Sorcery School turns solitaire streaks into monster-fighting magic

• Solitaire-powered battles
• Over 170 spells
• Ad-free offline play

I like solitaire. It asks for little beyond a deck, a few minutes and the patience to accept that the cards have personally decided against you. Sorcery School turns that into spellcasting battles against monsters.

Available on iOS and Android, Sorcery School is a free-to-play, ad-free card-adventure RPG that also works offline. You arrive at the Owl School of Magic as a new student and discover it has been overrun by monsters. The invasion threatens the wider magical world.

Battles use familiar solitaire sequences, with longer streaks helping you cast spells against whatever is standing nearby. Spell cards let you attack enemies and defend your wizard. They can also trigger combinations, while different magical styles carry their own strengths. Owl, Snake, Water, Fire and Ice magic are among those available as the journey moves beyond the school.

Headmaster Hawthorne, Professor Silvertongue and fairy companion Ivy guide you through several magical realms towards the Master of Darkness. No prizes for guessing what he has planned.

It is not short on numbers. There are more than 200 monsters, 170 spells and 200 quests before you get to equipment upgrades, artifacts and wizard customisation. Trading Cards, Badges and Rings of Eternity are in there too, because apparently the school has a very busy extracurricular programme.

I am sold on the solitaire part. Watching a neat sequence turn into a spell gives every card a job beyond clearing the table, and that alone makes me curious. Sorcery School can also be played offline and does not run adverts, so nothing breaks the rhythm once a good streak begins.

Five minutes of solitaire has a habit of becoming forty. The monsters can wait.

For more decks that may decide your afternoon has gone too well, our list of the best card battlers on iOS has many other ways to tempt fate.