Cafe Spades

It's an intriguing question - how do you make a card game 'sexy'? We're not talking in a literal sense - this is a family review after all. No, we mean how do you make simple, old fashioned card games appealing to a hip, young, tech-savvy audience?

DChoc Cafe is Digital Chocolate's answer. Having already introduced the concept to card games in the form of Solitaire and Poker, it's now moving onto Spades.

As with the previous efforts in the franchise, you're provided with a solid version of a traditional game and offered a number of subtle variants relating to the nature of the betting, whether to play in a partnership or solo and so on, all of which is accessed through a highly stylised, isometrically-viewed cafe hub.

Cafe Spades looks and plays as smoothly as you would expect given the developer's experience in this field. The familiar bold, highly detailed graphics are easy on the eye, and the game successfully creates a laid back environment in which to play your cards right.

Your cafe hub is fully customisable, as is your chosen avatar. Fancy a snazzy new hat to show off at the digital gaming table? Of course you do! Better win some card games then.

Among the options for play is a career mode of sorts called Spades Challenges, which tasks you with working your way up a rankings table of computer-controlled players. The ultimate aim is to become the most famous spades player in the cafe, but along the way you'll also unlock new hairstyles and items of clothing for your avatar. It's completely cosmetic and non-essential, but strangely compelling all the same.

The network capabilities of previous DChoc Cafe games have, of course, been retained, as you find yourself able to drop in on other player's cafes and check out the decor. The game of Spades itself, however, remains disappointingly single-unit multiplayer only. We would have loved the opportunity to take on all-comers from around the globe, but as it stands you'll have to recruit flesh-and-blood competitors from your immediate vicinity.

The version of Spades on offer holds up reasonably well, and if the idea of Spades on the go appeals to you then look no further. We did find that the choice to imbue your competitors with faces and personalities slowed the game down a little, to its detriment, in that it started to grate when we simply wanted to blast through a quick game during a five minute break, only to leisurely meander through our opposition's betting decisions. Perhaps this is just a matter of personal preference though.

Despite such niggling complaints, Cafe Spades does a wonderful job of giving you control over how you want to play your Spades. In the same way, it rewards you at every turn and tracks your achievements closely, giving you a visual and immediate indication of how much you've put into the game via the customisable hub cafe. That level of investment is a rarity in mobile gaming, and the whole DChoc concept has been rightly applauded as a result.

As a social experience Cafe Spades still hasn't moved on from its predecessors, so our gripes over the lack of real online multiplayer remain. However, as a fully fleshed out iteration of Spades this is hard to fault. With numerous gaming options and plenty of novel rewards for the persistent player, Cafe Spades is as 'sexy' a card game as anyone is likely to find, or indeed, want.