Hangman 1001: Fashion Edition Review

Digital Chocolate's Café series of games has come to represent something of a hallmark of quality, offering the sorts of games that might appeal to those who get turned on by the idea of pubs featuring a stash of boardgames in the corner. Although not advertising itself as such, with the title Hangman 1001: Fashion Edition, this game is in fact merely a more lifestyle-influenced version of the mahogany-palette'd Starbucks-fancying Cafe Hangman.

That's no bad thing, though. The green and brown colour-scheme may not suit the game's fashion aspirations, but the presentation is otherwise polished and friendly, with a simple menu that lets you get right into the hangman action – if such a thing exists – quickly.

There are three main game modes: Classic, Hot Seat and Time Attack. Classic is predictably the simple game of hangman, while Hot Seat is a two-player mode where you both take turns to try and reveal the same word. The winner is the one who takes the least time to do this, assuming you manage to discover the word without completing the gallows, that is. Time Attack is similar to the Classic mode, except that you only have a minute to uncover the word in question.

The words are split into five different categories. They need to be unlocked by playing the previous category, but since you only have to complete one word, it's no hardship. The word types are 'People & Places', 'Luxury Labels', 'Accessories', 'Top Brands' and 'Entertainment', plus there's a random option. For the non-Heat-reading viewers out there, the game's title may prove an instant turn-off, but the words on offer remain largely accessible. You won't have to study Vogue magazine to get ahead in Hangman 1001, with the majority of the words deriving from pop culture rather than couture. There are obviously some slightly obscure names included, but not to an extent that severely hampers the gameplay.

A slightly odd choice of dynamic, though, is that if you fail a word in the Classic mode, you'll be given the same word the next time you try that category again, but the game reveals the word anyway when you fail, so you're essentially left uncovering a word that you already know. It's an observation we made in our original Cafe Hangman review, but it's a feature that hasn't changed since.

To keep the more ardent player interested, there are 20 achievements to unlock, culminating in being crowned a 'Hangman Fanatic' after solving 1,000 words. Another interesting feature is the secondary multiplayer mode, the Friend's Challenge. Here, you can make five different lists of ten custom words to challenge friends with. Actually finding the motivation to type them all in may prove an issue, but it's certainly a great idea, whether you choose to include your friend's ex-partners or a list of the vilest obscenities you can muster.

Ideally, it would have been good to see the fashion theme step over into Hangman 1001: Fashion Edition's visuals. As is, it's pretty clear that this is little more than Cafe Hangman with an edited word list. However, the fact that it remains accessible, fun and relatively feature-packed wins out.