I Played Solitaire Grand Harvest and Failed

College application season was about to get started, and I wanted to make my first amount of dollars. So, I began looking for jobs to supplement my day and earn a couple of dollars to get started. And I found a few options to discover. After asking my parents and weeks of decision-making, I settled on doing surveys for money. The job said that I go sign up for a website called SurveyClub. So, I signed up and hopped onto a few websites that SurveyClub offered. One of those websites was a website called InboxDollars. The standout feature of InboxDollars is that you can play games and earn money. That feature got me on.

Inside InboxDollars, there were plenty of services to earn money here. Although the website has surveys, the website has benefits like going to Walmart and buying enough stuff to make something like $5 and playing games. InboxDollars offered some games that were like the casino. I’m not sure if you went to the casino, but the games shown were unfair. Games like poker, jackpot, and Solitaire were heavy on the random chance that you cannot predict how to win them. In InboxDollars, most apps are free, but you must reach a far-reaching goal in a couple of days. I got in InboxDollars and chose Solitaire: Grand Harvest. InboxDollars offered this challenge: I must finish crop 15 in 14 days.

Like most mobile games, this game gave me a tutorial and a set of rules right after installation. In the game, my goal was to empty all the cards in a specific order. In Solitaire, it went in this order: King, Queen, Jack, 10 to 1, an Ace and repeat. However, Grand Harvest doesn’t care about the colour order of the cards. So, even when you have a bunch of 2s in the play area and an Ace. If one of the 2s contained an Ace, you could just pick a 2, an Ace, and then another 2. The game encouraged it, and you can implement this strategy to earn more cards or even some coins.

The more you switch between cards often and experiment with this kind of strategy, the more cards and coins you can get. But if you have a card on the playing field without a match on your deck, you must flip through the stack until you find it. For example, you have a spade 6 on your deck, and the playing field has a diamond queen. You must tap the patio one card at a time. You must be careful with every decision because the deck was like the number of moves in Candy Crush. If you emptied the deck before finishing the level, it’s game over. You can redo them, but you must pay a considerable amount, which increases every time. In Solitaire, the deck always brought random cards that may or may not match the card on the playing field. Sometimes, the deck doesn’t contain the card you’re looking for. So, you must cross your fingers and hope for the best for your mind and your money (the coins).

This game has a map that contains a series of crops. You must complete a certain number of levels to finish a particular crop and enter it with the total number of stars specifically for that crop. Once you did, you received a treasure which came in different colours. Each colour determines the number of prizes you can pick from a phase of rows of crops. The wooden crate treasure rewarded one prize (usually won’t happen unless you slacked off with only one star every level up to finishing the crop). The silver crate treasure was awarded two prizes. The gold crate was rewarded with four awards. Lastly, the diamond crate was rewarded with eight prizes. You can watch a free ad for a free bonus if you want. The prizes ranged from extremely small and pointless, like getting 1000 coins, to great, like receiving 50000 coins or a pack of powerups and cards.

The first level, it told me everything I needed to finish the first level, which I crushed on the first try (as it should be). I received a dog jumping around the win results screen and three stars. I tapped the next level, bringing me to level 2, which brought me the same result. As a matter of fact, I got this streak for around 8 levels until reaching level 11, which broke the line. My first attempt at level 11 was unlucky. I didn’t have a card that matched heart 4 with a heart 10; heart 10 was one of the last cards on the playing field. So, I must shell out 2000 from my 40000 coins to play this level. My second attempt was decent, but it was my third level not to get all 3 stars, and I have a deficit of 2000 coins. This game was tough to get a profit. The first few levels cost 2000 coins, breaking even or making a small profit. I really had to play more and more levels to make this happen.

After level 11, I finished the first crop, which was level 12. It allowed me to go through this phase where I could pick a specific number of crops based on the number of stars earned before finishing all the required levels for that crop. I can only harvest 2 crops in this case because I didn’t get 3 stars on all 12 levels. I ended up receiving a powerup and some 5000 coins. They weren’t fantastic, but for playing the first time, that was fine.

By this point, I became tired of playing Solitaire for the day because I had played it for an hour. However, my mom wanted to try this out because it could earn money. Unfortunately, my mom was very busy. She only had a few minutes at work to do surveys for extra income. I made an InboxDollars account for my mom. She picked another game, which was a Bingo game. However, my mom couldn’t get her phone to scan the QR code and download the game. I didn’t know why that happened. So, I tried a couple of times throughout Saturday, and it didn’t seem to work very well. After that, I went on as usual with a couple of YouTube shorts and finished my English summer assignment.

It was Sunday, and one of my goals was to finish another crop of Solitaire: Grand Harvest. I spent making my sweet hand-cooked breakfast, which was a taco with eggs, bacon, and cheese, along with an iced coffee. After I finished my breakfast and did the vacuuming, I went to play Solitaire. Level 13 was not significant to pick up for the first time because I lost on the first try. This time, I received a powerup where I can play free levels, and I have 5 of them. This powerup can be used only once, even when you lose it. So, with 5 free level powerups, you can potentially win all 5 levels for free. I never reached that goal because every level has a random pattern. Some designs were incredible, like one level shaped like a heart. Still, these can be notoriously difficult to finish due to their limited options. But other than that, not much has changed for this new crop. This crop was relatively easy to complete, and I finished it with a silver crate.

