Hardwood Solitaire IV PreRelease Feedback

[Forget_the_Rest]

It's possible that you consider this as "working as intended" but I find it annoying. I lost my internet connection earlier so I thought I'd play a few games until it came back up. Unfortunately, it seems that to play any of the games you've purchased, you need to be signed in. Is there any chance of it validating which games you own the first time after launching after purchase and then being able to play offline in those situations?

[kissmad]

So now you have to be connected to the internet to play HWSIV. Looks like I found another reason to just stick with HWSIII.

[Jonas]

I think if you make sure to click "remember" on the sign on, even if you're off line, you'll still be in a signed on state.

[Forget_the_Rest]

Thanks for the reply Jonas.

Unfortunately, I already have that checked so it seems it's not possible at this time.

I think it'd be great if you consider it though as being forced to remain online in a single player game always confused me!!

Thanks again.

[glg1517]

So far I like Solitaire IV and haven't had any problems with it. I just bought the Klondike pack since that's mostly what I play and was thinking about buying an avatar. Why does an avatar like the bunny which has only one changable color cost a lot more tokens than say Ying which has 6 elements that can have their colors changed?

One more question, I have a custom deck that I use with Solitaire III, at some point will I be able to import it into this version or will only the ones that you get in the store work with this version?

[racingfreak92]

I first became a fan of Silver Creek when i got a 360 and bought and loved the Hardwood Spades, Hearts, and Backgammon games. Now that i got a laptop i came back to silvercreek for their mac offerings. I was excited to see HWS4 with its great graphics and effects, sadly you took this game in the same direction as you did the 360 version (know as Soltrio) with all those card packs. I dont know how Soltrio fared in sales but i know that the Xbox forums were not very happen when the game came out because it not only cost $10, but quickly had an additional $15 in games released in packs that were only mere kilobytes, meaning the game were more than likly included in the orignal game, only in a locked version. Since its release 3 years ago i have never heard anything about that game since its initial launch. Maybe the game did sell well, idk (though i am very interested) but seeing all those game packs instantly turned me off.

I feel the same way about HWS4, i dont want to buy these game packs only to find that they have rigorous DRM (requiring online connection for a singleplayer game) and arent protected by some sort of universal account like iTunes or Steam.

Silvercreek i think there is a huge market in making low priced, bundled game. You already have HD assets for Soltrio, what you should do is update Spades, Hearts, and Backgammon and bundle the whole thing together as "HardWood Games" or something like that. There are tons of crappy solitaire games everywhere on the internet. By making 1 high quality yet cheap game you could take over the market. For $20 for a bundled game that includes the 100 solitaire games you have as well as online enabled hearts, spades and etc for $15-$20 you could really move copies. I also really recommend moving away from your own sites distribution and sell your game on Steam/Impulse where you will get exposure to tons of users.

[cattani]

to buy all the staff, games pack, deck, environment,avatar is around 120 $ (around 9600 point) since all the staff in HWS3 cost 20 $.
why this big difference ?

[Jonas]

to buy all the staff, games pack, deck, environment,avatar is around 120 $ (around 9600 point) since all the staff in HWS3 cost 20 $.
why this big difference ?

its just a different thing. We'll still have HWS III.

SolIV is going in with the idea that most people don't use most of that stuff. We pick the things we like. So if you just like to keep things simple the game is a lot cheaper than 20bucks. If you we're one of the rare people that used everything in SolIII, then you'd probably want to stick with it.

Its likely we'll offer bigger packs say "10 environments' or "100 solitaire games" where the value proposition would change. One benefit to the piecemeal approach is that as we make new content we can make a modest profit on it for those that are interested in that item (say a turtle avatar). Hence making it work making or at least giving us some direct feedback on weather we should make more of that type of item. In the old model, adding more stuff didn't necessarily have a return on investment nor did we have a way to measure cause and effect. As well as folks just want stuff at a lower price point nowadays, so this custom approach allows for that as well.

[Jonas]

I feel the same way about HWS4, i dont want to buy these game packs only to find that they have rigorous DRM (requiring online connection for a singleplayer game) and arent protected by some sort of universal account like iTunes or Steam.

We have a new release coming that will NOT require a online connection to use your stuff. It still will be like steam in that your stuff will be tied to an account. the nice thing about that though, is that you don't have to put in unlock keys etc to get your stuff back, you just have to install the game and login, and all your purchases will sync back up.