10-20-30

 
 
 
 

I learned to play this game when I lived in Hay River, N.W.T., Canada. I have found during my time of writing and telling friends about this program that not many people seem to know it. I hope you like it.
Don't tell your kids, but it's a great math drill too.

This is not a traditional seven-column solitaire game, where you could just as easily play the game with a deck of real cards - and much more cheaply too, if that was your only reason for owning a computer. The nature of this game sometimes causes you to have a column of 30 cards or more, and when coupled with removing cards from the top and bottom of the column, it makes for a fair amount of care needed to keep things neat when playing with real cards. This is where a computer program really shines, completely reformatting a longer column each time cards are added or removed from it. You will see this as you play, when the columns get long. You can also see it here in the screen shot; look at the right-most column. Don't worry if you start to get middle cards bunched together so tightly that you can't see which cards are there - you can only make your group of three cards out of the top or bottom three, and those ones will always be visible.

I have included sound effects with the game, which I think greatly increases the enjoyment of play. Of course, you will need a sound card and speakers for this feature to work on your system.


Techno-babble

Displays best on a screen resolution of 1024 X 768, although it will work and is playable on lower resolutions.

Cards used in this game are from the freeware QCard32.DLL written by Stephen Murphy.

Help file was written using VB HelpWriter Lite by Teletech Systems.

Sound control was provided by the TegoSoft OCX Control Kit, by TegoSoft Inc.

Install/uninstall was created using InstallShield Express 3.5.

Program was written in Visual Basic version 4.0 on a Windows 98 SE Pentium III system.

Rules of the game
 This game, as the name implies, focuses on adding the values of cards to reach ten, twenty or thirty. To do this:
 1) You must select a group of three cards.
 2) The cards must be either on the top or bottom of the active column. That is, in order to select, for example, the second from top card, you must also select the top card.
 3) The three cards you select can be any combination of top and bottom cards.
 4) Face cards all have a value of ten.
 5) You must take your group of three cards from only the active column.

The game begins with a new deal to four columns. As you remove groups of three cards adding up to ten, twenty or thirty, they are returned to the bottom of the deck to be reused. The object of the game is to remove all cards from each column. Once a column is empty it remains unused for the rest of that game. You win the game when all of the cards are back in the deck.

You can remove more than one group of three cards in the active row if there is another 10-20-30 grouping uncovered when you take a group of three cards off the column. Taking three and sometimes four groups off one column before moving to the next column is not unheard of.

Moving to the next column is begun by dealing another card.