This crop introduced me to a series of game modes and powerups. Let’s start with the game modes first. The game has three ways, but I didn’t remember them all. There was the standard mode, the deluxe mode, and the extreme mode. The second crop brought me to the exclusive mode, and the game forced me to play it, even though this mode costs 2x the money with 2x the rewards. But after that one level, I never returned to the deluxe mode unless it was part of a challenge on a section mentioned later. Again, these levels cost more money, but every reward can only break even or make a small profit.

The next series of crops didn’t bring me anything too interesting other than to spike a new powerup here and there. By reaching level 100, I acquired all the powerups available. This time, the game bombed me with all kinds of advertisements.

The first ad of the game was daily challenges. The premise was simple. You have three sets of challenges to do for the day, and they earn a couple of points. The challenges ranged from stacking 20 red cards to attempting to make 300 gems in a day, and the rewards were proportional to the perceived difficulty of those challenges. These points were called stars and were used to fill up the amount required for a Fortnite battle pass-style path. You get the package if you fill up all the stars for a particular box. You started on the first level, which only required a small number of stars. So the reward from the first level chest was pretty small, and you can expect what the prize will be because it’s right above the pathway. As you progress your day, the boxes increase in level and difficulty in how many stars are required. There were 10 chests to open and a mystery box with random awards. You can also pay for a golden pass where you can get golden chests, essentially bringing the rewards from that and the free chest.

The second ad was the numerous side quests. I won’t go through them all because later reasons, but here are the ones I’ve remembered. One notable one was a journey, where you spent gems on building structures and earning more coins. Gems are made separately and only happen on one card in a game. The other one was tournaments where you must play more games to earn a certain number of trophies to earn more coins. Finally, there were puzzles where you received a pack after finishing a level, like making gems. You can complete the puzzles and earn a lot of coins. That were all the notable ads from the game, and let’s return to the journey.

Sunday became Monday, and I became “the addicted I”. I played the game almost nonstop throughout the 14 days required and went through some serious trouble. The randomness of the game and the incredibly random chance of winning forced my already addicted solitaire mindset into playing more and more fun, to earn more money and coins to get more. Not only I went through playing more hours than making YouTube videos and writing this blog, but I also sacrificed my dignity in making the game. I didn’t notice it at first because the symptoms were relatively minor. It didn’t affect my work schedule. I still had time to do homework (I have trouble actually doing homework), make YouTube videos, work on making music, and other things. In fact, I thought that Monday was a productive day due to the number of tasks completed from my written task list.

The rest of the week went on like this, but the addiction symptoms progressively increased. Finally, one day, I thought it was on a Friday, and I fell into depression. I was on level 89, and I couldn’t finish the level, no matter how I tried. The level was challenging to spend, and I was hesitant to use any powerups. Not only could In’t finish the level, but it cost 2,000 of my 40,000 initial coins. My coins progressively went down, and I began thinking of not finishing the game because of the low amount of cash.

Saturday was completely different. I finished level 89, and I managed to maintain a winning streak and earned the gold crate, which allowed me to open 4 things from the crop I forgot. One of those things included about 50,000 coins, and I was overjoyed. It turned things around in this game, and I was well confident that I could finish this game in time. So, I played more and more levels with the new prizes and powerups, and it was a very fulfilling day. I finished level 100.

The following week went very similar to the first week, and there wasn’t anything unique about it. However, two days were vital to me: Wednesday and Thursday.

Wednesday was the most degrading day for the game because I felt rushed. I was at level 140-ish, and I was on crop 10. I must finish crop 14 in 14 days, and I felt super behind. So, when I came home, I played this game and did homework. After completing all my homework, I poured hours and hours into playing this game. Finally, I finished many levels and reached crop 13, which was very exciting. However, it took a toll on my mental self. I was not doing anything to my arms and legs for around 3 hours straight. I also slept poorly at that time. That was Wednesday.

Thursday was a wildcard. Now, I have an easier time because I just have to finish crops 13-14. However, when I looked at the challenge, it was supposed to finish crop 15 in 14 days. So, I must grind to halt crop 15, which was at the 140s. Luckily, I have 100,000 coins, so the financial issue wasn’t a problem. Like yesterday, I devoted around 3 hours straight to finishing crop 15. Luckily, I managed to reach it, and I was overjoyed. I couldn’t believe that I could finish this crop. I whispered to myself,

“I did it. I did it. I did it.”

Although the game must send my information to InboxDollars to confirm the challenge completion, I felt pretty happy. I thought that now I could go back to becoming healthy again. That was the end of Thursday.

Unfortunately, I haven’t received the award, and I don’t think I ever will. I felt I finished it a little too late, and the game didn’t send my information. I couldn’t tell that the game actually sent me information. So, InboxDollars never knew what I did to get the $30. So, I deleted the game and never played it again. I cannot do this challenge again as it requires a new user to play the game to earn that money.

But like every challenge in the world, you should always TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.