Written on
A card game for Grandma, made by her granddaughter
Why there is a card game for grandmothers at all, and what one has to get right before she will play it twice.
People search for “a card game for grandma” more often than you would think. Most of what they find is a solitaire app with a video every third deal, coins to buy, and cards the size of a fingernail. I know, because my Grandma had them on her tablet, and I heard about every one of them on the phone.
Caravita started as a replacement for a small card game she used to play on her computer, years ago, until the computer moved on and took the game with it. It grew into eight games, each one she may know from family evenings: Spite and Malice, Clock Patience, Golf, Crazy Eights, Pyramid, FreeCell, Klondike solitaire and a rummy. Each has a new short name in Latin or Italian, with the old name right beside it.
What a card game for a grandmother has to get right is not the rules. It is everything around them. The cards must be big. There must be no clock, because being hurried is the one thing she will not put up with. A wrong tap must be undoable, as often as she likes. Nothing may ever ask her for money, a password, or a rating. And when she opens it tomorrow, the buttons must be exactly where they were today.
That is the whole brief. The rest of this site is how it was done, and the first page deals you a hand of it.