Canasta. Wiki

I haven’t played canasta since I was in high school... so I forgot all about it. Then when I received my IPad, I fell in love with it all over again. I have tried many canasta games available in the app’s, but wasn’t to thrilled about them until I found this one. I love the background and card back varieties that are available to me. The most astonishing thing is I love the way they represent their canasta game. The asking "can I go out?". The placement of your cards. The order of the cards is automatic. If you are a beginner it even helps you to learn better. Need I say more.... For me this is the best one. All I can say is try it for yourself... it depends on what your looking for! I’m keeping this one!

The game is fun if you want to little something to do to kill time. The main problem with the game is the partner you play with and the people you play against. They’re all computers and they don’t have half a brain as to how they’re playing that game. If they had at least a smart partner for you that would make it better but none of them play according to the way a normal person would play the game. They throw cards when they shouldn’t they throw away wild cards which are ridiculous it’s just makes you want to throw your phone but for the most part it’s a fun way to spend a few minutes.

I do enjoy this app, even if the players are slightly lacking. For example, when my partner uses a wild to add that 7th card to canasta then immediately adds an 8th card, being the actual needed card. Way to waste a wild that could've been used to canasta another pile.. Or picking up the deck for 5 points when we are about to go out, adding 20-30 extra points at least to their hand, thus losing us points. All the players seem to love giving the opponents cards that bring them to 6 and near a canasta. Or freezing the pile when everyone is about to go out. Could have used that for another canasta or to go out yourself. Sigh... fun game but frustrating at times. Stupidity makes for less of an enjoyable game. HOWEVER, this one is hell of a lot better than the canasta solo app. That one is a complete and utter mess that makes you want to chuck your device across the room.

I love canasta and have played it for 30-40 years. I still play it now, on this app, at least a few times a week. It’s a great app with only one fault: periodically your computer “partner” chooses an oddball strategy of ridding itself of every playable card in their hand, going out as soon as they can instead of racking up points to 500 to win. And no wild cards are held to complete canastas later. This is a loss of natural canastas and points. For instance, if they have three 7’s in their hand, they’ll put down three 7’s and a wild card. Then a few rounds later are unable to finish that canasta as a natural (all 7’s and worth 200 more points) because they used a wild card unnecessarily. This has changed my playing considerably and isn’t as much fun. However, even with that crazy algorithm, I still enjoy playing.

Great game! Rules are almost the same as the game I played growing up. My biggest complaint is the layout of the board. Instead of having the score bars stacked on top of each other, making it so you can’t tell if the opponent’s 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, and maybe 10s are “canasta’d,” move the red and green bars next to each other so they go across the top of the screen. Also, when either pair gets a natural canasta, make the last card shown one of the red cards in the deck. As it is now, the score ticks at the top of each card tell you if it’s natural or mixed, and with the Aces, it’s impossible to tell if it’s a natural or mixed because Aces and 2s are all 20 points. It’s difficult to read sometimes with the current format. Other than that, fantastic game.

Can’t play since iOS iPad update. Can’t play on M1 either. Best canasta game. Love ability to choose two cards. One bug you have missed though, which can be annoying. I see no clue as to why it happens so can’t help you there. Many times at the last hand of the game, the game will suddenly end without letting me play my last cards. It doesn’t play them for me and when I’m holding the ability to meld on my last turn, this is very annoying. Also something that annoys me but don’t know if fixable, my partner focuses on making more matches than on playing the 7 th card, seemingly. And at the end of the game I can’t see what cards my partner was holding as it is overshadowed by the game stating it’s over, etc.

This game just seems off. I’ve manually counted the cards in the opponents hand and the game doesn’t count correctly at all. 2-tens are 20 points, 2-nines are 20 points, 1-queen is 10 points, 1-jack is 10 points, 1-eight is 10 points, and 1- five is 5 points. That’s 75 points! Yet the score board counts it as -65 points. And when it’s the other way around, I get an extra -10 penalty. Your teammate is constantly throwing out cards that can be used to go out when it can be used for more points, I’ve played 50 games so far and won 100% of the time. It just seems a bit too easy to win without paying money to buy the medium and hard modes. Another point I have is when you are able to pick up out of the discard pile. It says you need 2 cards or more of the same rank. But same rank is considered by what points the cards are. 3-7 is 5 points, 8-K is 10 points and A is 20 points. Good. But when you have 2 Jacks and your partner has put down Jacks already and you have a King and a Queen, only 70% of the time can you pick up the card from the discard pile. Extremely frustrating when the discard pile has more than 10 cards in it too. This game can be so much better.

This game is fine when I’m waiting somewhere and want something to do. BUT, there are some extremely irritating things that happen over and over. If I have laid down say, 5 Queens and my partner lays down a Queen, then a wild and then another Queen all in one hand. They dump wilds and if they had just played the two Queens first it would be a 500 meld vs the 300 they just made by playing the wild before the two natural cards! I hate that! The next one is if the partner starts getting low on hand cards and they have a card that would make a 500 or even a 300 meld- they HOLD the cards. So irritating. Next, your partner picks up EVERY pile, even if would make sense to leave it. Last, but not really, just the only other one I will mention: your partner, on a locked pick up pile (two has been played) will start discarding cards that would make a meld vs other cards in their hand. Literally, the deck is locked, you have 6 Kings down and with 7 cards in your partners hand they will discard the King!!! One other thing- I should be able to see my partners left over hand when the play is over but it’s mostly covered up by the running points. It should be placed somewhere else.

