Peg Solitaire Walkthrough
Whilst reading this walkthrough, please remember that Peg Solitaire can be controlled with both the mouse and the keyboard. In the text I shall refer to "clicking" buttons which implies use of the mouse, however you can also activate the buttons using the tab key (or shift and the tab key) to move the focus ring between the buttons and then pressing the space bar to "click" it. As explained later when we get to it, the actual game can be controlled using a combination of the arrow keys and the space bar.
When you start Peg Solitaire, you will see the splash screen:
After a few seconds, the Game Summary screen will appear. The first time you run Peg Solitaire it will appear like this:
There is a single profile called Player 1. The four possible boards are displayed across the top (from left to right: English, European, Extended English, The Guvnor), and beneath them are the best results so far for this player. At the moment, they are shown as tildes (~) to denote that the game hasn't been completed.
You can change the profiles by clicking the Setup button, which will take you to the Set Up screen:
Here you can change the profile name and add extra profiles up to a total of five. Here I have renamed Player 1 to Paul, and added Stuart:
You can adjust the colours used in the game for a particular profile by clicking the Customise button for that Profile. That will take you to the Customise screen:
Click the arrows either side of each label to change:
- Board: there are five board textures to choose from
- Marble: there are first marble textures to choose from
- Hi.Marble: you can change the colour of the Highlighted Marble (the default is brown)
- Hole: you can change the colour of the actual hole
- Sel.Hole: the Selected Hole is the one that you will jump to if you are controlling the game with the keyboard (the default is green)
- Hi.Hole: the Highlighted Holes are the others that it is possible to jump to (the default is red)
When you have finished, click Save to save the changes and you will be taken back to the Setup screen. Click Save of there to be taken back to the Game Summary screen:
Here you can see that the profile name has changed and two arrow buttons have appeared. You use these buttons to cycle through the available profiles.
The English board game is highlighted (denoted by the board behind the marble layout). Click on the Play button to start the game.
The following image shows the Play screen, and has the buttons labelled for clarity:
There are five buttons on the Play screen, these are:
- Escape: clicking this button or pressing the esc key will save the current game and take you back to the game summary screen
- Undo: clicking this button or pressing cmd + Z will undo the last move (jump or marble selection)
- Rotate Anticlockwise: clicking this button or pressing cmd + left arrow will rotate the board anticlockwise
- Mute: clicking this button of pressing the M key will turn off the game sounds, clicking it again will turn them back on. Note: this only affects the game sounds, all other sounds will play as usual
- View: this button will switch the view between the 3D representation and the more 2D view from above. You can switch to these views by pressing the 2 key for the 2D view from above, and the 3 key for the 3D view.
- Rotate Clockwise: clicking the button or pressing cmd + right arrow will rotate the board clockwise
The rules for Peg Solitaire are explained in the How to Play Peg Solitaire page on this site, so I am not going repeat them here. I will focus on how to control the game.
You select a marble by click it with the mouse, or by using the arrow keys to move the highlight to the marble you want and then pressing the space bar. If the marble can be moved then one or more holes will be highlighted, by default one is highlight green and any others red. The green highlight denotes the selected hole that the marble will jump to if the space bar is pressed, you can change the selected hole by using the arrow keys. You can click any of the highlighted holes to make the selected marble jump, or press the space bar to jump to the selected hole. If you have selected the marble in error, then either clicking it again with the mouse, clicking the undo button, or pressing cmd + Z will unselect it. If you have jumped a marble in error, clicking the undo button or pressing cmd + Z will jump it back.
When the game completes, either by you correctly ending with a single marble in the centre hole or simply running out of possible moves, you will be taken back to the game summary screen. If your game result was your best so far, then the statistics will have been updated and the board image will show the positions of the remaining marbles. If you successfully ended on a single marble in the centre hole, the Marbles Left row will show a tick for that board.
You can select which board you wish to play on by clicking the appropriate marbles pattern image. The board background will move to reflect your selection. You can also change the board selection using the left and right arrow keys.
Once you have selected the board, clicking Play will then take you into that game:
If you have interrupted a game by either clicking the escape button, pressing the esc key, or by closing the app then the next time you choose to play that game you will be presented with a screen similar to this:
The Resume button will continue from where you interrupted the game, the New Game will start a new game. The Cancel button will take you back to the Game Summary screen.
You can view the rules from the game by clicking the Rules button on the summary screen:
Clicking the arrow buttons (only the right one is shown on the first page above) will move you through the pages. Click Done when you have finished to take you back to the Game Summary screen.
Well, I've just about come to the end of this walkthrough. I hope you found it useful and you enjoy playing the game.