Last updated on November 26th, 2025 at 10:00 am
Sage Solitaire – Card Game Review
Sage Solitaire is a Card/Entertainment/Family game from STFJ LLC, first launched in 26th August 2015.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 563+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Sage Solitaire Stand Out
Sage Solitaire is a brand new Solitaire variant that combines the luck and joy of Solitaire with the depth of Poker; lovingly crafted, and optimized for your phone.
As featured in the New York Times holiday gift guide!
Named 'Game of the Week' by both TouchArcade.com and BoingBoing.
5/5 Stars “A fantastic example of how to make a mobile card game that's unique, fast, and strategic.“ – Touch Arcade
4.5/5 Stars "I’m in love with Sage Solitaire" – App Advice
——WHATS IN THE “BOX”?
The free version of Sage Solitaire deals out Single Deck, Insta-Tournament, and Vegas Modes. A single in-app purchase kills ads, and unlocks more modes, wallpapers, and themes that pair nicely with any situation you might be in. So take it with you, Sage is a Solitaire game fit for your life.
——MORE PRAISE FOR SAGE SOLITAIRE…
"No doubt about it: If you liked Threes you're gonna enjoy Sage Solitaire." – Asher Vollmer, creator of Threes
"I can’t stop playing" – The Verge
"Might be one of the best designed games of the year" -FastCompany
"Already taking over where my Threes addiction left off…" ProductHunt
"A great take on solitaire" – SlideToPlay
——A WORD FROM THE DEVELOPER
Klondike and FreeCell Solitaire are great games when all you have is a deck of cards, but you have more than that, you have the computer phone of the future! Our phone screens aren't the size of a table (yet), so why do we have to play solitaire games designed for tables?
Isn't it time we had a solitaire game where the cards were big enough to see and easily touch? Shouldn't there be a solitaire game light enough to play casually, yet deep enough for swapping strategies with friends?
At least that's what I think.
I hope you enjoy Sage Solitaire.
-zach
——FULL GAME FEATURE LIST
- Six Different Modes (Insta, Single, Double, Vegas, Grit, and Fifteens)
- 48 Achievements
- Tons of GameCenter Leaderboards
- In-Depth Statistics tracking synced across devices through iCloud
- Loads of Wallpapers and Card Backs
- Night Mode (easy on your eyes for playing in the dark)
This Card game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Sage Solitaire is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 4th November 2020
Recent improvements include:
Infrastructural upgrades. Fixed the copy/paste issue.
Download & Availability
Sage Solitaire is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Sage Solitaire on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We have a screenshot of a cleared screen in single deck (since there are reviews claiming it cant be done). It took us less than two minutes & took less than 24 hours from first download of the app & beginning to try. So stop whining. It would be stupid if it was easy. Great concept.
We like a lot of the games this development team has put out but this one is a game we especially enjoy. We hope you guys can add an option to turn off the haptics in a future update.
This game is so satisfying! Thank you for hours of fun.
We love playing this game. We fit in a few games here and there as a quick diversion from work. The Instant Tournaments are our favorite game play mode. And we would love Vegas mode more if it wasnt so darn hard to make a little cash, but then again, thats why we keep coming back to it, so good job. Our only problem with this game is that we cant shut off the haptics without shutting off our phones haptics. We would absolutely love it if you added a setting to turn off the games haptics. Thanks for making a game (and your other games) that we still love playing after all these years.
Zach makes great games. This one hooked us quickly, and the hourly challenges and variety of play modeseach with its own strategic twistmakes for infinite playability thats hard to put down.
Our favorite unique game of solitaire. Fun, interesting & challenging. Download & try for yourself.
One of our most favorite games from our favorite game developer. Well thought-out and fun with many variations.
Love this game, especially the Instant Tournament. But a couple of issues we hope the developer can address. 1) Even in battery-saving mode it drains our battery like crazy. Our phone actually gets hot as we play in that mode. 2) as of a week ago, the Global leaderboard isnt working. Maybe all the leaderboards.
Vegas mode appears to ignore the suit star multiplier when scoring.
We like the game, even though we are not at all good at the Vegas mode. But lately the Vegas mode reset doesnt work. We watch the add and it gets stuck and doesnt reset. We can watch more adds but it doesnt reset the score. We were considering paying to remove the adds but it looks like it hasnt been updated in 2years so Im hesitant to pay money only to have it not work or quite working in a couple months.
Game has such potential, but disappoints ;-(-;.
IPadOS 18.3 (22D63) caused the game to become very sluggish. Something is very wrong that was triggered by the last upgrade, and it has affected all the games we use.
You could use the hints feature for every single move you make, game after game, and you still wont win ONCE.
Why doesnt our casino balance reset after watching ads a whole 30 seconds of our life Ill never get back.
Ive been playing this on our commute for a few days now, easily 50 games, and not once have we actually cleared the board.
