Hardwood Hearts 17+

This is by far the best cards app if you dream about escaping to the medieval times. Forget Vegas, the casinos, and showgirls; bring on the rainbows, magic spells, and gnomes! I love that there are no ads to disrupt game flow, the board is easy to understand, and the sound effects are mesmerizing. I can almost walk in a trance listening to the dreamscape background music along with the occasional noise of waves splashing against the rocks, plus the toll of clock tower bells. The graphics are incredible!

I love the options available to play with others online, speed up the animation, disable shooting the moon, enable Jack of Diamonds, vary the intelligence level, and maximum scoring. The app is also smart enough to know when a player is left with all remaining points, or when no further points are available, and wraps the hands up for you instead of having you trudge through each hand manually.

I also love that you can shut off the background melody and instead play the game either silently or with your own music from your phone. If you want to keep hearing the magical effects in the background, however, you have to keep your phone’s ringer switch on, and even so the volume of your phone’s music will drown out anything you can hear from the app.

Overall, I still give Hardwood Hearts 5 stars for such an immersive experience!

Great Game ! Lucked into this beauty on the App Store ! They host 4 games to my knowledge including Hearts , Spades , Euchre & Backgammon if I am not mistaken ! There is a mystical feel to the games including visual special effects & sounds that add a mysterious feel to the games ! There are unique backgrounds & avatars that add to the Middle Ages feel this game exudes ! Another thing I like is the natural feel of the distribution of the cards & fast play ! Like sitting around the round table with friends or family but with your best Masquerade outfit on ! If you like something truly unique then try it as a guest as I did ! I know you will love it as I did ! Daisyog

Almost always dealt two of clubs, five of hearts virtually guarantees that you’ll take a trick all hearts (2, 3, 4), passing the ace or king or both of spades virtually guarantees you will be passed the queen of spades, typically you will be passed the same suit(s) as you passed, if you get a significant lead you will be dealt a virtually-unprotected queen of spades on a no-pass hand. When one takes the queen of spades it is most frequently with a club trick - easy for programmers to set this up. There is a key weakness wherein I can shoot the moon because the software fails to take the queen of spades - though it could - if I have the last heart to be lead after the queen.

There are other obvious patterns.

I would prefer a no-cheat game. However, that would expose the inability of the programmers to deliver a sufficient level of software intelligence.

I imagine a response to my complaints might be “we cheat to artificially challenge the player in order to improve player skills, blah blah…”.

That said, I suppose many (most?) play the game real-time with online opponents. Are the Hardwood folks interceding/cheating in that area too?

Must admit - I admire the ‘cheating’ algorithms!

Regardless, the game helps pass time in physician waiting rooms….

…and far superior to other hearts games I’ve found.