Triple Take started as a nameless family tradition — a three-round card guessing game we’ve played every Thanksgiving for years, using handwritten slips of paper that fell on the floor, featured someone’s terrible handwriting, and inevitably led to heated disputes nobody could verify. I finally turned it into a real product.
How It Works
Two teams compete to guess cards containing people, places, and things across three rounds with escalating constraints:
Round 1: Anything Goes. Say anything except what’s on the card. This is where your team learns the deck.
Round 2: One Word. Same cards. One word per turn. Your brain races to find the single word that’ll trigger what your teammate remembers from Round 1.
Round 3: Silent Charades. Same cards. No words. Just you, your body, and whatever your teammate can piece together from memory.
The energy builds instead of fading — Round 1 is fun, Round 2 is intense, Round 3 is chaotic hilarity. Most party games peak early and drag. Triple Take does the opposite.
Why It Works
Most party games create variety through volume — more cards, more rules, more expansion packs. Triple Take creates variety through constraint. The same thirty cards feel like three completely different games because the rules change how you communicate. That’s a fundamentally different approach to replayability, and it’s why the game stays fresh even when your group has played it a dozen times.
The three-round structure also handles the mixed-age problem that kills most game nights. A seven-year-old can contribute in Round 1 with unlimited clues. Competitive adults get tested in Round 2’s one-word constraint. And everyone — regardless of age or skill — laughs together in Round 3 charades. The difficulty curve is built into the mechanics. No house rules needed.
The memory layer is what sets it apart from Taboo, Charades, or any other guessing game. Success in Triple Take requires paying attention during the entire game — including your opponents’ turns. Did you catch that “Statue of Liberty” was in the deck when the other team guessed it in Round 1? Better remember that for Round 3.
Where It Is Now
Triple Take is a web app with 973 curated cards across multiple themed packs, voice-guided tutorials, score dispute resolution, and custom card creation so any group can personalize the deck. It works on mobile and desktop and passes most WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards.
My family played the digital version at Thanksgiving. The cards didn’t fall on the floor. The disputes got settled. And the kids still tried to stump us with references we’re not supposed to know.