Hearts

Hearts is the classic four-player trick game, dealt on burgundy baize under a brass oil lamp. Every heart you win costs you a point and the queen of spades costs you thirteen, so the whole evening is spent ducking under other people's cards. Before each hand you hand three cards to your left, then to your right, then across the table, then a hand where nobody passes at all. The two of clubs leads, you must follow suit if you can, and hearts stay shut until somebody is forced to throw one.

The other three seats are painted cameos in gilt frames: Colonel Hargrave behind his monocle, Aunt Lavinia with her lorgnette raised, and Mr Pennrose the poet with ink still on his fingers. They gasp when the queen drops, they look smug when they slip her to you, and they have something to say about most of it. Choose Easy if you want the table to be generous, Normal if you want it to count suits and shed the queen sensibly, or Sharp if you want three opponents who track every card, sit on their stoppers and notice a moon attempt in time to ruin it.

Take all thirteen hearts and the queen in a single hand and you have shot the moon: give the other three twenty-six apiece, or take twenty-six off your own score instead. A running scoreboard between hands keeps the totals and a hand-by-hand history, and the evening ends the moment somebody reaches a hundred, with the lowest score winning. Legal cards are lit as you play, a hint will suggest one, and you can take a card back until the next player answers it. Two house rules wait on the title screen: the jack of diamonds worth minus ten, and a queen who may not fall on the first trick.