Unit 1 - Solitaire Mirrored

Section 06 Unit 1 Group 14
Diamond Gem:
Shouyi (Zoe) Yan
Waleed Hettini

Solitaire Mirrored is a mod for Solitaire where the player stacks the cards from Ace to King on the Tableau and colors do not matter. The game ends once you stack the cards starting from King to Ace by their suites. Achievers would enjoy this game by its challenge and how a simple change of the rules can make Solitaire a bit more difficult.

Starting positions of the cards

Problems during Playtest: 

All of our playtesters are used to regular solitaire rules where cards are stacked from King to Ace. In our mod, stacks are stacked in reverse or from Ace to King. It took some time for the playtesters to get used to that. This problem renders the time limit challenge rather useless as it took the players around 5-6 minutes into the game to get used to the reversed rules. 5-6 minutes is already about half the time of the limit of 10. 

Tableau: Colors do not matter and cards are stacked backward

Another problem was that, aside from our first playtester, the playtesters focused too much on stacking the Tableau instead of building the Foundation. Focusing on the Tableau is also a large time-consuming factor which is another reason that makes the time limit useless.

Foundation: Stack from King to Ace by suites

Out of the three playtest rounds, our first playtester faced a roadblock. She ran out of usable cards that can be used in the Stockpile. Our second playtesters did not know how to play regular Solitaire. He took quite some time but luckily finished the game. Our last playtester was confused by our rule sheet and did not get to finish the game. Overall, the problems most prevalent was the time it takes to get used to the game, knowing the use of the foundation, and the confusing rule sheet.

Feedback:
The feedback we got was mainly about our rule sheet. While it was short and easy to read, the rules ended up confusing the testers and the rules did not properly explain how to play the game especially for the tester who did not have experience with playing Solitaire. One suggestion we got was to clarify our rules revolving around the Foundation pile and how it should be stacked. Another suggestion we got was to expand on our rules for those who have never played Solitaire. One of the testers liked the time limit idea though would prefer it to be longer as it takes time to get used to the reverse stack rules.

How the game is like

What to Change: 

We will definitely change what's needed based on the feedback we got. So the most important thing to change would be the rule sheet. We would need to clarify the rules and add more detailed explanations on how to play the game. Another change would be removing the time limit. I feel that the time limit is too much of a challenge for the player. It takes too much time to get used to the rules and it pressures the player which would cause frustration. It might be helpful to add a layout as well. The layout would help remind the player that stacking the foundation is the end goal and brings more focus to it than just mainly paying attention to the Tableau. We might look into adding more changes to the game because one playtester said it sticks to close to the original. Of course, the most important change we look to make is to clarify the rule sheet. 

Conclusion: 

Overall, through playtesting we got very helpful feedback. I do see the problem with our rule sheet and we do intend on making it better. The feedback we got was eye-opening to a lot of problems and thing we could work on and improve.