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Castle Solitaire Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Help You Win Consistently

Not all games need to have advanced graphics, experience bars, cute waifus, and absolute units of husbandos. For those looking for a slower pace, how about some old classics – Castle Solitaire, for instance?

castle solitaire guide

Castle Solitaire is published by MobilityWare, a long-standing name in the mobile game scene and responsible for porting several classic games to mobile, such as regular Solitaire, Hearts, Gin Rummy, Mahjong, Dominoes, and so on. These games, as well as Castle Solitaire itself, are available on both the Google Play Store and the App Store.

Castle Solitaire is essentially an easier version of solitaire, but there are some extra side features and changes to the base game that may not be evident at first sight. And while Castle Solitaire is very easy to pick up and play, you may want some additional guidance on what exactly you can do with all the gold and other resources you pick up.

Solitaire 101

This section is entirely dedicated to learning how to play solitaire the way Castle Solitaire presents it. If you already know how to play solitaire, you can go ahead and skip to the “What’s New in Castle Solitaire?” section.

Game Objectives

Solitaire is played with a deck of 52 cards where your objective is to move all cards to a special area in ascending order. With aces as one, you’ll need to construct suites of cards in descending order – higher value cards at the top – to effectively clear the board. If you fill up all four card suites with all their cards in ascending order (ace to king), you win. If you can’t make any moves, you lose.

castle solitaire gameplay

Complicating this is the fact that you only have limited slots available for card movement, and that your available actions are largely determined by the luck of the draw. This means that each move you make must be calculated and you’ll have to weigh the opportunity cost of placing a high-value card in an empty slot against drawing a new hand and hopefully getting a higher number.

How To Play

To play Castle Solitaire, just tap and drag a card to move it either to an empty slot or on top of another card. If cards would be stacked together, they need to be in successive, descending order as well as of the same suit; for example, you can put a 2 of hearts on the 3 of hearts, but not the 2 of hearts on the 4 of hearts. This rule differs depending on the type of solitaire you’re playing, but for Castle Solitaire, it’s exactly like this.

castle solitaire gameplay 2

You can permanently get rid of cards by depositing them in one of the four Castle Solitaires located at the sides of the screen. To do this, you’ll need to build upwards, starting from the ace (which is already in place). This means you’ll need to first deposit the 2, then the 3, and so on until the king, until that suit is finished. You win if you complete all four Castle Solitaires, and you lose if you have no more available moves.

castle solitaire start
Maybe I’ll be luckier this time.

Games start with the four aces in their Castle Solitaires and six random cards in the slots above. You can either start stacking cards in the slots (if you were lucky) or tap the deck at the bottom of the screen to draw three cards if you have no other moves.

By stacking cards into long suits, you’ll free up space. Unlike the usual stacking rules of cards only being able to be placed on the suit and number above them, you can place any card that hasn’t been deposited into an empty space. Utilizing and maximizing your free spaces can make or break Castle Solitaire games.

castle solitaire space
“It is the empty space which makes the bowl useful,” – Lao Tzu

Each time you draw from the deck, three cards will be laid out before you which will also bury your previous draw. You can take cards from your draw and stack them or move them into empty spaces to try to assemble your suits so that you can fill up your Castle Solitaires. Note that cards buried under a new draw become inaccessible unless you get rid of the card above them by playing it. Thus, don’t redraw rashly!

castle solitaire comp
Get all your Castle Solitaires like this and you win!

Solitaire and by extension Castle Solitaire are simple to learn but difficult – if possible – to master. As you play more games, you’ll eventually develop your own style of play!

What’s New In Castle Solitaire?

Now that I’ve (hopefully) explained how to play solitaire to people who are encountering it for the first time, we can get to how Castle Solitaire differs from regular solitaire.

Gameplay And Quality of Life Changes

Here are the gameplay and quality of life changes that Castle Solitaire adds to the game:

  • There are no tableaus (hooray!); every card that isn’t on the initial board is somewhere in the deck.
  • Cards can only be placed on cards of the same suit. You cannot alternate colors.
  • Any card can fill in a blank tableau (slot), not just a king.
  • Cards that can be deposited into Castle Solitaires are automatically done so if they are on the playing board. Cards drawn by tapping on the deck are exempt from this. This can be disabled by turning off Quick Play in the settings.
  • You can tap a card to add it to the Castle Solitaire (if it’s possible), to another card (if such a card exists), or to an empty slot (if none of the other conditions are possible).
  • If there is a move you could have made but didn’t and chose to redraw, the card in question will wiggle, notifying you of the potential misplay. This can be disabled by turning off Auto Hints in the settings.
  • There is an undo button that allows you to take back as many moves as you want. Do note that undoing does not remove those moves from your move counter.
  • You can enable hard mode, which disables aces from being added to Castle Solitaires at the beginning of the game. Note that stats and scores for normal and hard modes are tracked separately.
  • The game automatically keeps track of your score in each game. This score is determined by the amount of time it takes you to finish a board (faster is better) as well as the number of moves you’ve made (fewer moves mean a higher score).