I really enjoy this app. I find it relaxing for the most part. I grew up in a house full of people who played canasta. I now know very few people who know the game or want to take the time to learn it. My only complaint is that I wish the technology team would come up with some programming to make the computer partner smarter. For example, you need 7 cards for a canasta. A clean canasta without a single wild card is worth 500 points. A dirty canasta with 1 or more wild cards is worth only 100 points. If I have one book of six that has a wild card in it, and one book of six that has no wild cards in it, the computer should be smart enough to choose which one to make a canasta when it plays a wild card as the 7th card. So why wouldn’t the computer play it’s wild card on the book already containing wild cards rather than “dirtying” up a clean book that has no wild cards — which means a chance at 500 points just went out the window.

Your partner works against you by discarding the last card to complete a 6 card meld thus making a completed canasta. Later your partner will add a 8 and 9 th card to a completed canasta even picking up the deck to do it. The next drawn card may have been more valuable. Also your partner will feed cards to the next player so the computer can pick up the deck. Sometimes you get no wild cards at all which makes it impossible to make the higher melds. Several times, the computer goes out and the player has never mended at all. With the first play, the computer lays down these really great melds sometimes even a completed canasta. It is really hard to win. Apparently the computer can get sets of cards with the same pip value but the player gets only 1 or 2. Hopefully the next version will make some attempt to correct these defects and this game really great.

I like the game and agree with the idiot partner comments, but my biggest complaint is the screen layout. Just today (there must have been another update last night) the screen is now even more cramped to the point where you can't really see the discard pile card denominations. The cards seem larger and my speed preferences have been reset. The scoring bars at the top should be side by side. As they are now, it is difficult or impossible to see the opponents cards when deciding which card to discard. It makes a difference if you discard a card that gives them a natural Canasta or a Canasta that has a wild card. I hope the idiot partners and cramped screen are not a ploy to get you to buy the full version. I won't. I wanted to include a picture to show the problems but don't think I can.

I love this game and play at least one game every day. But since I responded to an update request - although it wasn’t really a ‘request’ as I couldn’t continue to play without responding! Now I’ve lost my 8 yr history status on this game! And the ‘update’ is not as user friendly! There were many ‘glitches’ with the original game which were very frustrating and many players commented on them already but it was fun to play - not so now and all my info is gone! Bummed! Also, I can no longer change how high a final score I would like to play to. And can’t request a more difficult level of play without ‘purchasing’ points!!! What’s up with that? Very disappointed in this so called update. May have to look into something else!

I have been playing canasta for 45 years and never encountered anything as pitiful as this. Whoever developed this version is pathetically overestimating his ability....perhaps he should be occupied being a politician because he is not any good at this. The player to my right Discards nothing but black threes and 2’s to freeze the pile. The player to my left is unconscious and never makes an intelligent move. Both members of the opposing team very frequently lay down complete canasta on their fist play—-usually all aces. It is so predictable, so boring, so annoying and repeated soooooo frequently. Get real ! This game rates about one and a half. The developer has revamped this game a little....now the cards you draw or discard do a fancy flip before landing. I guess that bit of cleverness is supposed to make everything wonderful in this lousy attempt to seem like a real canasta game. The moron on my right starts just about every game spewing black threes—— Oh, excuse me, that’s after he lays down a complete canasta of aces on his very first turn. Get real, that just doesn’t happen in a real canasta game. Now this fool developer has de died you can pay him if you want the players to act realistically. What a bummer ! It deserves 1/2 of 1 star. I noticed only nice reviews get shown, not anything critical of this mess!

I was having trouble with the game in that my partner computer seemed to be weird and was playing against me rather than with me so I unloaded the game and reloaded it and at first the partner computer was doing well. Then it changed. My opponents were getting 7 or more cards dealt to them in the initial deal so that they were playing complete sets of 2 or 3 numbers off of the initial deal and two games in a row my partner only laid down cards that the opponent team could use with 2 and 3 black threes in its hand. I can play with a dumb computer partner but when the computer partner is playing every card it shouldn't be I get really upset. If this is supposed to make me want to spend money on the upgraded version it's not working. Before I found that if I aborted the game and restarted that I could sometimes get a computer partner that wasn't so dumb but when the game keeps reverting to a partner that plays against me I just want to delete the app. Previous review pasted here I was really enjoying this game and was playing it all the time then the programming seemed to go haywire and my computer partner started acting will it was partners with the right opposing partner. It was throwing only cards that would play on the opposing team and the opposing partner on my left was only throwing cards that I needed. Went from a 95% win rate to 45% wins. Weird.