DChoc Cafe Solitaire 12 Pack (we'll just call it "Cafe Solitaire" from now on) is a collection of twelve forms of patience, i.e. card games you can play on your own.
Here's the full list:
Beleaguered Castle
Calculation
Flower Garden
Freecell
Golf
Klondike
Poker (not real poker of course but a single-player variant)
Pyramid
Scorpion
Seven Sisters
Spiderette
Yukon (and rumour has it there's a thirteenth game too, but we didn't manage to confirm that)
Each
game type has a very well-written animated tutorial the first time you play it, and you can view the tutorial again from that game's info menu. Even if you're totally new to the rules you should be able to learn them quite easily from these guides.
The difficulty and style of each game varies tremendously, with some (such as single-player Poker) going by quite quickly while others (such as Freecell) needing quite a bit of thinking. One particular game, Beleaguered Castle, seemed absolutely impossible to this reviewer, as it always seemed to end after just one or two turns, and requires much planning to make progress. There is an undo option which is very useful in the more difficult games, but you will lose your "perfect game" bonus points if you use it.
Cafe Solitaire's interface is excellent, the game automatically blocks off any invalid moves so you usually only need a click or two to put cards in the correct place. Everything can be controlled from the direction pad, and it's equally playable in both horizontal and vertical modes.
As well as the games themselves there's an online community of "cafes", where you can interact with other DChoc players (though the interaction is very limited, you can't chat to people for example). These cafes provide an interesting incentive to play the game, as every time you score points in a game these are added to your cafe's total, and in effect they act as gaming clans. When a cafe earns enough points from all of its members it is upgraded, and becomes a more elaborate establishment. You can join other people's cafes, or found your own and invite friends to join you.
Individual players can also earn upgrades in the form of clothing to customise their cafe avatar. When a cafe gets upgraded more clothes and other individual bonuses become available, which adds even more incentive for players to team up in a shared cafe.
Graphics & SoundWell, you can't expect anything spectacular from card games but the graphics are perfectly functional. All the cards are clearly labelled, the animation is smooth, the interface is intuitive. There are some nice flourishes such as steaming mugs of coffee on the tabletop background.
The more interesting side of the graphics is to be found in the cafes, which use isometric 3D to provide a slightly Habbo-style environment. There are lots of little details in the background, and overall it looks very pretty. One odd thing though, the cafes seem a bit too dark, as if they used a palette that was too dim (you can perhaps see this in the screenshots above). Is this a lighting effect that has gone wrong?
Sound is fairly minimal, with the odd sound effect here and there during major game events. There are two ambient music tracks which play in the background of the cafe, which are okay but they repeat a bit too often. Sound can be altered on a master volume, and the game automatically asks you if you want sound at startup (which is great for trains, lectures, meetings etc).
TV & Keyboard TestSome N-Gage-compatible phones (e.g. Nokia N79, N82, N85, N95, N95 8GB, N96) have a TV Out feature which lets you connect the phone to a television set. This can be used for playing N-Gage games, or for any other phone function.
All N-Gage phones are compatible with Bluetooth keyboards that use the HID Bluetooth standard, and such a keyboard can be used to control games or any other phone function.Cafe Solitaire works splendidly on a television set, the cards look crisp and clean and the cafe looks nice too. This is a perfect game for playing on a TV set.
Our Bluetooth keyboard controlled Cafe Solitaire without any problems.
N-Gage Arena / DChoc Cafes
This is where it gets complicated: Cafe Solitaire's cafe system is totally separate from the N-Gage Arena. The cafes use different usernames, different passwords, different league tables, different reward systems, probably different servers too, with absolutely no connection to Arena. The cafes are also multiplatform, so the same cafe universe is shared with many types of devices including Java phones. On the one hand this is a blessing because it means there is the maximum number of people online to interact with, but it calls into question the whole point of this game being on N-Gage, and it's very confusing to have two separate online gaming systems used in the same game.
The cafes themselves are an excellent idea, especially the way they effectively work as clans but with a more casual image, and they should do well in attracting casual gamers to online gameplay. Nokia ought to implement their own version of this concept for N-Gage, it would help enhance the platform's appeal to the Facebook/Habbo generation. One caveat though: the cafes are not at their best in Cafe Solitaire, as by definition all the games are one-player so you can't play online against other cafe members.
Cafe Solitaire has N-Gage Arena rankings based on your total score in all the game types, which took a while to start working but did eventually show our league table position in the N-Gage app. Weirdly though, Cafe Solitaire's own in-game Arena Rankings option just shows your score without saying where it ranks.
There's the usual Arena point pickups system too, but most of the pickups are laughably easy to obtain, and only a minority of points require any hard work. Simply playing each game type once earns 240 points for example.
OverallWith the exception of the actual cafes, Cafe Solitaire doesn't provide much radically new, but it does deliver on what it promises. The twelve patience games are easy to understand thanks to their excellent built-in tutorials, and there's enough variety in the gameplay styles to satisfy deep strategists or those who just want to fill in a minute or two
The cafe system adds to the game by giving people a reason for playing and a reason for interacting with other players: the more people play in a cafe, the more unlockable bonuses become available for all its members.
The one big shame about Cafe Solitaire is its lack of integration with the N-Gage Arena system. It undermines the whole case for the N-Gage platform if its games use a totally separate community system. The cafes are a really good idea, why aren't they accessible through N-Gage Arena accounts? Why bother having Arena if N-Gage games can opt out of it and use their own online system?
In summary, if you enjoy traditional card games Cafe Solitaire should keep you happy as it's very well done. There are short and long games, easy and hard games, something for everyone and every mood. The 7 euro price tag is also pretty good, and the online cafes with their avatars and unlockable features add an extra dimension. Overall, a nice slice of classic entertainment.
-Thanks to Allaboutngage for Review.
