Release Date: 07/10/2020
Played On: Win
Available On: Mac / Win
Time Played: 2h 7m
Progress: Completed
Developer: Bithell Games
Publisher: Bithell Games
In recent times, Bithell Games have been making a name for themselves as an indie developer to watch. Of course Mike Bithell is someone that's been on my radar since I first played the brilliant Thomas Was Alone, and I suspect I'm not the only one. However, what's really excited me about his company's recent work, is that they've released a series of "Bithell Shorts". These are short, but high quality games, that explore a unique mechanic or system and tell a succinct story. Needless to say, this is a winning combination for me, as I often prefer to play smaller games with nothing but quality content, as opposed to bloated hundred hour grinds that never truly satisfy.
I've already written about previous shorts like Subsurface Circular and Quarantine Circular, which were both heavily narrative experiences that explored what could be done with dialogue systems in games. Perhaps I'm just a big fan of story-heavy games, but I loved discovering these worlds through clipped dialogue trees and by having to connect the dots between fragmented information.
Plus, I really enjoy how Bithell games have managed to find a way to create something from ideas that may not have the legs for an entire "normal" length game. Sometimes all you need is a couple of hours' worth of gameplay in order to say what you wanted to say, and I find that incredibly refreshing. What's more, it's a lot of fun to see what else this creative studio will come up with, but knowing that the price of entry will be reasonable and respectable means that I'll always be willing to give their latest concept a try. I just hope that we see more shorts in the future that explore some more creative and original ideas.
The latest short to be released is The Solitaire Conspiracy; a mix between the traditional card game solitaire, and an espionage mystery thriller. It might seem like a strange combination, but that's entirely the point in a lot of ways. In fact if you were to distil and force abstraction on a number of game concepts, I suspect you'll find some small combination of a theme and a mechanic, with little else to fill the plate. However, is a basic card game really the best fit for the story that's being told here? I'm not entirely convinced.
Story-wise, we're greeted by a FMV character who claims to be from a super-secret group that have been locked out of their network (or something like that). The only way to regain access and continue to save the world by defeating the bad guys, is to go in as a new agent and level up to level 15, at which point we will gain access and restore everything to the way it used to be.
Along the way we are able to enlist the help of special ops teams, who each have their own set of skills that can both help and hinder our progress. All we have to do is pick from available contracts and successfully execute them while utilising the teams we have on hand, and earning XP to level up and continue doing more valuable contracts. While it may be a little loose here and there, the overall conceit is fine enough, and I always enjoy it when a game treats you as a person sitting in front of a computer screen. I don't know why, but that kind of thing is always a lot of fun to me.
I also enjoy puzzles and playing games like solitaire, so this seems like a bit of a no-brainer at first. In order to complete each mission contract, you simply have to complete a game of solitaire by order all of your cards in sequence, and in stacks of the correct suits. Initially the play-area appears differently to traditional solitaire, but it's actually not far off the mark. Instead of seven columns of playable cards, there are eight; and instead of an increasing number of cards stacked in each column, there are an even distribution across the board. Finally, there's no deck to draw additional cards from, as the entire deck is distributed on the board from the start of each game.
There are a few other little differences, like the ability to move a card onto any other card that has a higher value. While some may lament the fact that you don't have to keep in sequence and alternate suits, these little differences aren't quite enough to stop it feeling like the solitaire we all know and love, which is a good thing because of the way that this is entirely different to the game we all know.
This is the point where The Solitaire Conspiracy attempts to combine its theme with its gameplay, and it's simultaneously interesting and a little off-putting. The basic idea is that instead of suits, each set of cards belongs to a team of operatives that you have deployed on the current mission. Thus, each mission can have a different number of suits/operatives involved. Sometimes you will be playing with only a single suit, but others you'll have all four. Add to that the fact that you have more than four teams of operatives at your disposal, and the combinations can be quite varied throughout the game.
Each team and their differences can be incredibly important during each mission, as each team comes with a special power that can be used to change the flow of each game entirely. This is where traditional solitaire is well and truly thrown in the bin, and the video game portion gets introduced heavily.
For example, there's a team who's special ability is to shuffle all the cards found in any stack on the board. One a team's ace card has been placed in the final position, the face cards of that team glow and are able to use their special ability. So once this team's ace is in play, moving any of their face cards to another stack of cards, will shuffle that stack and leave the face card on the bottom.
Other abilities include redistributing cards between stacks, pulling a specific card from within a stack, re-ordering and sorting a stack, you get the idea. Although these can be helpful in many cases, they can also be a pain in the butt and set you back every now and then. One particular team/suit, has the ability to pull the next card you need out of a stack and bury it right to the bottom, making it even harder to access. Another might remove all cards that are in play from the centre stacks and redistribute them elsewhere, which means you have to redo everything you had set up until that point.
There are actually some thematic links between the teams and their abilities, but they're a nice bit of colour at best. Like how the violent team that likes to blow everything up, have the ability to redistribute every card in a stack across all other stacks, effectively "blowing it up" along the way. It might seem like a bit of a nightmare at first, but managing each team's abilities was actually quite easy and I rarely had to make a move that disadvantaged me in any major way.
