The new app is a World War Two themed solitaire game, called Churchill Solitaire.
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Now available on a mobile device near you: an app designed by Winston Churchill and Donald Rumsfeld.
The game is free, but there are in-app purchases to be had. The game opens with archival footage of the war with one of the British Prime Minister’s famous speeches playing in the background. Normally a meditative exercise in time-wasting, Churchill’s variation on Solitaire is already trickier than normal, and it’s made even more stressful by a soundtrack that sounds like a cross between a military march and a battle theme from a Japanese RPG.
In every game of solitaire there are many known knowns, but it is a version that perhaps stresses the known unknowns that a certain former secretary of defense is turning into a videogame.
Thirty years on, de Staercke, who was now Belgium’s most senior diplomat, met Donald Rumsfeld – then the USA ambassador at North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Brussels – and passed on the favour. Instead, Rumsfeld’s former aide Keith Urbahn built the app with the help of Snapdragon Studios while Rumsfeld shot off a constant flood of little memos, much as he’d done in office when the two worked together.
The objective is to create eight piles of cards in the top right Victory Rows.
It’s tempting to think of Rumsfeld as a new-wave indie developer, coding frantically in his bedroom, but the programming work was done by others. “They just get new glitches”, Rumsfeld said in one of his notes, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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The Journal’s in-depth piece on the creation of “Churchill Solitaire” is full of incredible anecdotes from Rumsfeld’s brush with game design: his frustration with bug testing, his outrage when a server wipe erases his progress, his disdain for the cowardly undo button. Even the payment model isn’t eager to blitz your wallet, as it only unlocks a randomized mode for $4.99 and extra deal packs for $0.99 each, as well as extra hints and undos for up to $5.99 for a pack of 100.
