Forbidden Solitaire warns us to uninstall it ‘before it’s too late,’ but I played the demo anyway and now I want more

The Steam page for Forbidden Solitaire warns you to uninstall it “before it’s too late.” I saw this a few moments after closing the demo that just dropped today, so it’s possible my PC is now haunted by unimaginable horrors. But as a Windows user in 2026, I’ve probably seen worse, so I’m just going to go ahead and tell you why I think this haunted little card game is worth the risk and we’ll see if I survive until the end.

Forbidden Solitaire wastes no time before getting weird. I was only a few minutes into playing the demo when I was offered some upgrades by an eyeball in a wall. It followed my cursor around as I hovered over gems that I thought would be slotted into rings on the giant hand in the middle of the screen. But when I bought one, my character jammed it right into his flesh.

Forbidden Solitaire is solitaire if you could cheat by shoving gems into your hand because an eyeball told you to. My first upgrade let me undo my last move, which ended up being pivotal when I fought the fleshy mass of human skulls later on. I may not be particularly good at card games, but I can handle solitaire. All you need to know is how to pick cards that are one number higher or lower than the card in your hand. And in Forbidden Solitaire, each card you take off the board increases the amount of damage you deal to the enemy before it’s their turn.

I don’t know why the monsters in the dungeon you explore can be hurt by cards, and I doubt Forbidden Solitaire will ever tell me. You play as a character who found a CD-ROM of the game and decided to try it out on a PC from the ’90s. Messages from a friend researching the controversy around the game occasionally pop up with links to things like FMV news footage of parents decrying the game for its violence: “Why is it so violent? It’s fucking solitaire!” By the end of the demo, I had seen enough evidence of the game driving people mad that I wouldn’t be surprised if it were hiding something from me.

As I cleared passageways blocked by piles of bones and tore the heart out of a shambling abomination with the unusual power of this game’s version of solitaire, I couldn’t tell if I was getting closer to revealing its secrets or if it was simply luring me closer to my own end.

But I was having so much fun playing cards that I forgot about the possible damage to my psyche. Sometimes cards show up that aren’t cards at all. Key cards can be picked up and placed onto lock cards to reveal what’s underneath, and there are cards that will instantly deal damage to your opponent or shield your health from their next attack. Other special cards help extend your turn by letting you remove multiple cards at once or reshuffle what’s on the board before the enemy can even land a hit on you. Nothing feels better than chaining a bunch of moves together for one massive attack, and I suspect that will be vital to your survival in the final game.

Things got even weirder at the end of the demo when I started finding cursed cards that wouldn’t go away until I matched with them twice. Forbidden Solitaire is as much of a card battler as it is a puzzle game. Each move you make could end your combo or jumpstart it, rewarding you for thinking several steps ahead. But you have to be flexible because you never know what cards will show up next and derail your plan. This tiny bit of friction is just enough to make every victory feel earned. For the hour I played Forbidden Solitaire, I felt like I was good at card games. And even if that turns out to be the demo giving me the illusion of confidence so that I go and play the real thing when it’s out, I’d be happy to be lied to again.

If I could make it through Inscryption—another mysteriously meta card game with crunchy 3D graphics in the style of ’90s PC games—I can make it through Forbidden Solitaire. Or at least I will try my best because I’m committed to finding out what lies deeper in the dungeon, and what makes the game so forbidden after all.