How to Play Royal Family Solitaire

A forgiving single-deck game where all 52 cards are dealt out up front: foundations descend from Kings while tableau piles let you build both up and down in the same suit. With no stock to fall back on, careful tableau play is what wins the game.

Setup

1. Four Kings (one of each suit) are placed as foundation bases
2. Deal 4 cards face-up to each of 12 tableau piles
3. There's no stock or waste pile in this game—every card is dealt out at the start

How to play

• Build foundation piles downward by rank in the same suit, from King down to Ace
• Build tableau piles up or down by rank in the same suit; for example, 7♥ can go on 6♥ or 8♥
• Only the top card of each tableau pile can move, to a foundation or to another tableau pile
• Cards automatically move to the foundations when no other card could be built on them; this behavior can be changed in Settings
• Any card can be moved into an empty tableau pile
• Click the Redeal button to reshuffle the tableau and deal it back out in the original pile configuration (once per game)

How to win

Objective: Move all 52 cards to the four foundation piles

You win when all cards reach the four foundation piles. You're stuck when no more moves are possible.

Tips

• Build mixed runs in the tableau to expose buried cards rather than rushing everything to the foundations
• Empty tableau piles give you flexibility; use them strategically to rearrange sequences
• Since there's no stock to deal from, think a few moves ahead before committing to a play

Play Royal Family free on Windows

CardTray is a free solitaire app for Windows that includes Royal Family alongside 300+ other games. It saves every move as you play, so you can close the window and pick the game up later, replay any deal, and take on a new Daily Challenge deal every day. Browse every game in the Game Gallery.

Related games

More games from the Fan family:

• Unusual — A two-deck solitaire challenge where you race to build eight foundation piles while managing 24 tableau columns.
• Demon Fan — Demon Fan deals the whole deck across 18 tableau piles, with just the top card of each pile face up.
• Indefatigable — A single-deck solitaire where the entire deck is dealt out at the start, four Aces already in the foundations.
• Linus — Linus deals all 52 cards across 18 small tableau piles and challenges you to free them one at a time into suit-ordered foundations, building tableau sequences in alternating colors along the way.
• Perseverance A — Perseverance A is a tableau-heavy game where the four aces start on the foundations.