Account Level and Titles

While Castle Solitaire is more of a “one game at a time” affair, there are in-game progression goals that help you keep track of how long you’ve been playing. The most prominent progression tracker is your title.

castle solitaire squire
You can switch your title by tapping the menu when it appears.

Titles are a nifty way to show off your dedication to the game, and no, they don’t do anything else. Earning titles is simple too: just accrue enough experience points to level up, and at certain level thresholds, you’ll get a spiffy new title!

castle solitaire quest
Always do these.

The fastest way to get experience by far is by completing your daily quests. These can be viewed by tapping the Goals button on the lower panel. Each player gets 3 quests per day. Premium subscribers have access to a fourth quest that usually gives a lot more experience points than usual. You also get a large lump sum of experience points by completing all three free quests, so try to make the effort to clear it whenever you can!

Daily Deals and Trophies

If you’ve only got time for one quick game of Castle Solitaire, why not spend it on the daily deal?

castle solitaire trophy
Nice to have, I suppose.

What purpose do trophies serve? Absolutely nothing, but they’re nice to collect. Completing ten of one month’s daily deals nets you the bronze trophy, while twenty will get you the silver trophy, and thirty nets you the gold trophy. You also get a crown for each daily challenge you complete.

If you’ve missed a day, don’t worry. Just go to the daily challenge screen at tap the date you missed to play that day’s challenge!

castle solitaire cry
I could say something about the crying face, but I won’t.

For those finding daily deals trickier than normal games, you can deliberately throw the game by drawing your whole deck and tapping until you’re out of moves to view a solution to the board you’re given. And even if you fail to clear the daily challenge on your first go, there’s no cause for alarm as you can retry a daily challenge as many times as you want.

Tips and Tricks

Solitaire is also known as “Patience”, and while Castle Solitaire does give players options to make the game easier and more accessible, some skillful know-how will help you win more games without mashing that undo button.

Always Clear The Starting Board

Before you draw your first hand, see first if you can already make plays with the six cards you’ve been given. This will free up invaluable space for your succeeding draws and hopefully set you up with an early sweep.

castle solitaire board
Free slot!

As part of this, keep an eye out for any twos you may have lying around at the start. If you see any, deposit them in their Castle Solitaires and thank your lucky stars!

Remember: No Alternate Colors

This one always gets me. If you have some experience playing solitaire, you may be thrown off by Castle Solitaire’s same-suit-only rule.

castle solitaire desc
More troublesome to set up than it looks.

This peculiar rule means that some strategies – such as reserving slots for certain colors – are less effective than they would be in a regular game of solitaire.

Start High

By starting stacks with a high-value card – kings are ideal – you’ll have a statistically higher chance of being able to place cards into that stack as the probability you’ll draw a lower-value card is higher.

castle solitaire big
King downward.

However, statistics aren’t guarantees. While this is an effective strategy, it’s not foolproof and every hand will be different!

Remember The Cards Buried in Each Pile

Redrawing cards will bury previously drawn ones in one of three stacks. By remembering what card was in what stack, you can streamline your plays and make a comeback from a single card. Alternatively, you can tap-hold a card in the draw pile and move it around to see what the card below it is!

castle solitaire peek

Like this.

Rethink Your Style

Not every game of Castle Solitaire is winnable, but finding or creating a personal style that works best for you is important. And if it’s still not working out, remember that you can always change things up and find other, more feasible tactics!

Play At Your Own Pace

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that classic games like Castle Solitaire are meant to be enjoyable, relaxing experiences. There’s no pressure to compete with other players, so sit back and enjoy the game at your own pace.

castle solitaire end
I can do better. Much better.

That concludes my strategy guide to Castle Solitaire, and I hope you were able to pick something up from it. If you’re up for sharing some of your own tricks to make winning more consistent, make yourself heard in the comment area!

Sue

Saturday 6th of January 2024

How many levels are there?

Charles

Sunday 19th of November 2023

i have found that the game has a stupidly high win rate, and have yet to find a random deal that I couldn't win, though sometimes i needed to undo.

In general, you want to leave one space open, because as long as one space is open, you can add to either end of a stack! Simply having a single space open usually doubles your possible number of moves that won't remove it. You should also usually leave high cards in the three piles, unless you can get your stack back.

moving a card to the foundations is NEVER WRONG. leave autoplay on, it can't break the game! It should even apply to cards in the three dealing piles. if you see one that matches a foundation, tapping it is ALWAYS correct.

I also believe that the advice of moving higher cards to the top is bad advice, and it's better to move mid range or even lower cards instead, because when you have your space, you can build form both ends, while nothing goes under a king. but if you can get back your space, then bring up the high card every time.

If you get stuck, think of what card would unstick you best, then undo until just before it was covered, and make a priority of uncovering it, even if you have to fill your last space. This will usually get you the win when keeping the space open didn't.

If you go through 3/4 of the deck without making a single space, then yeah, you might have found an unwinnable deal.