The Undoing of Solitaire

An undo button in solitaire has negative effects on the experience of the game. Such a simple feature serves to remove much of what makes solitaire fun to play: skillfully calculating movements of cards. Much of what is fun is diminished when you add an undo button.

The typical, unrestricted undo button allows players to backtrack when they have made a mistake. Without a necessity to calculate correctly, there is no need to put in effort since they can always undo. Furthermore, if you can try any move, you can look at cards that are not revealed yet. If you were to use the undo button liberally, the play becomes sloppy and mindless, almost feeling like you are cheating. The game should have a requirement to calculate correctly.

The assumption that losing a game is a massively bad thing is not true. Since the game is randomly generated each play, there is not much of a downside in restarting the game each win or loss. The effect of it being easier to win is that the payoff is lessened. The challenge of the game is the heart of why it is valuable. It is fun to win by never making a mistake.

In The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection, all but one game lack the undo button. The game that does have an undo button has one that is so limited that it will never pose a strategic advantage. The collection shows why the undo button should not exist in most games, while also showing how to implement it in a way that only undoes a mistake.

The games in the collection without an undo button are very similar to traditional solitaire games you are more likely to have heard of. In these games, there are only a few times where you have to string together many movements in a row. Losing these games would take place almost instantly after one bad move. For this reason, even having an undo button that undoes just one move would make a large portion of losses avoidable. So, it makes sense why Zachtronics chose to completely get rid of the undo buttons in the majority of the games in the collection.

The game in the collection with the undo button has two features that makes the undo button more honest: you can only move one card at a time and the undo button only undoes one move. As the game progresses, you are creating stacks of cards and painstakingly moving each stack, bottom to top, one card at a time, and since the undo button in this game only undoes one card movement, there is no way you can get back to safety after moving several heaps of cards. This allows for an undo button that will only undo something similar to a finger slip.

To have the best experience playing solitaire games, you should have as little help as possible. Any feature that aids the player lessens the cold, steadfast nature of the genre. Solitaire can be difficult, but the fun is in the challenge.