Welcome to Cafe, a restaurant in a metropolitan shopping mall. Cafe Game Online™ is a single-player Flash™-based online game based upon the Cafe™ card game by Gamemakers of Pittsburgh.

Cafe is designed to imitate situations encountered within a restaurant setting. Everyone takes turns playing the waiter, serving up scenarios to the other players. Their responses to those scenarios reveal clues as to who they really are.

Win by correctly identifying the personalities of other players! Every session of Cafe Game Online™ unfolds in two phases, which determine choices for the player and computer-opponents. These phases are the Exposition Phase and the Intuition Phase.

Practice games are preceded by a quick series of scenarios and responses designed to get new players familiar with the mechanics of the game. You may skip through this practice series at any time and get on to the Exposition Phase.

In the Exposition Phase, understanding is the key. Players are faced with scenarios and respond to them in turn, these responses shaping their evolving in-game personality. This phase lasts for five rounds of game play.

While computer-controlled opponents may not make guesses until the Exposition Phase is complete, the player is able to choose to guess the personality of a computer-controlled opponent, rather than presenting a scenario, as soon as each opponent has responded to at least three scenarios.

Be careful when you decide to guess! Once you have attempted to guess an opponent's personality, right or wrong, you may not guess again!

The understanding obtained during the Exposition Phase is put to the test during the Intuition Phase. The computer-controlled opponents may now guess the personalities of one-another -- and the player! Five more rounds of game play will occur, during the Intuition Phase. At the end of this phase, final scores will be tallied and a winner decided!

Score in Cafe Game Online™ is tallied with Intuition Points. These points are awarded upon successful guessing. Each successful guess is worth more Intuition Points. The game will continue until the end of the Intuition Phase or when a participant reaches 10 Intuition Points.

The first successful guess awards 1 Intuition Point. The second and third successful guesses award 3 Intuition Points and 6 Intuition Points respectively. Any participant who succeeds in making three successful guesses will win the game automatically!

If no one has three successful guesses by the end of the Intuition Phase, then the total Intuition Points are tallied and the participant with the highest total is declared a winner, with equal totals resulting in a tie.

Once the option of making a guess becomes available, being sure about the personality of the opponent you are guessing is very important. If you aren't sure, you still have the option of supplying a scenario, allowing you to observe more responses from them. Once a guess has been made, there is no going back!

Likewise, if you are still not sure and the Intuition Phase is ticking down, some bold guesses may help turn the game in your favor! Try to strike a balance between observation and action!

Even if you failed to guess the personality of every opponent, you may still observe game play unfold for the rest of the session and learn strategies and personalities for the next!

In the upper right-hand corner of the game field you will see two buttons, Fast-Forward and Next. If you press Fast-Forward, you will instead see the Pause button in place of Fast-Forward.

These controls manage the flow of game play, switching between turn-based and real-time play. Cafe Game Online™ starts off set to Turn-Based, meaning that new turn will not begin until the Next button is pressed. This gives you time to read the scenario and responses, and to check previous scenarios and responses before new ones occur.

Once the Fast-Forward button is pressed, game play switches to Real-Time. Computer-controlled opponents will continue to act, only stopping when it is your turn to act or respond to a scenario they are presenting. Pressing the Pause button will return game play to Turn-Based.

The chat window displays scenarios and responses, as well as who was in the Waiter role and who was in the Guest role during that turn. The chat window may be expanded to view more content and scrolled, allowing you to go over the history of scenarios and responses, guests and waiters. Checking through chat before making a guess can help you determine the personality of computer-controlled opponents.