Yukon Solitaire (Commodore 64)

I got a vintage Commodore 64 for my birthday earlier this year, but hadn't yet received a flash card with actual games to play yet. So I started playing around with programming some simple BASIC games on the Commodore itself while (mostly) using a second-hand box of 80's computer books as a reference, which was a lot of fun.

One of the games that came out of that was a version of my favorite solitaire variant: Yukon solitaire. I think this one turned out really well, so I wanted to share it here. It makes use of character graphics using the default set ("10" being represented by "T" to make this work) and a bit of an unconventional horizontal lay-out to make it all fit properly. I personally find the control scheme works very nicely and efficiently with a C64 keyboard.

Controls

• 1-7: select/unselect stack; or move current selection to other stack
• 0: select/unselect foundation stacks; or move current card to foundations
• F1/F3 or CRSR left/right: move selection left/right within current stack
• F5/F7 or CRSR up/down: move selection to top/bottom of current stack
• Space bar: open menu that reveals restart (R) and quit (Q) options

Rules of Yukon solitaire

Yukon is similar to standard Klondike solitaire, except that it does not have a stock and that the card stacks don't have to be fully ordered. Ordering rules only apply to the top card of a stack you are moving, and the bottom of the stack you are moving to: the former should have a card value that is exactly one higher than the latter, and the two cards should have different colors.

For example, let's say you've got the following two stacks:

🂺🃒🃆🃇🃋

🂶🂡🃚🃝🂵

Because it is legal to put 🃚 on top of 🃋, it is a legal move to move the entire 🃚🃝🂵 substack to the top one:

🂺🃒🃆🃇🃋🃚🃝🂵

🂶🂡

In this case, this has also revealed the Ace 🂡, which you can always directly move to the foundations stack. Just like in Klondike solitaire, the foundations are subdivided by suit and ordered from Ace to King. Move everything to the foundations and you win.

It should be pretty easy to get a hang of the rules and effective strategies through experimentation. There's also plenty of further tips and explanations available online.

Enjoy!