Down below the document window where I’m typing this review, nestled on the toolbar of my iMac, sits the flame shaped icon for Freeverse’s Burning Monkey Solitaire 4 - it is sitting there and mocking me.

I’m not sure how the game got under my skin, but done so it has. Sure, on the face of it the game may seem to be a harmless solitaire game filled with amusing monkey-themed animations, but I’ve seen cute solitaire games before. Unless those monkeys are going to start flinging things at me through my computer screen I’m pretty sure I can handle them.

So what is it about this game that has me giving the icon the evil eye?

Maybe it is the fact that, at least for a relative solitaire novice like myself, the darn thing is too difficult. That’s right, here and now I’m admitting that this game repeatedly kicks my ass. Out of the dozens of games that I’ve played - I’ve won one.

The way my heart jumped in my chest and the way I found myself strutting around my office while taunting the monkeys on my computer screen repeatedly with shouts of “Who’s the head primate NOW, ya furry lil’ punks?” you’d have thought I’d won the Darwin “Playing Cards” Super-bowl.

So, yeah, the game is addicting if a bit on the difficult side.

No matter which of the various variations (say THAT three times fast!) of solitaire that I chose from the thirty-one the game offers, I would lose. Adding insult to injury, when I’d click the option to select a “winnable game” from the Internet, I’d lose that, too.

Thank goodness I could at least relieve the frustration that my solitaire ineptitude brought about, by clicking on any of the monkey characters scattered about on the screen. Sure, after a while you run through all of the animations and cute sayings that are available, but some of them are worth hearing again and again and again.