Building a No-Framework Solitaire Portal: What I Learned Shipping 15 Card Games Without React

CardGame Notes — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 04:24:18 +0000

The constraint that shaped everything

When I started building a solitaire portal, I gave myself one rule: if a feature does not need a server, it does not get one. No user sessions, no API layer, no database. Progress and statistics live in localStorage. That single constraint eliminated most of the traditional game-portal stack before I wrote a line of game code.

The result is SolitairePicks — 15 classic card games, statically generated, playable in the browser with no install and no signup wall.

One file per game

Each game (Klondike, Spider, FreeCell, Pyramid, Golf, TriPeaks...) is a self-contained JavaScript file with the same small interface: deal a deck, render a tableau, validate moves, detect a win. No framework lifecycle to fight. When I fixed a Spider-specific edge case last week, the diff touched exactly one file.

The tradeoff is honest: I re-implement drag-and-drop per game instead of reusing a component library. For card games the interaction surface is small enough that this costs less than maintaining a shared abstraction nobody else depends on.

Statistics without a backend

Win-rate tracking runs entirely client-side. Every finished hand appends a row to localStorage; the stats page reads it on load. Cross-session progress persists without a single network request. If a player clears their browser data, they lose their history — acceptable for a free portal, and it keeps the privacy story simple: nothing about gameplay ever leaves the device.

What the classics look like

Klondike — the Windows-era standard, draw-one and draw-three modes
Spider — 1/2/4 suit difficulty tiers with per-tier win-rate tracking
FreeCell, Pyramid, Golf and a dozen more — the "second coffee" tier

What I'd do differently

If I started today I'd still skip React for the game logic — but I'd add a tiny shared module for the drag layer earlier. Rebuilding it six times was the tuition fee for learning where the real commonality lives.