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Hoyle's Official Book of Games | |
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Genre(s) | Playing cards, board games, puzzles |
Developer(s) | Sierra Entertainment (1996–2003) Encore, Inc. (2005–2016) |
Publisher(s) | Sierra Entertainment (1996–2003) Encore, Inc. (2005–2016) |
Platform(s) | Windows, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, Dreamcast, Game Boy Color |
First release | Hoyle's Official Book of Games: Volume 1 1989 |
Latest release | Hoyle Official Casino Games Collection 2016 |
Hoyle's Official Book of Games (later Hoyle Classic, Hoyle Card Games, or the Hoyle Series) is a series of computer games released from 1989 to 2016 that was initially developed and published by Sierra On-Line. The series focuses primarily on playing cards, but has also included board games, puzzles, dice, and dominos. It spawned a spin-off series dedicated to casino table games and machines called Hoyle Casino in 1996.
The series is named after 18th century playing card expert Edmond Hoyle, but some titles in the series also used trademarks and designs from the Hoyle brand of playing cards under license from Brown & Bigelow. Early titles had a volume numbering and included humorous computer opponents drawn from other Sierra video game series. Later titles saw yearly releases or specialized in particular types of games.
Encore Software took over publishing the series from 2005 to 2016, leading to the development of their own Encore Classic Games series in 2020.