Free Games - Cafe.com Online Game Blog

New Version Live

The newest version of the Cafe.com game portal is live as of yesterday. Not a ton of  updates this time around, but they include:

- New 4-player html waiting rooms for Bubble Bubble and Temple of Mahjong
- Gifting system now available
- Allopass payment now available (France only)

As always, refer any bugs or issues to the help desk.

Something For Everyone

It's another gorgeous, crisp winter day here in the Northeastern US, but yours truly is stuck inside with a bad cold. I guess it's not so bad... I've got my favorite apple cinnamon tea to keep me warm, and really how often do I get some spare time to sit around and surf the web?

So here's something kinda interesting... with all this free time, I decided to go poking around Cafe.com to see if there were any games I hadn't played yet. You know what I found? Cafe.com has over 50 unique and completely free games. Did you know that?! I didn't know that. And there's something for every mood too. Into puzzle games? Together Jigsaw and Arctic Quest will feed yours jones. Word jumble more your thing? they've got at least 4 differently themed jumbles to keep things from getting dull. Most games can even be played single OR multiplayer, so you can pick up a quick game of Mahjong during your lunch break, or challenge people all day long.

I think I'll stick with Busta Fruit for a little while. Still trying to break a 9x combo!

Welcome, President Obama

Today at 12pm Eastern Standard Time, Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America.

Cafe.com welcomes the new US president, and eagerly looks forward to a future of hope, change, and prosperity.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when we celebrate the life of a man who was the driving force behind the Civil Right movement of the 1950's & 60's, a man without whom the world would be a much darker place.

We salute you Doctor King, and know your dreams and ideals will live on even though the man has passed.

New Facebook Versions

New versions have been uploaded of all the Cafe.com Facebook applications. Players should notice quicker load times, better feeds, and an all around less-buggy experience. The Leaderboards are also up and completely functioning, so you can see how you rank against your friends and other players.

Absolute Solitaire High Score

The current high-ranking score for Absolute Solitaire is cinlynn66 with 109,840 points. Anyone out there who can do better?

Awesome & Awesomer

I'm feeling a little under the weather today folks, so you don't mind if I keep it a bit short and sweet, do you?

Games = Awesome
Free = Awesome

Free + Games = Awesomer.

Cafe.com. Free Online Games. Get over there!

Cafe.com sells Boonty to Nexway

From Romain Nouzareth, CEO Cafe.com

My brother and I will announce later today that cafe.com has sold Boonty to Nexway.

Boonty has been the initial business of the company, started in 2001. At the time our idea was to sell downloadable games trough the big portals of the world. Now that we have the appstore, Itunes, XboxLive, Wiiware and others, it may seem obvious but back then lots of people thought we were crazy.

We got the idea in 2000 when we saw the Napster phenomenon. Whereas the industry was trying to solve the piracy issue with lawsuits and DRM, we thought that the problem could easily be solved with an easy to use, extensive and cheap offer. The funny thing is that initially we wanted to sell hard core titles.

Having started our first internet company in 1995 and sold it to IconMedialab of Sweden in 1999, we thought we would have enough credibility to meet most of the major publishers and convince them to try something new… but they all turned us down. Why bother selling online when they were making so much money in retail? And why take the risk of piracy? My brother and I almost gave up. However we stumble upon a few independent game developers selling casual titles and willing to give download a try. It was instant success and the starting point of the casual game revolution that has become so big today.

We grew quickly all over Europe, US and Asia from 2002 to 2005. We raised our first VC round in 2004 after my brother and I and business angels funded the initial stage. From 2005 to 2007, we had harder times and we had to turn the company around to come back to profitability only at the very beginning of 2008.

Boonty is now a very profitable business and growing quickly. I am glad Nexway bought it. It is a fantastic, fast growing, profitable (and big) digital download company. You will hear a lot form them in the next few years.

This is a very important turning point for cafe.com. From now on, our team will focus 100% on growing our social casual game web sites. Cafe.com is a place where casual gamers play, win and meet others within a friendly, safe, social environment. Cafe.com features more than 30 highly addictive casual games wrapped inside a social networking experience.

My favorite games are Temple of Mahjong, Busta Fruit and Absolute Solitaire. We will launch exciting new original games in the next few days, I can’t wait !

Initial technical work started in 2006 and Cafe.com was launched to the public in May 2008 in the US and a few weeks later in France and Germany.

Today over 5 million people play Cafe.com social games every month. This is quite an achievement after only 9 months in operation and near zero marketing budget! The site targets the primary casual gaming audience, which is more than 50% women with 60% of the entire audience being over 26 years old.

From the beginning, Cafe.com’s business model has been based on micro-transactions and rich media advertising, a successful model started in Asia and now being adopted by other entertainment companies.

100% of the all-cash deal will be reinvested into cafe.com.

Snow and Sunshine

It's a beautiful day here in the Northeastern US. We had a lot of snow over the weekend, followed immediately by rain and icy winds, and now that kind of dazzling winter sun that only seems to come after a storm has passed. The result is a world looking like its entirely encrusted in diamond, every surface slicked in a sheet of ice and glittering like the windows at Tiffany's. It's really quite breathtaking.

Especially when one realizes one can't even open their car door because its encased in a giant block of ice. Not that it would matter, since the whole car is basically frozen to the ground anyway.

Ok, so maybe massive ice storms aren't so great. Do they let you call out of work on account of "car-door-won't-open"?

Hey, that reminds me: What did the snowman say when his car wouldn't start? "Darn, it froze up again!" Hah hah, I kill me...

(pst: if you did get to stay home on account of ice, why not celebrate the cold with a game of Arctic Quest? Your boss will never know.)

Welcome to the Wii-te House

If there's a greater indicator that times are a-changin' than videogames officially entering the White House, I don't know what it is.

As Gameculture has reported, President-Elect Obama's daughter Malia and Sasha received a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, and apparently Mister Obama himself is known to slip on the wrist-strap and attempt to make a better showing at bowling than he did on the campaign trail.

Some might think the president owning - and playing - videogames is a meaningless point. But most of us realize what this really indicates: a president in touch with the current generation, who sees the potentials of technology as a jump-point for innovation and a better way of doing things; who doesn't see videogames as the latest in a long line of targets to take the blame for societies ills and may (hopefully) be intelligent enough to avoid knee-jerk "protect the children" anti-game laws that pointlessly gut the 1st Amendment without accomplishing anything of benefit and shifting attention from the real issue at hand (yes Hillary and Lieberman, I'm looking at you. For shame!).

Maybe at the next meeting of world leaders, Israel and Hamas can settle things once and for all by duking it out in a winner-take-all round of Wii-Tennis.

(Photoshopped image courtesy of Joystiq.com)