In fact, since release the game has received a significant patch that introduced a new game plus mode where the difficulty has been ramped up. Even though I don't have any interest in replaying the game at all, I like that the developers have recognised how easy the solitaire portion actually was, and offered an alternative for those that are keen to sink their teeth in further.
For my money though, I'm fine with just playing through the main campaign in the way that it was originally intended. At least I didn't have to spend ages replaying the same puzzle over and over again, which is something I actually appreciate. After all, I tend to play games as a way to be entertained and have fun, and pulling my hair out with frustration is not something I consider to be fun at all.
Without a doubt, this system of playing solitaire with a bunch of powers that can change up the game is a fun way to play. It encourages you to think about more than simply putting numbers in sequence, as using abilities can often be the fastest way to complete each mission. There's no doubt that the basic gameplay loop in The Solitaire Conspiracy is satisfying and engaging. I had a lot of fun unlocking new teams and playing with their abilities, even though the puzzles weren't super challenging, I still had to think. You can't just auto-pilot each mission, but if you're like me and approaching it quite casually, the balance works well and is fun to overcome.
Unfortunately though, there's a huge black mark on The Solitaire Conspiracy that almost managed to spoil the whole experience for me, and that's the story element. I'm all for trying to make something like solitaire a bit more interesting by adding an espionage mystery theme as the motivation behind the whole thing, but at the end of the day it really didn't work for me. In fact, I found myself skipping most of the story elements between the actual solitaire gameplay, because it felt boring and irrelevant.
What I mean to say is that other than the suits being teams with special powers that impacted gameplay directly, the rest of the story could have been left out entirely. I mentioned how you take contracts and level up with XP earned from completing those contracts. Well each one has a story to it where you might be tasked with infiltrating a building and doing something like stealing the key card that will let you subvert the bad guys.
It sounds good on the surface, as it attempts to tie what you're doing in with something realistic within the world that's been created. Except that in order to complete these contracts, you're playing solitaire. So you pick up a contract, read a blurb about the awesome Matrix-type stuff you have to do in order to pull off the job, then you play solitaire for a bit and that's that. There's very little that relates directly between the story about what you're doing, and the actual action of stacking cards on top of each other in a specific order. I really tried to make the leap between context and actions, but it never stuck for me.
Instead all I found myself doing was clicking past the contract text entirely, as it was just another couple of paragraphs about something that I was never going to see happen anyway. It pains me to say it, but this is one game where the relationship between story and gameplay is flimsy and tenuous at best. Even the better parts that come in the form of FMV interludes, have their own problems.
Basically, every time you level up by completing contracts/playing solitaire, you are greeted by someone who is basically walking you through the story of the game. This is where most of the context and exposition can be found, and in theory it's a nice idea. As I said, I love it when a game treats me like I'm sitting in front of a terminal, and having someone speak directly to me in that fashion really drives the context home nicely. Plus there are a bunch of nice effects that have been added to make it seem like you're communicating on some kind of special tech interface that can do a bunch of cool stuff because you're a super-secret spy and all that good stuff.
Sadly though, there are two actors who appear in full motion video throughout the game, and neither of them are very good. The main guy feels like he's recording his performance from inside his closet and his portrayal of his character didn't gel with me very well at all. The other actor to appear in FMV scenes had a great voice, but you could literally see his eyes reading lines as he spoke them. Neither performance seemed to be given much thought, and I wonder if the "actors" were just mates of the developers and brought in for shits and giggles.
Now, I don't want to be too hard on these guys for their performances, as I always want to point out that this kind of thing is often down to a lack of time and/or direction. Maybe they weren't really given enough to work with when they were asked to perform, or maybe this is where the budget limitations of a properly indie studio start to show. Either way, I feel like everyone involved was trying their best, but it just didn't sit comfortably for me. Without spoiling anything, I suppose it also didn't help that I figured out a few major plot points right at the start of the game, so none of them had much impact when they were eventually revealed.
Thus, while I really enjoyed The Solitaire Conspiracy overall, it has some unavoidable flaws and I feel like the marriage between theme and mechanics really didn't work that well in the end. It's a real shame because not only is the solitaire gameplay a lot of fun, but the entire game is presented exceptionally well, with clean and colourful aesthetics and interesting UI elements all over the place. Not to mention a perfectly serviceable soundtrack that keeps you locked in on each and every puzzle.
Overall I feel like this game can be called a success, because I feel like it actually achieves what it set out to accomplish. Much like the other Bithell Shorts, this one presented a short little experience that was well produced (on a technical level at least) and fairly unique in its design. While it may not have hit the home run that previous Bithell games have hit, it still works as an enjoyable solitaire variant that will no doubt keep some players hooked for a long time.
When you're trying to innovate and be creative, there are always going to be successes and failures along the way, so the shortcomings in The Solitaire Conspiracy seem inevitable to me. What really gets me excited though, is wondering what kind of mash-up we might see on the next Bithell Short. This is definitely a studio to keep track of and pay attention to, as they seem committed to making games that are more than just a simple profit-maker. I applaud them for their respectable and honest production model and I can't wait to see what comes next.