Girl Gamble

Back in the '80s, there was a game show called Play Your Cards Right. Chances are you can still find it now, huddled in a dimly lit corner of a cable channel somewhere.

It was hosted by loveable entertainer Bruce Forsythe, gave birth to some classic audience-participation catch phrases (such as "Nice to see you…to see you nice" and "You get nothing for a pair…not in this game") and was, like many shows of its era, a subtle exhibition of sexism. Bruce did the jokes, whilst scantily clad Dollies were on hand to help out with menial tasks, show off the prizes and generally smile and look pretty (Ahh, how we lament that bygone age of innocence – Misogynist Ed).

The premise behind the game was astoundingly simple. A series of competing couples answered questions based on percentage responses to surveys (for example: "We asked 100 people how many would like to review mobile porn games. How many said, 'Yes! Yes! YES!'") and the winners then had to work their way across a game board filled with giant playing cards, turning them over as they went, and guessing whether the next card would be higher or lower. En route to scoring amazing prizes, natch.

Girl Gamble is basically the soft porn equivalent of Play Your Cards Right. Admittedly, there are no questions as such, nor any competing teams (although you could play with your girlfriend if you're into that sort of thing).

The cards are now blocks concealing a percentage of a picture, and the dollies are more concerned with revealing than dealing, having been stripped of all their clothes.

But the higher / lower crux of the game is essentially the same. Faced with a basic one-armed bandit interface bearing two spaces, your task is simply to guess whether the next number (from 0 to 9) will be higher or lower than the previous one. Guess correctly and you'll be given a glimpse of the picture with the top card removed and then returned to the number game again, where the previous number now becomes the starting point for your next guess.

Should you manage to guess enough numbers correctly in a row to remove all the cards, you're rewarded with a nude picture of the girl in all her glory, and after a moment or two of ogling you can move onto the next.

Guess a number wrong, however, and all the cards on the previous picture are replaced, leaving you to start from scratch.

And that's about it. The 'game' does increase in difficulty as you progress, with more cards to be cleared each time, and the images do seem to become slightly lewder, albeit in a manner that would have been rather more shocking to an '80s studio audience than the average man in the street today.

The presentation is fine, with a shiny interface and sharp pictures of attractive girls in the buff (although the lack of any audio is a bit of a shame), and there's certainly some short-lived entertainment to be had. Indeed, the slow spin of the number reels can induce moments of genuine suspense once you've played through to the last card or two on the later levels.

Ultimately though, both the game mechanic and the reward are far too slight to make this worthy of the investment. If only they could have roped in Bruce Forsythe to host it.