At a time when game file sizes are growing ever larger and disk space is astonishingly expensive, I increasingly appreciate the value of a small game. And they don’t come much smaller than TinySol, a solitaire game so diminutive that it can be loaded from a QR code.
TinySol is the creation of vintage computer enthusiasts Classic Bits, and was stumbled upon by YouTuber LGR Blerbs at the VCF Southwest convention in Texas. In what sounds like the beginning of a horror film, Blerbs was randomly handed TinySol at a booth on a 5.25-inch floppy disk.
Despite appearances, TinySol is a new(ish) game, having been in development since 2021. In the dot matrix-style manual that accompanies the hard copy, developer Classic Bits explains “I originally wanted a tiny game to shoehorn into ROM images for GRiD computers and that would leverage the sharp 640×400 AT&T 6300 monochrome video.”
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Weighing in at a paltry 3 kilobytes, TinySol lets players enjoy three-card Klondike Solitaire with simple black & white graphics. The program is so compact that it can fit within a QR code, which can be decoded with a snippet of code written on TinySol’s packaging.
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In the comments to Blerbs’ video, Classic Bits provided some additional information on the game, saying that the game is “intentionally monochrome for max clarity on old displays,” and that the QR code version is actually a “mini low-rez version with limited features”. And while currently the 3-card draw is the only mode available, Classic Bits has added a one-card draw mode for an “upcoming release”.
Fortunately, you don’t need a hard copy or a QR code to check out TinySol yourself. The game is free to download via the Classic Bits website. You can run TinySol in DosBox by dragging and dropping the TinySol executable onto the DosBox application. It’s worth noting that many of the three-card draws the game generates are not actually winnable, so Classic Bits has compiled 640 winnable save files that you can also download if you wish.
