About TrickPals
Trick-taking — everyone plays one card, and the highest card of the led suit wins the pile — is the engine behind Hearts, Spades, and Bridge. It usually starts at age 10+ and is competitive. TrickPals brings it to ages 6–8 as a cooperative game (a “Crew”-style co-op): you and Pip the owl are on the same team, delivering the mail together.
Follow the suit, win the trick
Otto leads a card; Pip must play the same suit if it has one. The higher card of the led suit wins — unless someone plays a night 🌙 card (the trump), which beats any suit. That’s the whole rule engine, felt through play.
Deliver your parcels ⭐
A parcel is delivered when Otto wins the trick that carries it — so you learn to lead your parcel high to win it. Pip flies at night to push the Storm back, but Pip never grabs your parcels: if it’s ever forced to catch one, that only counts while Pip has caught no more than you delivered. The helper can’t win the game for you — you have to make your deliveries.
No chat — that’s the safety
Real cooperative trick games are hard because you can’t tell your partner what to do. TrickPals keeps that: no chat, no free text. You cooperate by playing the right cards, which is exactly the thinking we want — and it’s safe by construction.
Game weight (measured, not asserted)
We follow one rule across the library: a game’s weight is measured, never guessed. The pips below come from letting the computer play TrickPals hundreds of times and counting how many choices a turn it holds and how long a round runs — so a grown-up can pick by how much the child has to keep in their head.
Measured over 200 self-play games: about 3.8 choices a turn, ~5 turns long.
What it’s good for (and what we don’t claim)
TrickPals is gentle practice for following a rule, comparing numbers, planning who wins, and playing on a team. It is not a curriculum or a brain-training app, and we make no claim it raises IQ or test scores.
Safe by design
- No losing to a friend. You and Pip are one team; if the Storm wins, you just try again.
- On your device. Nothing is sent anywhere; no account, no sign-in, no chat.
- Readable for everyone. Each suit is a different shape and colour and name (🌙 Night · 🌲 Pine · 🐟 River), so the game works in dark mode and for colour-blind players.