SOLITAIRE.EXE · published · build 25643168
Before Steam Next Fest, ZONE.EXE on the desktop opens four real-time card games you play together, and the free demo gets all of them. Play with up to three Steam friends or against bots. Invite friends through Steam or share a room code, and tell us what breaks. Friend games stay open in the demo until Next Fest ends. NERTZ RUSH. Everyone plays solitaire at once, racing to put cards on the same shared piles in the middle. Between rounds you pick a power-up to use on a friend. Freeze their piles, jam their deck, or drop a virus card they must bin before it spreads. SPIT. A one-on-one speed race. Both players play onto two shared piles at the same time, one rank up or down. The first to empty their five columns wins the round. BLACKJACK RUSH. Everyone plays blackjack against the dealer at the same time, drawing from one shared deck. Everyone can see the next card, so grab it before someone else does. POKER RUSH. Five-card draw with no turns: everyone swaps cards and bets at the same time. Hands are revealed from weakest to strongest. First games that show you how. Your first NERTZ RUSH and SPIT games teach you as you play: the screen dims, a pointer shows the move, and one line says what it does. The power-up shop between rounds and the end-of-round knockout check explain themselves the same way. Spam clicking now costs you. In NERTZ RUSH, fast plays build a score multiplier. Clicking cards that cannot move used to freeze you for a moment. Now it resets your multiplier instead. Solo runs and a daily game. BLACKJACK RUSH and POKER RUSH each have a solo run of three tables that get harder, with its own leaderboard. There is also one shared game a day that everyone plays. Learn by watching. TRAINING.EXE now shows each move on the real board with one line of text. The F1 help screens have a picture for every topic. The desktop, the shop and each new game walk you through themselves the first time. Easier scoring. Each suit has a bar that fills as you play its cards. Sending a card up to its suit pile cashes that bar in, times your multiplier. You can also click a bar to cash it in at half value. The first launch lets you pick the calm look (CALM, no flicker) or the full flickering old monitor look (FULL CRT). Remastered music. Every album is fixed and mastered again. The soundtrack starts with calmer genres and adds the heavier ones as you play, and a small note names each new song as it starts. Fixes. Steam invites open the right game, tooltips show above every window, Alt+F4 quits from ZONE.EXE, and the screensaver is gone.