A Farewell To Kings 201 X

A Farewell To Kings for Mac OS X v2.0.1 is Rob Steward's native OS X port of his unconventional strategic solitaire, released 4 September 2001. Unlike linear card solitaires, play unfolds two-dimensionally on a grid: cards are matched by suit and rank in both directions, and four-of-a-kind in a square formation collapses into a removable "book."

The two-dimensional twist

The board is a grid rather than a row of stacks. Pieces interact with their neighbors in every direction, so each move has to weigh four-sided consequences instead of the linear cascades of Klondike or FreeCell. Steward describes the game as playing "more like a strategy game" than a card game, and the difficulty curve reflects that -- it is not easily mastered.

Books and kings

The signature mechanic is the book: arrange four cards of the same rank into a 2x2 square and they lift off the board together, freeing the cells underneath. Custom king arrangements add another layer -- attaching cards to a king-built book triggers special handling, a piece of which the 2.0.1 patch had to fix after an unhandled-exception bug surfaced.

What 2.0 and 2.0.1 changed

The 2.0.0 rewrite (3 September 2001) delivered the first native Mac OS X build, with greatly improved graphics, in-game sound, expanded preferences, optional cheating, unlimited undo, auto-saved games and preferences, and built-in instructions. The 2.0.1 hotfix one day later patched a major bug where cards in the fifth row from the top were almost always free to move, and squashed the king-attach exception.

Relationship to nid 10888

This entry is the OS X-native sibling of A Farewell To Kings 2.0.1 (nid 10888), which is the same 2.0.1 release packaged for classic Mac OS. Both share the gameplay, graphics, and bug fixes; the difference is the runtime target.

System requirements

System 7.6.1 or greater (including Mac OS X), 68020 or better -- PowerPC, G3, or G4 recommended. 8 MB free RAM, 4 MB disk, 800x600 screen. Shareware from Rob Steward Company.