumors, search for clues and use these clues to try to confirm the rumors and find the treasure. Your first deal four rumors, then start each basic expedition by drawing 19 cards, laying 15 of them on a hexagonal map and using the remaining four cards as your hand.

Each turn you draw a card to your hand and use two cards in it to remove cards from the grid based on some comparison. You do this two more times with the goal of leaving a single card on the map that should match the last card in your hand in either suit or rank. If you succeed you keep the card on the table as your clue.

After six basic expeditions you gather your clues for the final expedition, where you match them against the rumors from earlier but only remove one card per term: extra matches become exhausted rumors. This time the goal is to expend all your cards to leave one unexhausted rumor, that becomes the treasure.

Failing this, you take one of the face-up rumors as your hunch, shuffle them with your clues and other face-up rumors and hope the card you draw is the one.

 

There is more skill involved in this game, with the only strong luck element being the lay of your hand as everything else is face up information. It's one thing to clear a grid of cards, it's another to leave a single matching card, so your moves have to take out the right chunks at a time and not split the map too much. Planning ahead doesn't get spoiled by a draw too often to become a problem.

There's a lot of planning ahead involved, not only in how to clear the grid but also in what card to try to get as a clue. Every move has consequences and they all come out in the final expedition. As I said, this is no easy game, and mistakes are costly. Taking risk isn't much of an option and zugzwang is even possible, e.g. the only options either clear the map early or split it too much. 

Something can be said about having to play six basic expeditions, that while they are all different, how well you do in one doesn't affect the next ones (only the final expedition) so the puzzling is the same throughout.

You can opt not to play the luck-based ending, in this mode losing a clue means losing the game as you need all six to make the final expedition possible. The game is hard enough as is so this extra challenge is a small change.