Belote & Coinche: Card Game

Thirty-two cards, four players, two teams, and one question every trick: who is taking it, and what is it worth? Belote is the game France plays after dinner. Eight tricks a deal, a partner across the table, and a contract to hold up between you. TWO GAMES IN ONE • Belote — the classic. A card is turned, and you take it or you pass. • Coinche — the auction. Bid what you think you can make, double the other side when they have gone too far, and find out. Declarations on or off, the target score from 501 to 2000, a turn clock if you want one. WAYS TO PLAY • Quick game — sit down with three house bots in one tap. Three strengths, from a gentle partner to one that counts the cards alongside you. • Pass the phone — four people, one device, each hand hidden behind a curtain. • Nearby — open a table and the people around you join over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. No accounts, no internet. • A friend anywhere — invite them through Game Center, or open a room, agree on the code, and both type it in. • Ranked — on your own, seated with real players first and a bot only in a chair nobody came for, or you and a friend as a duo, rated together. • A real deck — playing with actual cards? The score pad keeps the sheet for you: say who took it and what was made, and it counts the contract, the announcements and the belote. A bot fills any empty seat, so a table of two friends is still a table of four. Signed in to Game Center, you hear when a friend opens the game. RANKED Six leagues, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Maestro, three divisions each, and a new season every month. Every league you reach puts its medal on your seat for good, and from Silver up it strikes the app icon in its metal. The season's board ranks everyone who played, or just your friends, and the road pays on the way up: jetons at stops inside every division and a pack at the top of it. A JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE The solo campaign: Bretagne, Paris, Alsace, Bourgogne, Provence and Corse, thirty tables against players who get better as you go. Up to three stars a table, a prize at the end of every region, and a board of everyone on the road, or just your friends. SOMETHING TO COME BACK FOR The daily deal, one hand of Coinche played by everyone that day, with its own ladder. A handful of tasks every week, the same for everybody: each pays when it is done, and finishing them all puts the laurel on your seat. A streak that pays for turning up. And levels, which only ever go up: every game counts, won or lost, every level pays jetons and every tenth brings a pack. And a wheel to spin every day, with a look at what everyone else won on it. AN ALBUM TO FILL Packs of three cards for the album: a free one every three games, and more for jetons. The album comes in four volumes, each printed in a colourway of the deck, and finishing one hands over that deck and a prize of its own. A friend's code, typed once in Settings, can bring a gift as well. A COACH, IF YOU WANT ONE Switch it on and it tells you what each card in your hand would do, and why the one you cannot play is refused. Switch it off and it never says a word. When the game ends, a reading of how you played: the moves that were best, the ones that were close, and where a trick slipped away. SOMETHING TO PLAY FOR Jetons for every game, and a shop of felts, card backs, table marks and music for the table to spend them on. Cosmetic only — nothing in it changes a hand. Two card styles, Classique and Bistro, in six colourways: the house Maison, plus Marseille, Lyon, Paris, an aged Parchemin and a Nuit printed in reverse. English and French throughout. iPhone and iPad. Free, with ads between games, or none at all after a single purchase. No account, no sign-up.