You get a lot when you pay the small fee. Plus competition with others for each hand. We believe in buying products we use and this game has fun variations. There are rules we wish werent there but every card game has them so accept them and move on. Part luck part skill. Win some lose some. Some rules are strange, but its the way it is designed so Ive learned to live with the quirks. ONE QUESTION FOR PROGRAMMER: often, too often it seems, we get the same rank card when turning over a pile (3 kings last round). We know you will say Its Random but is your random generator really doing its job? As a long term programmer ourselves we know randomness and when it doesnt seem right. You dont need to answer this inquiry but please DOUBLE CHECK YOUR ALGORITHM. Thank you. We love the game.
We had this on our phone a couple years ago, and then deleted it. We recently reinstalled the game, and remembered why we deleted it: it is so addictive. We can sit down and spend hours going just one more game, just one more game. If anything, we have learned that we are glad we dont gamble. There are some things we find frustrating (like trashing a card and finding the SAME ONE underneath) but we think thats mostly because Im not very good at the game. If you like solitaire, or just think its ok, definitely play this version.
The Vegas mode is a total tome sink for us. (Just one more game and Im sure Ill win!) (why we do not gamble irl) the game itself is perfect, imo. We havent figured out why our iPad and iPhone dont see each others scores, even though Im logged into Game Center with the same user name on both. And we havent quite figured out the ranking and messages on the instant tournaments. But we absolutely love this game.
Love the game, fun time-waster, in our opinion. However, we smell some rigging of the deck. You shouldnt be getting the same exact value card every time you trash a card. Everytime. Literally, almost ever time. We get the first 3-4 decks done, and we run out of hands… We trash a card. Lets say a 3. Whats the card we get? Another 3. Literally. Almost. Every. Time. Please Explain.
The new update has changed the game so that the phone vibrates whenever you choose a card or score a hand. Its really annoying. Click Click Buzz Click Click Click Buzz Make it stop.
Overall we think this game is great. Its aesthetically pleasing with a creative concept, and is very addictive! However, the tournament option is quite glitchy. Ive played a couple games in this mode, but now we cant access it and get one of a number of alerts about it either syncing, or being logged out of GameCenter (Im not, Ive checked). We would also love a better explanation of the features that will be unlocked in the paid version before we actually pay for it.
Fun game play but Vegas Mode is laughably, frustratingly impossible. The regular mode is also a bit more difficult than we would like but still playable. Vegas Mode is not playable.
Great time killer but sometimes the rules make progress impossible. Worse is the Vegas mode where you only get a payout if you have a card from the starred suit in the mix. Had a straight flush worth nothing because it was the wrong suit. Makes no sense. Better to give an extra bonus if using a started suit, but not to penalize players for not having one in a hand.
There are times when the score does not show points we just played.
What are the odds the almost every time you discard the same card comes up. On this game its about 90% of the time. Especially when the decks almost gone.
We really want to like this app but we play a few games and we get a full screen ad (with music even though we have the app set to silent) PLUS we cant navigate away from the full screen ad. We have to from memory and restart.
This game took over our screen time for about 3 weeks. The idea is great, the graphics and sounds are great, even most of the game mechanics are good. But there are a few things that keep popping up that ultimately chipped away any interest or excitement we had for this game. Mechanically, two pair IS a poker hand but not allowed, however, a 3-card straight is not a poker hand and is allowed. Also, not being able to make a hand from the same row is annoying. It might not be if there were more than three rows OR if there were the same amount of cards in each pile. The final mechanic that really twists the knife is trashing a card and finding the same ranked card underneath. The probability of drawing a pair in a 52 card deck is something like 1/200. This happens every single game, often more than once. The scoring, on another hand, is totally bunk. Not too bad in single deck, but vegas is just horrible. Not only can you only score on one suit (bonus suit) but the point values too low to make your ante back and clearing the board is required to make anything above ante. Also, why bother upping the ante? Betting 50 and clearing the board with $20 wins you about 50. Betting 200 and clearing the board with $20 wins you about 50 (maybe slightly more). The risk is SO much higher but the reward is the same. Then there are exhaustive ads that increase over time. Was fun for a bit, but im over it.
The volume controller does not work for ads so your are forced to turn down the global volume instead or listen to loud annoying ads. This is just stupid.
Way too many ads, cant close or anything. Too bad, used to be fun. Deleted.
Completely obnoxious ads, makes game unplayable.
We think we would enjoy the game more if we could read the instructions rather than trying to guess by trial and error.
This is a fun solitaire game but with the last update it plays long ads with sounds… Even when we have our phone on mute. Cannot play when we're in a quiet place because we never know when it's going to blast out sound. We understand getting ads but don't force us to have sound blasting out from long advertisments. We're looking for a new game :(.
The game is riddled with long, loud ads. We like to listen to things while we play games, but the amount of ads make this impossible. The amount of ads make it impossible to really get a feel for the game to judge if we want to pay to remove them. We wont pay to remove them if we dont care for the game. Scummy tactics by another clueless dev.
