cardtray.io is up

The CardTray website is live. That is the whole of this entry. The app has not shipped yet, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

What is here now is everything you would want to read before deciding whether to install it when it does.

What's on the site

• How to play about 320 solitaire games, in Guides. Each one sets out the deal, the moves, how to win and which games it is related to, from Klondike, Spider and FreeCell through to Forty Thieves, Scorpion and Baker's Dozen. They are written from the same rules the app plays by.
• The manual at Docs, written from the app's own help rather than from a marketing brief: the Game Gallery, playing a game, Continue Game, the Daily Challenge, Stats & Records, the solver, themes and every setting, with what usually goes wrong in each.
• How it's funded, in full, on its own page. CardTray is free with no ads and no paid tier, because it shares a slice of your PC's idle bandwidth when it can. The part most pages would bury is stated there and on the home page: the sharing is what pays for the games, so play pauses while it is switched off. A game in progress is saved and waits at the same move.

What's not here

• The download. The app is still being built. The button will go live when there is a signed installer behind it, not before.
• Reviews. There are none yet, and we are not going to write any. The home page carries the limitations instead: most games are still Beta, the Daily Challenge waits for the first Verified games, and the installer is large because every deck and table is inside it.
• Online play. There are no accounts, no leaderboards and no multiplayer, and there won't be in the first version. High scores and streaks are yours, on your PC.

One thing worth stating plainly

Not every solitaire deal can be won, and CardTray won't claim otherwise. Every Daily Challenge deal is checked as winnable before it is offered. For most other games, you can ask the solver whether the cards in front of you can still be won, knowing every face-down card. Sometimes the answer is that it can't decide, and it says so. That is the honest version of the question, and it is the one the app answers.