Huzzah! Regency Solitaire 2 is here

Deep in the pastoral county of Dorset in southern England, Jake Birkett (also known as Gray Alien Games) toils and makes a very specific type of game. He arranges playing cards in appealing tableaus on the screen and prompts the player to clear them by clicking on them in ascending or descending numerical order; it is his personal development of the TriPeaks solitaire variant. He keeps the clicking sharp and satisfying, arranging fun game mechanics and a light plot – often written by his partner Helen Carmichael – around this deeply satisfying core.

Birkett used to make games for 21st century casual PC gaming portals — sites like Big Fish. When that scene withered in 2015, Birkett and Carmichael experimented with bringing a game they'd made for Big Fish to Steam: Regency Solitaire, set in a delightful, light-touch parody of Jane Austen's novels, over which debutante Bella pursues her matrimonial match the manicured croquet lawns of Regency England. Unbelievably, the Steam crowd loved it, and it became a minor hit there. Gray Alien then experimented with marrying solitaire with RPG systems in a pair of puzzle RPGs, the exuberant Shadowhand and more brooding and dark Ancient Enemy. These are excellent games, but with their XP, loot, and combat, they inevitably lost some of Regency Solitaire's ineffable, consequence-free charm.

Now Bella is back in Regency Solitaire 2 (out now on Steam and itch.io), and it's as light and sweetly insignificant as a perfect soufflé. This is pure casual gameplay, designed to soothe and reward, with just the right amount of challenge and complexity: enough to keep things interesting, not so much that it ever gets a little stressful.