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Rae's Solitaire Manual

10.27.2026

Rae's Solitaire logo. There's a set of antennae, and a stacked card motif.

Synopsis

For having fun or killing time; patience is a virtue.

Hi! My name’s Rae. Lately, I’ve been getting into solitaire (patience, card solitaire, what-have-you). One night, I thought: “I wanna play some solitaire on my Playdate”. Then I thought, “how hard would it be to make it?” …So, I made solitaire for my Playdate! Now, you can play it on yours too.

It’s robust, and ridiculously customizable. You can freely adjust your play settings to suit your play style, choose from a variety of pre-set visual settings, or even draw and import your own deck of cards! It’s got some nice features made with Playdate in mind, too — easy undo, extensive use of the Playdate’s crank to make your life easier, and an automatic suspend feature that lets you pick a game up where you left off. There’s Klondike, Spiderette, Yukon, maybe more…it’s solitaire! I hope you enjoy it!

Gameplay Basics

Controls

The d-pad and A and B buttons are required to play this game. These buttons are used to navigate menus, and are mandatory in main gameplay. The crank can also optionally be used. Within the game, context is provided as to which controls will perform what actions.

Modes

Klondike

In Klondike solitaire, you start with a ‘tableau’ of 28 cards, plus a ‘deck’ with 24 more. The goal’s to sort the cards into the ‘banks’ at the top, in order, by suit.

In the tableau, cards can be stacked by alternating color; starting with K at the top, down to A. In banks, cards are stacked by suit, from A to K. Cards can be flipped and drawn from the deck, and moved either into the tableau, or straight into a bank. If all cards have been flipped, it goes from the top.

Spiderette

In Spiderette solitaire, you start with a ‘tableau’ of 28 cards, plus a ‘deck’ with 24 more. The goal’s to sort the cards into four piles of thirteen, in order, by suit.

You can move around the top card in any tableau. If it’s part of a stack of the same suit, in order, then you can pick all those cards up as well! You can move any card into an empty spcae on the tableau, but Kings don’t have anything to stack on top of otherwise, so those spots are great for ‘em.

If every spot on the tableau is full, then you can ‘deal’ from the deck, adding seven more cards into the tableau; one at the top of each stack.

In ‘Will o’ the Wisp’ dealing, every slot in the tableau has just three cards dealt into it, instead of following the typical Klondike layout. This makes it a bit easier. You can also adjust how many suits are in play. Less suits can also make the game easier, by way of letting more tall stacks of alike suits be made.

Yukon

In Yukon solitaire, you start with a ‘tableau’ of all 52 cards! The goal is to sort the cards into the ‘banks’ at the top, in order, by suit.

You can pick up as many cards at a time as you want. To move them somewhere else, the colors of the connecting cards must alternate, in descending rank. (If you’re playing using Russian stacking rules, then the connecting cards must match suits exactly, in descending rank.) In banks, cards are stacked by suit, from A to K.

Scoring Algorithms

Klondike: Standard

Standard scoring depends on the moves you make throughout the game, as well as how much time you take to complete it.

Klondike: Vegas

For Vegas scoring, you play not with points, but with dollars. For each game, you start by anteing $52. Then, for each time you move a card into a bank, you gain +$5. (If a card gets moved from a bank back into the tableau, you lose $5 instead.) Upon starting a new game, you’ll begin again with -$52 to start the next round.

Vegas (Cumulative) scoring works just like Vegas scoring, except you play with the same pot between games. If you end with a score of $208, playing again will subtract $52 for the new ante, and leave you with $156 to start the next game.

Spiderette: Standard

Yukon: Standard

Standard scoring depends on the moves you make throughout the game, as well as how much time you take to complete it.

Yukon: Vegas

For Vegas scoring, you play not with points, but with dollars. For each game, you start by anteing $52. Then, for each time you move a card into a bank, you gain +$5. (If a card gets moved from a bank back into the tableau, you lose $5 instead.) Upon starting a new game, you’ll begin again with -$52 to start the next round.

Vegas (Cumulative) scoring works just like Vegas scoring, except you play with the same pot between games. If you end with a score of $208, playing again will subtract $52 for the new ante, and leave you with $156 to start the next game.

Custom Card Assets

This game supports custom card assets, imported through the game’s save-data folder. To create your own custom card assets:

  1. Create the images. They must be 40 pixels wide, 60 pixels high; and 1-bit only.

⚠️ For a custom card back, create one image and name it ‘back’. For a custom set of card fronts, create 52 images, and name them by the suit (plural), followed by the numerical value of the card; e.g. “spades1” for an Ace of Spades, “hearts13” for a King of Hearts, “diamonds7” for a Seven of Diamonds, and “clubs11” for a Jack of Clubs.

  1. Turn your images into .pdi files that can be read by the system — standard image files like .png or .jpg will not work.

⚠️ To create .pdi files, you can either run the images through the pdc tool, included in the Playdate SDK; or you can use this handy web tool.

  1. Access Data Disk Mode on your Playdate by following these steps, and navigate to Data/wtf.rae.solitaire/custom_cards.

  2. Create a new folder, name it something unique to your deck (letters only), and drop your card images into it. Don’t put ‘em outside, or within any sub-folders!

  3. Create a JSON file, and place it in the same folder as the card assets. In this JSON file, add strings for card_alias (what you want the deck to be called), and card_maker (what you want your name to be). Alphanumeric works best for these; recommended maximum character length is 15.

  4. Exit Data Disk Mode, launch Rae’s Solitaire, and navigate to Settings > Customization.

  5. Your card images should be available to use now! They’ll be placed at the end of the list of stock cards — scroll through Card Art (Front) and/or Card Art (Back) until you reach your deck.

⚠️ If you don’t have all the pre-requisite cards for a full deck of fronts, or the card image(s) are the wrong size, then the game will crash with a message letting you know what exactly went wrong. To resolve this crash, you can either rectify the given issue with the custom deck, or remove the custom deck(s) that are causing the crash.

On-line Capability

About On-line Play

This game connects to Playdate’s on-line leaderboard API, to enable sending and receiving of high scores among players across the globe. To use on-line functionality in this game, make sure your Playdate has an active Wireless connection.

⚠️ To access on-line features in this game, On-line Participation must be turned ON, in the in-game Settings > Gameplay. If this setting is turned OFF, both reading and writing will be disabled.

Submitting Your Scores

To submit a new score to a global leaderboard, simply finish a game. When you reach the ‘Game Complete!’ screen, your score will be submitted to the proper leaderboard automatically.

⚠️ Any submission to on-line records will be counted by Standard scoring rules, regardless of in-game scoring selection.

Viewing Global Scores

You can view global scores using two primary methods:

  1. Visit the Rae’s Solitaire game page in your Web browser, at play.date/games/raes-solitaire. From here, you can view all available scores in the Scoreboards section. You can see top 10 scores in every available board.

  2. Enter the ‘Global’ menu within the game, accessible from the Title screen. When in this screen, you can use the left and right buttons on the D-pad to switch between modes.

Credits

Changelog

Version 1.1.0

10.27.2026

Version 1.0.0

10.27.2026


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