CARD MODE

What links Thomas Was Alone to an ancient solo game?

- Jeremy Peel

There’s a PC game with 35 million players a month that’s never talked about. It might have been your first ever single-player experience, or the game you’ve played more than any other—but its ubiquity is such that it’s simply become part of the desktop wallpaper. Its name is Microsoft Solitaire.

“It becomes background noise, and was designed to do so,” says Mike Bithell. “The main purpose of putting it into Windows was as a tutorial for mice. It’s every core mouse gesture—clicking, double-clicking, dragging and dropping.”

At the beginning of October, Bithell Games released The Solitaire Conspiracy. Unaffiliated with Microsoft’s version, it builds on the classic card game with characters, powers, FMV cutscenes, and a daft espionage story about a Cyber Augmented Recon and Defence System. Yes: C.A.R.D.S.

It’s not the first time a Bithell game has spun out from a tutorial. 2015’s Volume was inspired by the first Metal Gear