The reviews are all drawn from existing texts. Years are accurate, but dates may not be.
Text version of critic reviews:
- FreeCell, for example, is simply the best single solitaire game I’ve ever played. It would be a pain to play with real cards, but the programmers have made the card handling smooth and easy. These entertainment packages prove that there’s room in the world for games that don’t give you frantic deadlines and that don’t take place in a kill-or-be-killed world. ~ Compute! magazine, Issue 142, July 1992, review by Orson Scott Card
- FreeCell is a pleasure to play because, unlike most solitaire games, there’s very little luck involved. ~ Game Player’s PC Entertainment, Volume 5 №2, March 1992, review by Richard Mansfield
- Are you tired of twiddling your thumbs while Windows formats a floppy? Windows 95 can handle floppy chores in the background so that you can continue playing your card game. (And boy, the new card game, FreeCell, is an incredibly delicious time-waster.) ~ Windows 95 for Dummies, Andy Rathbone, 1997
- Windows could never be boring with all the fun gadgets that are added. Things such as animated mouse pointers, screen savers, sounds, videos, and a host of other interesting and sweetly charming goodies are all what makes Windows a hoot and hollerin’ good time. More, more, you say? OK. Chapter 24 will teach you how to play some fun games. Here’s a warning for you: Don’t learn FreeCell. You’ll be obsessed and won’t get any real work done. ~ Discover Windows 95, Dan Gookin & Sandra Hardin Gookin, 1997
- Like Solitaire, the goal in FreeCell is to build four stacks, building the suits from Ace to King. However, instead of having stacks of cards and a deck to deal from, FreeCell is played with all the cards face up in columns. There are also four cells in the upper-right corner to which you can move cards to access the cards beneath them. When a column is emptied, you can place any card there, not just a King. To move a card, left-click it and then the location to which you want it moved, instead of dragging it. ~ PC Novice, Volume 7 Issue 12, December 1996
- With elements of 1990s slowcore, quaggy indie-rock, and experimental composition, Free Cell successfully captures a dissociative feeling that lies somewhere between boredom and nausea, like sitting in a sauna. ~ Pitchfork review of Free Cell by Lina Tullgren, 27 August 2019, review by Emma Madden
Text version of user reviews:
- Sometimes when I’m out at a party, I catch myself thinking, I can’t wait to get home and play FreeCell on the computer. Ah, the glamorous life of an actress. FreeCell is all about organizing. A whole deck of cards is thrown out on the table and you have to put it in the proper order, somehow, moving one card at a time. It feels so good when I do it right. It may sound crazy, but it puts me back in control. That’s one of the challenges of MS – lack of control. I constantly have to reorganize my life to accommodate my fluctuating needs. Playing on the computer for hours isn’t the best way of doing it, but it really does help me. I love the metaphor, making order from chaos. ~ Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood by Terri Garr with Henriette Mantel, 2005
- Maybe all of us should care, because the stages of life’s journey are a lot like a game of FreeCell. ~ Live the Light: Five Weeks to a Life that Shines by Larry Davies, 2007
- Roberts logged on with his ID on the computer. After running a preliminary check on the systems monitoring the girls, he brought up the Tetris screen. Without Tetris and FreeCell, he would have gone crazy in here long ago. ~ Bright Shadow by Elizabeth Forrest, 1997
- I thought how I felt when work goes well, when I have been so absorbed by my tasks, so “in the flow,” that time vanishes. I thought about my sense of well-being at the end of a day like that, and how much I wanted that for Rachel, not because work per se would be good for her soul, but because when she was focused — playing FreeCell or Solitaire on the computer, for instance — she was at peace. ~ “Rachel at Work” by Jane Bernstein, from Love You to Pieces by various, 2008
- The email checking turned into a two-hour run playing FreeCell. Her fingers clicked the mouse and her brain emptied of anything but the cards flipping in front of her. ~ Dead and Kicking by Wendy Roberts, 2009
- That’s what all politicians in Lebanon do. They drink coffee and play FreeCell. Dad doesn’t let anybody use his computer. You know why? He doesn’t want to fuck up his FreeCell ratio. Can you believe that? ~ I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine, 2009
[Uncharted is an occasional feature where I look at games which were massively successful but, for whatever reason, were not eligible for the charts so could not possibly have made my list of #1 games. In this case it is because FreeCell was included with Windows rather than sold separately]