Hoyle's Official Book of Games

Hoyle's Official Book of Games (or Hoyle Series or Hoyle Games) is a series of games produced by Sierra Entertainment. Volume 1, released in 1989, featured multi-player card games. Volume 2, released in 1990, featured 28 varieties of Solitaire. Volume 3, released in 1991, featured board games. Volume 4, was a remake of Volume 1, with two additional games. Sierra continued to publish more games to the series up to its demise. Encore Software has continued publishing entries to the series since then. According to Hoyle 1 it was essentially a spiritual sequel to Sierra's Hi-Res Cribbage (1981).

Volume 1

Hoyle's Official Book of Games: Volume 1
Developer(s) Sierra Entertainment
Publisher(s) Sierra Entertainment
Platform(s) MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST
Release
Genre(s) Card game
Mode(s) Single player

Hoyle's Official Book of Games: Volume 1 was the first card game simulator series released by Sierra entertainment. The series owes its name to Edmond Hoyle.

The Hoyle trademark and facecards were used under license from Brown & Bigelow Inc.

Games

The games included are: Crazy Eights, Old Maid, Hearts, Gin Rummy, Cribbage and Klondike.

Characters

For all games, except the last, the player could choose opponents, each having their own AI and manner of playing. These opponents included historical figures, members of Sierra staff, and characters from Sierra games.

When the player took too long making a decision, the characters started having dialogues, each according to his background. For example, Leisure Suit Larry begins to comment about women, while Roger Wilco wants to escape the game to save the universe again.

Development

The original concept was submitted to Ken Williams (CEO/Founder of Sierra On-line) by Warren Schwader. Once the project was greenlit, Warren acted as the Lead Programmer as well as the Game Designer. The games were programmed using Sierra On-line's proprietary scripting language: Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI). SCI was originally created to aid in the development of Sierra's core line of adventure games. Working with SCI to implement card games and to code artificial intelligence for the characters proved challenging.

Warren Schwader continued as the Lead Programmer and Game Designer for the next two games in the series.

Reception

The game sold over 250,000 copies by 1990.[1]

Volume 2

Hoyle's Official Book of Games: Volume 2
Developer(s) Sierra Entertainment
Publisher(s) Sierra Entertainment
Platform(s) MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST
Release
Genre(s) Card game
Mode(s) Single player

Hoyle's Official Book of Games: Volume 2 is the next volume in the Hoyle card games simulator series by Sierra Entertainment. This time, the pack offered 28 games, as opposed to the first volume's six. The other main difference between the two was that all the games were solitaire variants, so there was no option for choosing opponents. Subsequently, the game did not feature any Sierra characters for co-players.

The 28 solitaire games offered are: Calculation, Strategy, Eagle Wing, Beleaguered Castle, Klondike, Canfield, Golf, Flower Garden, Scorpion, Spiderette, La Belle Lucie, Fortress, Baker's Dozen, Bristol, Eight Off, Shamrocks, Yukon, Eliminator, Slide, Bowling, Nestor, Aces Up, Gaps, Penguin, Pyramid, Triplets, Poker Square

Volume 3

Hoyle's Official Book of Games: Volume 3
Developer(s) Sierra Entertainment
Publisher(s) Sierra Entertainment
Platform(s) MS-DOS, Amiga
Release
Genre(s) Board game
Mode(s) Single player

Hoyle's Official Book of Games: Volume 3 was the third volume in Sierra On-Line's series of computer games based on the officially licensed Hoyle rules and trademark. Unlike the two previous games, this one was made with Sierra's new improved VGA engine, and focused on board games, where the previous entries in the series had featured card games.

Games featured were Backgammon, Checkers, Dominoes, Yacht (a takeoff on Yahtzee), Pachisi, and Snakes and Ladders.

Characters

Like the first volume, and unlike the second volume, this game offers Sierra characters as opponents in the various games.

They do not interact with each other or have conversations as in the first game, but several of them have themed comments, catch phrase or accented style comments (though these are uncommon). For example, the Sheriff may refer to himself as the "Great Nottingham", or Baba Yaga who refers to her opponents as 'dearie'. Some characters are more specific than others, and some are more generic. It also depends on the game, a character might have more interesting things to say about plays in one game, but have generic comments to say in another.

Good guys
Evil guys

Hoyle Classic Card Games (Hoyle 4)

Hoyle Classic Card Games (Hoyle 4) was a remake of Volume I, released with VGA support, speech and original soundtrack. There was a set with 'Classic Characters' to play with and one with an increased number of Sierra characters as well. Load screens involve a silly comments made by the Classic characters, in relationship to whatever game was loading. The number of games was increased to eight, with the inclusion of Contract Bridge and Euchre.

There is some digitized speech for each character. Each character has five unique expressions in full speech (ranging from dislike at the plays, happiness, or praise). There are a few additional text based messages in theme for each character for some of the games, but only relate to the gameplay (characters do not have conversations with each other outside of the scope of the game). All the artwork and character sprites look like old fashioned and sepia-toned.

Classic characters:

Sierra characters:

Hoyle Classic Games (Hoyle 5)

The first CD-rom version of the game (1995), has over 30 characters to choose from including 'animated', 'icon', and 'business'.

Characters

Animated
Icon
Business

Other games in the series

By the late 1990s the new versions of each game was published almost yearly.

Collections

Board, Card, Casino
Card, Casino
Includes Hoyle Classic Games 2, Hoyle Slots/Video Poker, Hoyle SOlitaire/Majong, and Hoyle Friday Night Poker.
Includes Hoyle Board Games, Hoyle Card Games, Hoyle Texas Hold'Em, and Hoyle Slots & Video Poker.

Reception

Computer Gaming World stated that interacting with Sierra characters in Volume 1 such as Leisure Suit Larry and Princess Rosella was fun, but annoying for those who preferred cards to humor. It criticized Volume 1 for slow performance and cribbage's deviation from the official Hoyle's rules, and stated that the other games were "really children's games and offer no great excitement".[2]

References

  1. ↑ Sierra News Magazine (Fall 1990), vol. 3 issue 3, page 12.
  2. ↑ Lasky, Michael S. (January 1990). "These Characters Are Real Cards / Sierra's "Hoyle's Book of Games: Volume 1"". Computer Gaming World. p. 48. Retrieved 15 November 2013.
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