Rejoicing was heard by all when a new Seahorse solitaire game was released this past Sunday, Accordion Solitaire. Based on an old Mac solitaire game of the same name that's been around forever (I remember playing it on OS6), Accordion Solitaire may be the most addictive Seahorse game yet (and that's saying a lot).
The basic gameplay is deceptively simple. Thirteen cards are laid out on the game board. You can match pairs of cards of the same value or the same suit that are either next to each other or two cards away (i.e. have one card between them). Traditionally the cards are placed in a single row, and in this configuration the leftmost card of the pair is removed, the right card is moved to the old position of the other card, cards are moved to the left to fill empty spaces, and a new card is dealt at the rightmost end of the row. The goal of the game is to finish with one card left on the board.
I said this is the typical configuration because it is a bit of a challenge to fit a row of 13 cards onto a Palm screen. To combat this, Accordion offers three layout choices. The default layout is called two rows, and basically splits the 13 cards into a row of seven on top and a row of six on the bottom. The rows act like someone cut the long 13 card row after the seventh card and moved the rest of the cards; the left-most card of the bottom row can match either of the two right-most cards on the top row.
The other two layouts offer continuous rows of 13 cards. Gameplay follows the shape of the rows, so the right card of a pair doesn't always replace the left. The first of these layouts is a backwards c consisting of a top row of five cards, a vertical row of 3 cards, and a bottom row of five cards. The left end of the traditional row is at the left side of the top row, while the right side of the traditional row is at the left of the bottom row. Consequently cards on the top row move from right to left, cards in the vertical row move from bottom to top, and cards on the bottom row move from left to right.
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