Classic Solitaire HD is an exact replica of the classic Windows Solitaire game except that it has retina support for newer devices.  It works on both touch and non touch Windows 8 screens.  For the first time, Microsoft didn’t include solitaire in its newest operating system.

It is fairly obvious that the creator is going for people who want to hold on to this classic game for nostalgia reasons.  It works great as an intro game or for someone who doesn’t know a whole lot about computers.

Playing the game itself is pretty straightforward as long as you are at least somewhat familiar with solitaire.  Drag or tap the cards to move them where they need to be.  Draw from the card stack if you run out of cards.

It would help if there was a clearer game reset button.  It took me a few minutes to figure out that I had to click or tap the button at the bottom of the screen to start a new game.

There are no bells and whistles or special effects other than animated cards at the end of the game.  I didn’t hear any sound effects either.  You can customize your deck, use Vegas or Standard scoring, and choose between three different modes.

Classic Solitaire HD offers a localized Russian or Ukrainian version. I think this factor makes this app worth getting if you speak either of these languages.  Not very many apps offer this option.

There are a ton of free, fancier solitaire and related card games in the Windows Store including FreeCell and Spider Solitaire.  Classic Solitaire HD is a paid app, but has a free trial.

I think the creator is on to something with the localization option, and it’d be great to see more languages added.  But to make it worth paying for, it needs something bigger to make it stand out among the slew of other free Windows 8 card game apps out there.