You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Solitaire Grand Harvest

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
Can you believe people used to use playing cards for this?

As I draw ever closer to middle-age, I occasionally feel the need to check myself. When some new trend or custom or piece of technology becomes popular, and it sounds utterly stupid to me: am I becoming “Old Man Yells at Cloud”? Do I just look askance at it ’cause it’s new and not what I’m used to?

That’s what I had to ask myself after seeing this Solitaire Grand Harvest ad.

Now, I’ve never played the game, but I can see how it could be fun. They certainly show a bunch of fun-looking stuff happening in the commercial (though, given it’s a commercial for a mobile game, who knows whether that bears any resemblance to the actual game). It’s just … it feels weird to put all this in a game of solitaire.

I get the appeal of farm games, and dice games, and online tournaments. But why does it all need to be packaged and interconnected with solitaire? Having my solo card game interrupted with the message “Now it’s time to build a farm!” … feels intrusive.

But, hey, maybe I’m just becoming an old. Maybe if I gave it a shot, the blending together of so many different forms of gameplay would create a fun and unique experience.

Then again, it’s a free to play mobile game that doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, so regardless of the advertising, I wouldn’t expect it to be great.