The classic desktop versions of Solitaire and Minesweeper are gone in Windows 8 and 10. Instead, you’ll find shiny new versions with advertisements, Xbox integration, and optional subscription fees. But you can still play Solitaire and Minesweeper without ads, and without paying a cent.
Solitaire is installed by default on Windows 10. You can just open the Start menu and launch the “Microsoft Solitaire Collection” application to open it.
If the Microsoft Solitaire Collection isn’t installed—perhaps you’ve uninstalled it in the past—you can get it from the Windows Store.
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Microsoft Minesweeper isn’t installed by default on Windows 10, but it’s available for free. To install Minesweeper, launch the “Store” application and search for “Minesweeper”. Click the “Microsoft Minesweeper” tile and click “Install” to install it.
You can also click here to go straight to Microsoft Minesweeper on the Windows Store.
Once it’s installed, you can launch Microsoft Minesweeper from your Start menu.
On Windows 8, neither Solitaire nor Minesweeper are installed by default. You’ll need to open the Store and search for Solitaire and Minesweeper to install the Microsoft Solitaire Collection and Microsoft Minesweeper applications.
Whether you like the new games depends what you’re looking for. The good news is that they’re more shiny and polished than the old Solitaire and Minesweeper games.
The Microsoft Solitaire Collection includes quite a few different games—Klondike, Spider, FreeCell, Pyramid, and TriPeaks. Klondike is the classic, default solitaire experience you’re probably familiar with from previous versions of Windows.
You can choose “solvable decks” of different difficulty levels—decks guaranteed to be solvable so you don’t get stuck and have to restart—or use a traditional, randomly shuffled deck.
The Microsoft Solitaire Collection offers daily challenges you can compete in to earn badges. You’ll be given a specific game and deck and asked to perform a specific task. You’ll also find events, which are a series of challenges. You can choose different themes to customize your deck and gameplay area.
In Microsoft Minesweeper, you can choose a traditional board of an easy, medium, expert, or custom size. This game also offers daily challenges made up of pre-made boards of various difficulties. Challenges may ask you to mark the location of 10 mines with flags, for example, or detonate a specific number of mines within a certain number of moves.
Microsoft Minesweeper also has an “Adventure” mode where you try to reach the exit of a dungeon while avoiding traps and monsters and collecting gold. You have to find and avoid traps by using numbers on the floor. That part works just like traditional minesweeper.
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These games are integrated with MIcrosoft’s Xbox Live, so you’ll earn Xbox achievements by playing Solitiare and Minesweeper, too.
If you like the new Solitaire and Minesweeper games, check out Microsoft Mahjong. It’s a similar game, complete with daily challenges and a variety of puzzles and themes to choose from. Like Minesweeper, it’s available as a free download in the Windows Store.
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For all the pretty features these games offer, they have built-in advertising and require separate yearly subscription fees to play without ads. Currently, the Microsoft Solitaire collection costs $15 per year, Microsoft Minesweeper costs $10 per year, and Microsoft Mahjong costs $10 per year. These are separate fees. So, to play all three games without ads, you’ll need to pay $35 per year.
Solitaire has actually gotten more expensive over time, too. When Windows 10 launched, Microsoft was only charging $10 per year for ad-free Solitaire.
Worst of all, we’ve seen 30-second video advertisements in these applications. That’s a deal-breaker for time-wasting games you may want to play in short bursts.
You don’t need to pay, however—if you don’t mind looking at the ads, you can play all you want for free by playing different versions of Solitaire and Minesweeper.
RELATED:You Don’t Have to Pay $20 a Year for Solitaire and Minesweeper on Windows 10
There are some great ad-free alternatives to Microsoft’s new Solitaire and Minesweeper games. You don’t have to pay anything extra or look ad ads if you just want the basics.
We’ve put up completely free Solitaire and Minesweeper games on URLs that anybody can access in a desktop browser. And there are no ads.
Google now offers an ad-free solitaire game, too. Just search for “solitaire” on Google and you’ll see a Solitaire game you can play right on Google’s search results page.
READ NEXTGames like Minesweeper, Solitaire, FreeCell or Hearts have been included in most versions of the operating system by default. They have a large fan base not only at home but also at offices throughout the country, and if they have not been blocked in an office, you usually find some employees playing a game or two.
With Windows 8 comes a change to how games are being made available to the user of the system. Windows 8 does not ship with the games installed, and there is no 'games' feature that you can install optionally like you could under Windows 7 Professional to add those classic desktop games back to the system.
Instead, you find those games listed in Microsoft's Windows Store. The first thing that you need to know about Windows Store is that you can only install apps and games if you log in with your Microsoft Account. If you do not, you do not get to play a single classic game on Windows 8.
You find all available games under the games listing in the store. All free and paid games are listed here, and it may be difficulty to find the Microsoft games in the list, especially if the count increases to thousands. Some official games have 'Microsoft' in their name while others have not, which adds to the confusion as well.
The three games that have at the time of writing are:
And there are two additional games by Microsoft that do not have the company name in their title
It is not clear right now if missing games, like Hearts, Internet Backgammon, Spades and Hearts, Chess Titans or Purble Place will be added at a later point in time.
This game is a collection of various Solitaire games, some old, some new, that you can play once you have installed it on your Windows 8 system. The games included are:
FreeCell
Spider Solitaire
Pyramid
Klondike
TriPeaks
All solitaire games feature different themes deck that you can use instead of the default deck theme. Achievements, leaderboards, extensive statistics and daily challenges will also be available on launch. It is not clear yet if all features will be available for free.
Minesweeper has received a big update as well. You can still play easy, medium, expert and custom sized minefields, but also join daily challenges or play the adventure mode.
Just like the other games, Mahjong has been improved and is now offering 12 different setups and three difficulty levels. What makes this interesting is that you need to unlock all but the first setup for each difficulty level before you can advance.
If you want to play classic Windows games you need a Microsoft Account and download the games from the store to do so. Minesweeper, the Solitaire Collection and Mahjong are great updates that offer better graphics, additional game modes and features that the majority of users will surely like. If there is one thing to criticize it is that you can't play the game in a small window on the screen in Office or school anymore, as they can only be run in fullscreen.