I convinced myself that I had to finish Regency Solitaire before I could possibly write a review of it. It’s more than just an aid to procrastination; I found myself allocating hours of time (in the interests of writing a comprehensive article) to completing the next level, finishing the next hand with a perfect score, and generally hoping that Bella would escape the nefarious Bleakley and find true love with Lord Henry Worthington.

Regency Solitaire is, in many ways, exactly what it sounds like: the (originally eighteenth-century) card game, mated to a Regency setting. The game has a story, as we follow Bella, a young lady of respectable family, attending social functions that scholars of the period will quickly recognise (taking the waters at Bath, attending the opera, dancing at the assembly). Bella’s family are far from rich, and their position is further jeopardised by her ne’er-do-well brother’s gambling debts. Only through the player’s help can Bella avoid being sold off to the family’s slimy neighbour Mr Bleakley.

Regency Solitaire is the creation of Dorset-based Grey Alien Games, with funding from Creative England. The game seems to take some of its visual cues from the 2005 Pride & Prejudice, treated as we are to (digitally) painted backgrounds of misty English mornings and candlelit ballrooms. A number of historic locations also feature as backdrops (Netley Abbey makes an appearance) and all can be set as desktop wallpapers from the game’s user interface, which I couldn’t help but think was a nice touch. The narrative is, perhaps, a little formulaic (as one character reminds us, “there are only seven stories in the world”) but the actual game itself is addictive – the increasingly complex layouts of cards and the steadily higher standards expected of the player (usually in terms of how many cards can be cleared sequentially without recourse to the deck) give a sense of achievement and progression with each successful hand.

It feels pedantic to criticise the game’s Regency trappings, but some elements may prompt raised eyebrows from BSECS readers. A game of this type is not the place to explore the complicated place of women card-players in the period but we might question Regency Solitaire’s use of money to keep score. Bella uses her winnings to outfit her parents’ home – an in-game ‘shop’ provides power-ups to help manage the game’s increasing difficulty – preventing the period scholar in me from waving away those winnings as entirely abstract. Remembering the Gillray cartoons and legal threats levelled at the too-successful-at-the-card-table Faro ladies of the 1790s, Bella gets away very lightly. The same might be said of the heroine’s romantic engagements: her apparent eagerness to get Henry alone would probably see her labelled an adventuress by less sympathetic commentators. The game is, of course, a romanticised view of the Romantic period; it draws on the Jane Austen novel and the Jane Austen adaptation as much as it does on the period itself. Regency Solitaire’s characters present a range of archetypes that even players with only a casual interest in the long eighteenth century will recognise from a kind of cultural memory of what such stories are about: an impoverished but virtuous protagonist, a bewildered father, gossiping ladies behind fans, and a bounder keen to exploit social conventions. None of this is to slight the game, but rather to signal its interest as an artefact representation of how popular culture understands our period.

If I were to offer a genuine criticism of the game, it would be to signal that our protagonist sits awkwardly between a kind of heroic exceptionalism (she defies conventions without consequence) and ‘authentic’ passivity (most of her troubles are caused, and solved, by male intervention). Either of these would be reasonable in context, but Regency Solitaire seems unsure as to which it prefers. Grey Alien’s next project, Shadowhand, has us playing a Georgian lady leading a double life as notorious highwaywoman – suggesting that the team have jumped down on the more exciting side of Regency Solitaire’s fence. 

The game has tremendous charm and playability, however, and to focus on its failings as a narrative or a cultural artefact is to miss the point: the game is inexpensive, addictive, fun, and deserves to be noticed. I look forward to Shadowhand, and have prepared myself for undergraduate questions about highwaywomen for next academic year.