Café International Reviews

Cafe International is a classic board game from the 80s. Themed around a fancy UN dining event, you're trying to seat aligned delegates together to clear their tables and score points. You do this by matching male and female delegates of the same nationality at tables. The rules are simple but there's a fair amount of strategic depth to the game as you work to get combos to score more points, and try to make things harder for your opponent through strategic placement. The game is fairly bare-bones, but it doesn't have to be more than it is. The AI is pretty good, allowing for a decent challenge, and you can play with friends if you want. My only criticism is with the dated theming of the game itself, with a lot of old stereotyped caricatures of different nationalities, which are well done but some seem quite insensitive now (including having "Africa" be a country among the rest). This coupled with the insistence on male/female pairings (it was the 80s) feels very of its time. I wish that there had been some attempt to update it to more modern tastes, though the core gameplay is still good and I appreciate the effort was to keep the classic feel. Ultimately I think this is a good game and worth trying out if you like board games, and playing digital board games. The gameplay is fast but deep and can provide a decent amount of replay value. It might be a bit more expensive than it should be for what it brings, however, so I would wait for a sale before picking it up.