TRIPLICARD™ playing cards and games
New cards. Better games.

TRIPLICARD Games: An Overview

TRIPLICARDS are not in themselves a game; instead, they form the ultimate game construction kit - and we have spent much of the last five years taking advantage of it. The result: a bevy of involving, entertaining solitaires and multiplayer games. Like anything new, the innovative playing cards may seem a little strange at first, but familiarity will follow. Once you get accustomed to playing with ample aces and suits that aren't monogamous, we firmly believe you will love TRIPLICARD games.

Something Old, Something New

If you play conventional card games, you already understand the basic paradigm involved; once you get to know our quirky cards, learning new games is easy. You'll enjoy a new twist to old favorites like Spades, Hearts, Poker, Five Hundred, Oh Hell, Euchre, Rummy, and Crazy Eights - especially when you find that these TRIPLICARD changelings move faster, allow more strategy, and provide greater entertainment than the games you're used to. (There's a sound mathematical basis for this: good Poker hands, for instance, occur 10-100 times more frequently with TRIPLICARDS.) You may never go back to ordinary card games again!

If you never acquired the card-playing habit, it's a good time to try something new. The colorful TRIPLICARDS have more to offer than their traditional counterparts, and you may find our slightly twisted games more appealing than the old-fashioned ones you've been ignoring. (As Anne will attest, thinking "outside the box" is Jon's normal mode.) You've certainly never seen anything like Chimera, Reflection, or Heredity, which can't really be duplicated with an ordinary deck.

At Free Fall Games, we have more than twenty years of experience in making good games simple and simple games fun. Whatever your gaming background, you can learn any TRIPLICARD game in minutes. Each one comes with its own Help files, pop-up rules, audiovisual cues, and plenty of virtual hand-holding. You won't play perfectly the first time, but so what? You can practice in private whenever you want, and even trial and error will soon have you winning more often than you ever did with conventional solitaires. Play a hand while finishing your coffee, or spend an evening setting new personal bests.

If you're feeling sociable, you can readily meet new people online and chat during a hand. Since TRIPLICARD games are new, everyone starts on essentially the same footing; you are unlikely to be playing against somebody with a big edge in playing experience.

If you are concerned with potentially inappropriate content in your (or your kids') games, note that TRIPLICARD games do not contain nudity or violence. (They are, after all, card games.) They don't even contain bad grammar. (See our consumer advisory.) Parents should find them relatively safe for all ages, but we've gotten pretty good at making pretty good games, and repeated use may be habit-forming.

Now Playing

TRIPLICARDS Volume One includes five complete card games - solitaires or single-player versions of "any-player" games. For details, click each title.

Download a free trial version, and play all five as much as you want for up to three weeks. You may not fall in love with every one, but we're pretty confident you'll want to make constant companions of some of them. Once you're convinced, you can upgrade to the unlimited version - good indefinitely - for the special introductory price of $10. Or go ahead and splurge on the "real" version right away. (That's about the same as a movie ticket, a little more than the price of a paperback book, less than a pizza. Any way you slice it, you're likely to get far more hours of enjoyment out of our games.) Either version is only a couple of megabytes - maybe a fifteen-minute download on a slow connection - probably a lot faster than a pizza delivery.

Coming Attractions

We're just getting started! Here's a brief guide to current and upcoming TRIPLICARD games.

Pure Solitaires
If you enjoy solitaires, start with Eureka, which combines most of the familiar elements of "Solitaire" (i.e., Klondike) with an excellent chance of victory. After that, try some of the related games: Prism (not quite as easy), Alamo (distinctly harder to win), Iditarod (for a real challenge), the uncommon Suit Yourself, or the off-the-wall Red Death and Scarlet Fever. If you prefer a more thoughtful contest, Fanatic and its siblings (Fleur-de-Lis, Phoenix, Fan Dance, and Labyrinth) will test your skill, and Reflection offers the challenge of a perfect puzzle. (Beginners beware!) If you are in the mood for something different, and skill-based solitaires seem too much like work, the unusual Heredity rewards persistence, and its more winnable cousins, Genetics and Diffusion, can be pleasantly diverting.

Family Games
Newcomers who prefer chatting with or competing against other players should look online for Pokingo, Slotzee, Five Ten, or Fifteen, which offer fast-moving family fun for lots of people but don't require prior knowledge of TRIPLICARDS. (Solitaire versions of these games will also be available.)

Multiplayer Games
Experienced card players looking for something different should check out Stop & Go (cutthroat competition made simple), Whirlpool and Whirlwind (the mutant progeny of Crazy Eights), Simplex (Blackjack's second cousin, once removed), Triad and Harmony (turbocharged Rummy), Salvo (a classic dice game transmogrified), Cotillion (perhaps the first cooperative card game), Chimera (a most unnatural game for the skilled and devious), and such strange relatives of Poker as Balkan, Triage, and Quirk.

Basic Trump Games
If games like Hearts, Spades, Euchre, or 500 appeal to you, Melee, a small step up from War, is simple enough for young players and complete novices but unusual enough to disconcert many traditionalists, who may find the more "normal" Grab a more comfortable introductory game. More satisfying than those simple slugfests are three transitional games that offer much of the depth of bidding games without the complications of actual bidding. Get Even is simpler than Oh Hell but similarly appealing - and so nicely balanced that a bad hand can be as good as a good hand, yet a wonderful hand can be very bad, indeed. Conversely, luck is a major factor in Rout, an amusing descendant of Loo, a social sensation in Regency England. The archetypal Triumph is essentially a shapeshifting cousin of Euchre with better gameplay and less rigamarole.

Advanced Trump Games
Finally, veteran cardplayers with some TRIPLICARD experience will find substantial rewards in Balancing Act (a demented cross between Oh Hell and Cancellation Hearts), Heartless (more intense than Hearts, and even wilder than Cancellation Hearts), or 501 (one step beyond Five Hundred).

Caution: We have enough games for several volumes of TRIPLICARDS, but online and multiplayer games, in particular, are subject to delays, and the entire line of games is subject to basic economic reality. Free Fall Games is a small company with a mortgage to pay and groceries to buy. We'd like to hang around and develop new games, but we can afford to do that only if - and yes, that's a big if - we get a positive response to our initial offerings. So, if you like what we're doing, tell someone! Or buy something. If enough of you do both, we'll do our best to keep you entertained.

Online Games

Although many of our family games also make good solitaires, even Pokingo may well be superior as a multiplayer online game. Hearts, Spades, and Euchre are among the most popular games online, yet we're confident that the corresponding TRIPLICARD games are consistently better. Indeed, many of the best TRIPLICARD games are multiplayer games. We also know it is hard for you to know any of this without trying it yourself.

Off and on over the last several years, early versions of Simplex, Eureka, Reflection, Stop & Go, Grab, and Heartless (as THRALL games) were available for free online play on GameTV. Unfortunately, the site was obscure, and glitches in its system software discouraged returning players. With an overhaul overdue, the site was suspended last Christmas. Once the upgrade is finished, the site should reopen with a new name, location, and direct-from-a-browser interface. Working with their new, more robust system will take some time and effort, but we'll probably have some TRIPLICARD games on the new site later this year. When we do, we'll have a link here.

We are also looking for other online partners and hope you will soon be able to sample our games elsewhere on the Web. (Keep checking here for the latest news.) If your favorite game site, portal, or ISP might want to offer an attraction its competitors can't match, please suggest it to us - and vice versa! (We're really good at developing games, but we're not so hot at promoting them - or us. We appreciate all the help we can get.)

Related Pages: For further information, use the links below.