Wednesday, October 15, 2008 recent winners
Home Games Game Rules Downloads Features Standings Message Board Game Community Earn Credits Affiliates Privacy Account My Account Purchase Credits Lost Password Support FAQ Report Problem About Us Contact Us

TripleStars & MegaStars Rules

Click here for screen shots

TripleStars and MegaStars play basically the same. The only difference is that with TripleStars the layout of the cards is always the same (three pyramids). With MegaStars, the layout of the cards may vary with each level of the game.

Object of the game:

The goal of triple stars is to clear each level and advance to the next round. Cards are played from the playfield to the discard pile. A card can be played if it is one less or one greater than than the current face-up card on the discard pile. (The suit is irrelevant and an ace can be played on a king or a two)

Points

Points are scored on each move based on how quickly each move is made and the number of cards played in a row. The "run" ends when you draw a card from the draw pile or the timer runs out and one is drawn automatically. Using the wildcard does not interrupt your run. A longer run greatly improves your score for each play. Here's the formula for the scoring:

TIMER VALUE + (  ( 100 + (20 x RUN LENGTH) ) x RUN LENGTH )

For the those of us who don't speak algebra, this formula basically makes a run of 10 worth much more than two runs of 5, even if they are played at about the same speed: Here's a chart that shows the scoring for plays at different run lengths (we used 180 as the timer value on each line for clarity)

Run Length	Timer Value	Score
1	180	300
2	180	460
3	180	660
4	180	900
5	180	1180
6	180	1500
7	180	1860
8	180	2260
9	180	2700
10	180	3180
11	180	3700
12	180	4260
13	180	4860
14	180	5500
15	180	6180
16	180	6900
17	180	7660
18	180	8460
19	180	9300
20	180	10180
21	180	11100
22	180	12060
23	180	13060

As you can see from the table a run of 6 will score
300 + 460 + 660 + 900 + 1180 + 1500 = 5000
Two runs of 3 score:
300 + 460 + 660 = 1420 x 2 = 2840

In the example above the same number of cards are played but the first six were played in one run and scored 2160 points more than two sets of three. It a good idea to keep this in mind and look for the longer runs wherever possible.

Wildcard

The wildcard cycles through each card in a normal deck of 52 cards. To use the wildcard click on it to stop the cycle. The card that the cycle stops on becomes the current face-up card on the discard pile.

Bonuses

Bonuses points are scored when you clear a level. Each remaining card in the draw pile scores 1000 points and 5000 points are scored for an unused wildcard.