Shadowhand Solitaire

We need to talk about Grey Alien Games. Despite celebrating their twentieth anniversary this year, this UK-based developer really stumbled onto a winning formula with the release of Regency Solitaire in 2015. Since then, they’ve released a number of variations on that theme like Ancient Enemy, which added an action-packed story and one-on-one combat to the mix. For nearly a full decade, I have devoured their simple yet addictive solitaire mash-ups, always looking forward to what Grey Alien would come up with next. However, with the release of Shadowhand Solitaire, a repackaged version of their 2017 puzzle game that all but removes the combat, I’m starting to worry that this once inventive developer has run out of ideas. Is it time for Grey Alien to shake things up? Find out now when I review Shadowhand Solitaire.

Shadowhand is, without a doubt, my favorite 18th century superhero. By day, she’s Lady Cornelia Darkmoor, a beguiling young aristocrat with a secret. You see, when she dons a special mask, she becomes Shadowhand, a notorious highwaywoman who is more than willing to get her hands dirty if that is what the job requires. With sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, Shadowhand is on a quest to find and protect a friend, which eventually leads to a conspiracy filled with corruptions, smuggling and blackmail. Everybody has a story in this dangerous world.

The similarities will continue with the puzzle-solving gameplay, which is nearly identical to Grey Alien’s previous games. Similar to Regency Solitaire, Shadowhand Solitaire only loosely follows the rules of the popular card game. This isn't a game about matching suits or moving large piles of cards around, because the only thing you need to worry about is counting up or down. It's surprisingly simple; if you draw a three, then you're looking for either a two or four. The idea is to keep counting up or down until you either clear the board or need to draw a new card.

The puzzles start out simple enough, but quickly add new obstacles that make moving cards around a lot more difficult. For example, some piles will need to be unlocked with a key, while others will need to be dug up with a shovel. There are levels hiding treasure, stages with overgrown thorn bushes that need to be burned down and cards that are in the dark and require a lantern to be seen.

Speaking of things from the first game, Shadowhand also has a bunch of special abilities at the ready. These powers will allow you to change the board in dramatic ways, such as destroying a few cards off of the top and even reshuffling the whole thing. You'll unlock and buy a bunch of these active and passive powers, giving Shadowhand the skills she'll need to get ahead in this cutthroat world.

The fun thing that the original Shadowhand game introduced was the combat, turning a simple solitaire game into an exciting one-on-one fight. While occasionally frustrating (and maybe a little too dependent on luck), this was one of the things I loved the most about that 2017 game. Grey Alien did a good job of giving each opponent a different tactic, thanks in large part to the variety of items and special abilities they would throw at you. Best of all, these battles didn’t come across as tacked on, but rather felt like a natural extension of the regular stages. This added a fun layer of complexity to the game that was missing from Regency Solitaire, and then later built upon in the 2020 game Ancient Enemy.

Unfortunately, it’s this combat angle that has been fiddled with in this re-packaged version of Shadowhand. I hate to use the phrase “dumbed-down,” but the one-on-one fights have definitely been simplified. Instead of the turn-based combat we saw in the first release, this game just wants you to clear the board. And if you decide to play either the relaxed or normal modes, you don’t even need to do that. You’re actually guaranteed a victory every time if you play on relaxed mode, while normal mode doesn’t even require you to clear every card off the table.

This is a completely baffling decision. It would be one thing if Grey Alien removed one of the best and most unique elements of the original game in order to add something new and equally compelling, but that’s not what happened. Instead, they simply changed the rules of combat, effectively neutering one of the series’ biggest selling points. And to what end? If they worried that maybe casual gamers would be turned-off of the combat elements, why not just offer that as an option in the original game? Why go through the process of releasing a whole new game? None of this makes any sense to me.

To the developer’s credit, they have addressed some of these complaints. They talked about making a lot of gameplay changes and rebalancing, which apparently took hundreds of hours of work. In no way do I want to minimize the time and effort that went into repackaging this game, Grey Alien is a small company and I think we all know how even a relatively small project can lead to a massive amount of work. That said, I have a hard time not being incredibly disappointed by the decisions made here. While I’m sure there are plenty of people who would prefer a more casual version of Shadowhand, this feels like a big step in the wrong direction.

And that’s especially frustrating because the rest of the game is so damn good -- I love the story, I love the art, I love the characters. I had a massive smile on my face as I worked my way through the hundreds of puzzles, because Grey Alien’s version of solitaire is so much fun. In fact, I would argue that the puzzle solving is so good that you don’t even need combat to have a great time. Regency Solitaire II was released earlier this year, and it managed to be great without a bunch of people getting into fights. But this is Shadowhand we’re talking about. Her whole thing is smacking down evil-doers, and taking that away from her doesn’t add anything to the game, it just makes it worse.

As a fan of both Grey Alien and their style of solitaire games, I want to see the franchise continue. I want to see more Shadowhand. I want to see more Regency Solitaire. Hell, I even want to see more Ancient Enemy. But after a decade of these games, one thing is clear – it’s time to shake things up a bit. I don’t know if that means changing the setting entirely or finding a unique new gameplay wrinkle, but something needs to change to keep these games fresh. For years I have taken to social media to beg the developers to make Shadowhand in Space. Sure, I’m mostly joking when I say this, but that’s the kind of shake-up this series needs.

At this point, I feel like I know what to expect when I buy a Grey Alien game. There are no surprises. That’s especially true with Shadowhand Solitaire, a game that not only recycles the same story, but actively makes it worse by removing the one thing that helped to set it apart. The core puzzle solving is still a lot of fun, but the direction this game takes Lady Cornelia is both disappointing and discouraging.