Evil wizards, football, and boobs: weird Solitaire games on Steam

Gridiron Solitaire

The story: There's a newsreel at the start that says a bunch of things about football, but the basic story is that you own a football team and you want to win all the football! Your path to football victory involves clicking cards with little football players on them. There's a real season and everything.

The game: Doesn't feel much like solitaire or football, really. You're looking to find two cards, one red, one black, that are only one number off in value. Click them, and they're replaced by two new cards. Do that as much as you can to advance or defend. It's not terrible, it's just sort of unclear how far the ball is going to move and what your AI opponent is doing.

The music: Boisterous marching band rah-rah go-team type stuff you will want to turn off pretty quickly.

Enough room to enter my name of choice? There's not a whole lotta room, but I wanted to name my team the PC Gamer Computers, and I was able to! A-.

A weird thing about it: Even when you get a first down, it'll usually be, like, 1st down and 40. Which is weird, because the point of first down, besides getting four more tries, is that you don't have to go that far to get another first down.

Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire

The story: A series of young women with large breasts invite you to play mahjong solitaire, and the very sight of you clicking on matching tiles arouses them so much they moan, squeak, giggle, or make high-pitched cat noises. After a few rounds a monkey(?) riding on a cloud slowly lowers a bar to reveal a skimpy outfit (on the women, not the monkey), which the women seem embarrassed about. They're not alone.

The game: It's an okay mahjong game, though it's timed, which is bad. Why is there a timer? When I seduce women with my solitaire skills in real life, I find a leisurely pace works better than a frantic scramble to match peacock symbols. It's also, like, $15.

The music: Super loud action anime music that is very well made and that I turned off immediately.

Enough room to enter my name of choice? It never asks for a name. I think it knows everyone involved should remain anonymous.

A weird thing about it: So, I totally get that playing mahjong turns these women on to the point of them allowing a magical monkey to take off their clothing. Why wouldn't it? There's simply nothing sexier than someone recognizing identical symbols. But once they've revealed their bikini, latex body suit, or futuristic spaceship flight attendant outfit, they then put their original clothing back on and you have to play more mahjong to see another outfit. That's definitely the only thing confusing about this game, other than the fact that there are far easier ways to see cartoon bikini-boobs than by playing hours of mahjong and enlisting the help of a small, hovering, breast-loving monkey.

Zombie Solitaire

The Story: In a scene featuring art clearly inspired by Plants vs. Zombies, a man eats a tofu burger and turns into a zombie, leading to the undead invading your house. You must escape to Safe Island, which is named either after the person who discovered it, famed adventurer Thomas Walton Briggingham Safe, or perhaps because it's safe from zombies. How will you get there? The answer is cards. The answer is always cards.

The game: It's not bad! You can buy bonus cards like shotguns (they kill zombie cards) and bowling balls (they take out a whole row of cards) and they're fun to use.

The music: Grating.

Enough room to enter my name of choice?: I wanted to call myself Zombified Version of Chris. I could not, however, despite there appearing to be plenty more room in the box.

A weird thing about it: In between rounds, you play a little minigame. When some zombies came at me in a parking lot, I had to search some cars, where I eventually found gasoline to fuel a chainsaw. I clicked on the zombies to kill them with the chainsaw, but it didn't work. I instead had to cut down a tree that squished the zombies. Chainsaw + zombies = tree? That's bad zombie math.