Cafe Solitaire and N-Gage may not seem like a natural fit, after all, it has to be noted that solitaire is the favourite pastime of elderly aunts and those who's chips are down and see it as truly the last game in town.

Certain ideas spring naturally to mind: naked ladies. Explosions. Naked ladies causing explosions. They don’t have much to do with repetitively flipping over cards, granted, but then neither does Cafe Solitaire’s solution – multi-player solitaire!

We kid you not, Cafe Solitaire allows you to form virtual coffee shops, where like-minded individuals can meet online to play solitaire on their own, together. The cafe is rendered nicely, Sims-style, allowing you to chat with friends, examine your trophy cabinet, play solitaire and purchase power-ups.

Unfortunately, the power-ups do not include a BFG to lay waste to the digital tea-shop in a blaze of hellfire. They start with a nice pair of chinos and a casual shirt, and reach the heady heights of moccasins and a ‘nice’ blazer. A bit like strip poker, then, but in reverse, and not half as much fun.

The card games themselves are pretty much as you’d expect – 12 variations of solitaire spanning the well-known (Klondike, Free Cell) and the more obscure (Flower Garden, Beleaguered Castle). All have good, brief instructions on how to play, plus help if you get stuck.

Moving the cards around is easy enough, although there’s little visual or auditory flair. Eventually, you realise the whole game just feels like a very, very dull episode of Friends without even the ‘kooky’ one occasionally coming up with a ‘joke’. For die-hard solitaire fans only. (And if you only came in for the conclusion, we’re sorry Die Hard fans, there are no white vests and definitely no explosions happening here).

Key details

Price: £6

Rating: 3+

Download: N-Gage