Hearts

I’ve tried most of the heart games and they are neither random or fun. When you have to pick a game level then you know the cards are stacked against you or for you. This game is like playing the real thing and your opponents play to win and stop someone from shooting the moon. The is truly the best of the rest.

As in most hearts games, there is often a “chosen one” who is slated to win. This player will almost always have good cards, usually get the Jack of diamonds, and quite often be the one to hand you the queen of spades… Often when you play a card that should not get you the queen of spades. The other two players will be village idiots who are tripping over themselves to take as many points as possible, making it virtually impossible for you to direct points to the chosen one. Additionally one of the village idiots will often threaten to shoot the moon, requiring you to take several points to stop them while the chosen one magically seems to get no points hand after hand. Having said that, this game will at times shift who the chosen one is. The person who seems slated to win, if you can manage to give them a few points, will become persona non grata. This at least is better than most hearts games. All in all it’s fun.

I’ve tried a lot of them because I am addicted to Hearts. This is my favorite. The banner ad during the game is very unobtrusive and there’s only one full screen ad after every game, which is quickly dismissed. There’s a fun range of options for card backs, table colors, etc., and the AI is good enough that it’s fun to play against. My only desire would be a TRAM (the rest are mine) button, where you can automatically take the rest of the tricks if that’s guaranteed to happen. I’ve used it in other games and it’s a nice time-saver. The developer is also very responsive to bugs, which are usually squashed as soon as they crop up. This game is not out to sell you anything — it’s just to have fun playing. Just what I want.

There are some real positives to this game but there are also some negatives. The speed is good, the graphics are good and the ability to reduce after shooting the moon is a positive. So is the ability to play to either 50, 100 or 150. However I will have to say that the lack of randomness in the deals, based on the frequency with which one receives the QS, is a drawback. One other drawback is the tendency to have moon attempts stopped by someone OTHER than the low man and in so doing, end the game. It’s like a pro player has become an amateur. That needs to change. There are also times in a real game when the 2nd or 3rd place player would take points in order to prevent 4th from going over and thereby extending the game. That doesn’t happen here.

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It’s a great game, UNTIL it stops working completely. This has now happened to me 10 times. There is no solution to this bug. Everything freezes and you can’t do anything except delete the app and then get it again. But guaranteed, it will freeze again after 50 or so games. When I emailed the developer they do not respond. My suggestion is find another Hearts game from a developer that is responsive to fixing their software bugs. This one isn’t!