Developer: Gearhead Games
Price: Free
Size: 46.2 MB
Version: 1.0.4
Platform: iPhone & iPad
Royal Card Clash is a smart retooling of Solitaire with an anti-royalist concept that, to this Brit at least, feels borderline subversive.
Developer Gearhead Games takes a pack of normal playing cards, then strips out all of the face cards and deals them out in three columns. Said kings, queens, and jacks are then supplied with numerical values in line with the selected difficulty level.
Whittle down the face cards
The rest of the cards are dealt out to you three at time. It’s up to you to use these lower value cards to whittle down that regal wall until there are no cards left – or else you run out of cards and fail the run.
One special ability gives you an extra ace card
Only a card of the matching suit can supply the death blow to a face card. If you’ve got the king of hearts down to three points, only a three of hearts or higher will remove it from the field.
You’ll always have enough ‘points’ in a deck to tackle the field, but you can’t afford to be too wasteful – at least not on the Extreme difficulty level. The ideal situation is to use precisely the right numerical card, or thereabouts, to kill a face card off.
Ace cards are all-powerful
It’s a decent concept alright, but the developer’s attention to detail really lifts Royal Card Clash into the kind of ‘just one more run’ territory that will have you missing bus stops or ignoring the TV.
There are a couple of mechanics that turn this into a game of skill rather than a colorful admin task. The most powerful card here is the ace card, which will instantly drop a face card’s hit points to one. What’s more, if you hit such a critically low face card with an ace of the same suit, you’ll get to retain that ace card.
The other special ability shuffles the pack
There’s also room to hold a single card in reserve, which lets you retain a low value card for finishing or an all-powerful ace for a more deserving cause.
Throw in two ad-fuelled special abilities – a deck reshuffle and a one-off extra card – and you have just enough tools to turn a game of luck into one of skill and consideration. Those tools can be fully unlocked with a one-off $2.99/£2.99 IAP, though they arguably make the game a little too easy when used.
The game plays brilliantly in landscape or portrait
Indeed, Royal Card Clash is perhaps just a little too slim a package to be an unreserved recommendation. We found that we had blitzed through pretty much everything the game had to offer in an hour or two, and found ourselves pining for another challenge or twist to the formula. Perhaps some optional special status cards would have added further interest, in conjunction with some more punishing face card variants.
As it is, Royal Card Clash is a brilliantly executed riff on Solitaire, but one that leaves us itching for a more fleshed out sequel.