Octopus Pyramid Solitaire is a tile-matching game that combines ever-popular Mahjong tile patterns and gameplay with cards and rules from Pyramid Solitaire. A player's primary goal is to remove tiles from a blue, undersea-themed environment through each level of the game. The name of the game comes from the surprise appearances of a friendly octopus who smiles and sometimes wears headphones or holds a gold trophy or a laptop in its tentacles.
The tiles look like standard playing cards from Solitaire. The player must follow Pyramid rules, which means that they must remove a pair of cards from any suit that has a value of 13 when the cards are added together. For example, they might remove a Jack (J) and 2 since the J equals 11 normally when the cards are ordered in an ascending fashion. Other common pairing include 8+5, 9+4, 10+3 and Queen (Q/12)+Ace (A/1). The player can remove a King (K) without pairing it with any other card because it has a value of 13 on its own.
Octopus Pyramid Solitaire provides tools for removing tiles faster. It features Joker cards that the player can use to replace any card in a pair. For example, they might use a Joker to represent an 8 to remove a 5 from the field. They receive a new Joker every time they remove five consecutive pairs of tiles without disruption. They can pull cards from a draw pile below the playfield as well. They also receive boosters, such as a Zap card that removes cards of any amount in a line across the field, a bullseye card that removes one tile the player targets and a fish and bubbles card that removes a card at random. If the player wins, they receive coins and up to three stars per level.
