Teensy Golf Solitaire iPhone Game Review

Teensy Golf is a Solitaire variation game developed by Smallware for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Smallware has been developing Solitaire games for the Mac and Palm OS for over 10 years and has recently released two Solitaire games at the iTunes App Store. Solebon is their flagship Solitaire product and retails for $9.99 on iTunes. For those of you who don’t want to take a ten dollar plunge Smallware also offers Teensy Golf, a $.99 game based on the Golf variation of Solitaire.

Golf Solitaire is an interesting and fun twist on the classic card organizing game. In all Golf variations players have a number of face up cards in columns and one hole card. The hole card is placed at the bottom of the columns and determines which cards may be played into the hole. Cards at the bottom of each column having a value one higher or lower than the hole card may played into hole. Once a card is played into the hole it becomes the new hole card. Similar to Solitaire proper, players who run out of available moves have a stock pile from which they can replace the current hole card. When you run out of stock cards and have no more available moves your game is over. To win you must play all cards from their columns into the hole. If you are challenging a friend or competing against yourself a score is provided for each game. Just like in golf, the lower the score the better.

Teensy Golf comes with four different modes of Golf Solitaire play. Golf mode is the traditional implementation described above. Ambrose is basically the same as Golf mode but gives the player two hole cards at a time. Provisional mode, my favorite, is the same as Golf mode but allows players to take one available column card and place it in a temporary holding area. This helps tremendously when needing a card that is buried one deep or when stacking values are reversed. The last game mode, Triple Mulligan, has no card stock to pull from. Instead, players have all cards in twelve columns and must place them all into the hole in a single run. Of course, there are three mulligan cards which can be used to replace the hole card at any time.

Teensy Golf uses the same basic lower menu system as Smallware’s premium Solebon Solitaire game but does not include the “auto” functionality. During each game you can use the menu to change game modes, start a new game, check the rules, check your stats or undo your moves. There is also a small display which shows your total moves, score and time. Teensy Golf can keep a game going for each of the four game types, meaning, you can start a new game of a different type without effecting the progress of your other games.

It’s hard when reviewing a new implementation of an existing game to score the implementation and not the game itself. This is not a review of Solitaire but a review of Smallware’s implementation of Golf Solitaire on the iPhone and iPod Touch. To further complicate the review Smallware invented 3 of the 4 game types, something they should definitely get credit for.

I like Teensy Golf Solitaire. It’s very stable, loads quickly, offers enough features and game types to keep you interested, but not so many that you spend more time trying game types than actually playing Solitaire. The games graphics and layout are very well done, even the Teensy Golf website is well designed. I think the game is a good value at $.99 and I’m happy to see a developer offering something of real quality in this price range.

While I like Teensy Golf Solitaire, it could stand a few improvements. There is no sound in the game. The game doesn’t need anything major here, maybe just an opening sound of a tee shot. It would also be nice if there were some sort of sound effects for menu options and for winning a game. I was thinking of a “golf ball going into a hole” sound followed by a subtle golf clap. I would’ve liked to see some unlockable card backs (golf themed of course) but that’s probably pushing it for the price. There is no tilt support for wide screen mode in Teensy Golf and cards can only be moved with a tap. Dragging cards is a nice feature but isn’t really necessary for the Golf variation of Solitaire.

Teensy Golf Solitaire is a great implementation of this classic Solitaire variation. It looks great, has reasonable features, interesting game modes and is a bargain at $.99. If you don’t have a Solitaire game for your iPhone or want to give these Solitaire varitations a try I would definitely recommend checking this one out.

By: Aaron Robbins