Forbidden Solitaire

About Forbidden Solitaire

Forbidden Solitaire came out on Steam and GOG on April 30, 2026. It is made together by Grey Alien Games, the veteran indie team behind Regency Solitaire, Shadowhand and Ancient Enemy, who built the card play, and Night Signal Entertainment, the makers of Home Safety Hotline, who did the visuals, story and music.

It is 2019. Will Roberta has brought home a strange yet familiar CD-ROM game from 1995 from a thrift store. He vaguely remembers the ads and some kind of controversy, and that his mother made him promise never to play it. He installs it anyway, and tells his sister Emily, who starts to dig into why the game was pulled from sale.

The game on the disc sends you into a dungeon in search of forbidden secrets. Every obstacle is a hand of solitaire: you flip a card from your deck and clear cards one higher or one lower from the piles on the table, chaining as long as you can. Run out of deck and the encounter starts again. In fights a longer chain hits harder, and the enemy's next move is shown so you can block it; in stealth hands a guard's gaze sweeps over the cards, and taking two cards inside it ends the attempt; other hands open doors or search a corpse. Locked, frozen and exploding cards change the rules as you go.

Between hands you buy gems from an eye that peers out of the dungeon wall and push them into your increasingly bloodied hand, for powers such as undoing a play or reshuffling, and you collect Jokers, some helpful and some malignant. Reviewers counted 60 levels and more than twenty Jokers and gems each.

The horror sits in two places at once. Inside the disc are torch-lit passages, mines full of chanting and creatures drawn in crunchy 1995-style 3D. Outside it, on the desktop, Emily sends news articles, crime scene photos and FMV news segments about players who died, and the two stories slowly meet. Reviewers found it more grimly funny than frightening, with mild jump scares that can be switched off, but the gore and the suicide in its story are real; Steam carries a content warning guide.

It suits players who liked Home Safety Hotline, Inscryption or cursed-game stories, and anyone who wants horror played with cards rather than guns. A run takes about five hours.

How to play Forbidden Solitaire

1. Read your sister's messages on the 2019 desktop, then start the old CD-ROM game.
2. In each hand, flip a card from your deck and clear cards one higher or one lower from the piles on the table, chaining as many as you can.
3. Clear every card on the table to move on; if your deck runs out, the encounter starts again.
4. In fights, build long chains to deal more damage and watch the enemy's shown intent so you can block its attack.
5. In stealth hands, avoid taking cards inside the guard's gaze; a second card taken in it ends the attempt.
6. Spend your coins at the eye in the wall on gems for your hand and on Jokers, then read the messages that arrive as the story unfolds.

Tips

• Hold an armour card on a pile until the turn the enemy is going to attack, rather than taking it as soon as you can.
• In stealth hands, plan your chain around the guard's gaze before you start; one card in it raises the alarm, a second ends the try.
• Learn what each Joker does before you take it: some work against you, but none of them act at random.
• If jump scares are not for you, they can be turned off in the settings.
• Check the content warning guide on Steam first if gore or suicide themes are a concern.

Questions