Quality, elegant excellence. Sage Solitaire is ingenious and addictive.
We have loved playing this game for a long time, especially double deck. Unfortunately the update automatically installed on our phone and we believe it may have caused some issues with our phones cellular function, with a screen stuck on verifying cellular updates and no ability to call or textscary. We dont care about our ranking with the rest of the world, but would like to be able to play our personal best without so much tracking and sucking down battery life & memory with statistics. Is there a way to get back to the original version? It would be great to have a double deck version with the stepped up scoring used in tournament(otherwise it is all over too soon!) with the ability to opt out of worldwide rankings. Enid Adams.
Great game, but given how hard the Vegas option is, there really should be a reset feature so you can get back to zero. Couldnt be hard to program this logic.
Why isnt 2, A, J, Q K all spades only a straight and not a straight flush. We were so excited once we got it but all our hope were extinguished when it didnt do this. Q, K, A is a 3 straight, so we are confused why this wasnt coded in. Please add it in the next update so no more people have to suffer.
Long, annoying adds waaaayyyy too often now since the latest update. We understand with new features comes the need for more adds but we would rather the old game back and have less adds. Deleting this app :/.
We are loving the new Instant Tournament feature! It gave this game a whole new life to us. The only nitpicky thing Id say is to have older instant tourney results fall off the list at some point. Thanks for all of the work.
The 2.0 update with newer device support is very much appreciated! Im excited to be able to play this game again with it taking full advantage of the new screen sizes! One other feature Id like to see added: darker colored backgrounds for day mode and/or the ability to switch the card front color separately from day/night mode. The night mode feature is super useful, and we love the dark backgrounds it includes, but we prefer the white card front color for our normal game play. Given the OLED display of the newer iPhones, we know the darker backgrounds of night mode are also better for battery life so Id love to be able to compromise a little and have a darker background with the white card front, whether that be by adding darker backgrounds to day mode or by allowing the card front color to change separately. Perhaps it could even be implemented so that all backgrounds are available regardless of the day/night mode, a switch exists for the card front, but the night mode switch remains available too. That way, users can customize their main game day mode however they want with any combo of dark/light background and black/white card front, while still having the convenience of the night mode switch to instantly get the dark on dark combo when desired.
Omg we were looking for a cards game because we love cards, and this game showed up and we played and we love it!!!!!!! This game is awesome, it gives you free hints and everything!!! Download this game!! Brilliant job Zach!! Please make more games like this.
2 minutes in = we dont think we like this one too much. 2 hours later = we /need/ to stop playing this.
Even after a couple years this remains our go-to game for a short round in line or waiting for the train. Im not a huge poker player Im not even good at it but theres something so satisfying about this formula.
Love this game but we wish we could play Vegas mode with both double deck and fifteen deck.
We have to say that we really like this game. We love the challenge that it presents, the simple rules it employs, and the lack of a timer or time component. Game time wise, each new game can take a couple of minutes to play or can be stretched out for 10+ minutes depending on how strategic you want to get. It's the perfect game for a bus ride or coffee break.
We love this game! Great design, fun mix of poker and solitaire, easy to learn but challenging, perfect for when you have a few minutes of free time.
Very addictive. Our favorite is Vegas mode. The design is perfect, clean and chic. The doubles and fifteens mode seem pointless though … Not enough difference in gameplay to make them interesting.
Absolutely great and addictive game. It is a one more go and then wow an hour has passed and we really need to put it down kind of game. All the modes are fun and challenging. Another great buy from a great developer.
This is our favorite game; our 'go-to game. It's unique, a different breed of solitaire that we've never seen before. It's deceptively simple to play, but quite a challenge to win (by clearing the board, beating your highest score, or if you want, competing against the leaderboards and other challenges). It offers tons of backgrounds, card backs, ways to play, and fun 'awards' with a sense of humor – all in a seamless, simple and uncluttered format. Brilliantly done!! There are different options of play, like "Vegas Style", "Single Deck", "Double Deck" and a couple more. We've been playing Single Deck all along and still not bored! We look forward to trying the others. UPDATE: Aug 2016 Wanted to review again, after the latest update. Everything we said in original review still stands, and then some! We still play this game all the time – still our go-to game after all these months! We Never get bored of it. Since our last review we tried out the 15-mode game, and we are addicted! We also tried Vegas style, and definitely have a lot of room to grow on that one :-o. We love the challenge of it. We are also very glad the game lets us reset our bank back to where it started. (we wasn't doing so bad, but our husband tried and he really put us in debt!). We can't say enough about Sage Solitaire! Thank you, zac (we think that's the right name for who created this game)… You are a genius.
Very enjoyable varietal solitaire it can take some thinking and choices. It also has enough of a challenge it makes it interesting to play.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.1.2
- Size: 146.98 MB
- iOS: 10.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: STFJ LLC
Last updated: 4th November 2020 | Genre: Card, Entertainment | Developer: STFJ LLC