Favorite Things: Mondo Solitaire

Windows has shipped with a decent solitaire since time immemorial, but if you’re a Mac user you’ve typically had to go out and find one. When I switched from Windows to Mac several years ago I embarked on a quest to find (if not the best than at least) a decent version of the classic 52 card game for one.

Burning Monkey Solitaire was a cutesy collection of solitaire games, but it got annoying quickly. I also tried my hand at multiple variants of PySol, the venerable Open Source solitaire game engine, but they were too Linuxy (you know, ugly) for my taste.

After years of searching, I finally found the perfect solitaire implementation for Mac—Mondo Solitaire by longtime Mac Developer, Ambrosia Software.

Ambrosia has been making quality Mac apps and games for nearly 20 years and they really nailed it with Mondo. The game is beautiful. The animations are effective without being distracting. Card decks are good looking and playing surface is too.

Mondo ships with hundreds of solitaire variations—not that you’ll be playing more than a handful of them . From familiar favorites like Klondike, FreeCell, Golf, and Spider to some more obscure gamestyles like Devil’s Garden, Miss Milligan, and Will o’ the Wisp there are plenty of options to keep you busily entertained.

Mondo Solitaire is available for Mac OS X and can be purchased via the Mac App Store or directly from Ambrosia Software and costs $9.99. A version of Mondo Solitaire is also available for the iPad and iPhone and sells for $5.99 and $4.99, respectively.

Forgive the hyperbole, but Apple should license Mondo Solitaire and bundle it with every Mac, iPad, and iPhone they ship. They’d sell a lot more devices to grandparents than they currently do.

What’s your favorite Solitaire game? Sound off in the comments below.

All images are from my flickr, unless otherwise noted.

Related articles

• What is your favorite card game? (laurieanichols.wordpress.com)
• What Happened to Solitaire and Minesweeper in Windows 8? (howtogeek.com)