Strawberry’s Truth 2026

Strawberry’s Truth is a trick-taking game for 2 players that will consistently upend your expectations about how well you actually bid when it comes to trick taking, if you know what a strawberry is, and more. As it happens, of the four fruits in the Trifle deck, only Strawberry is botanically not a berry, and in this game, your bids are never just… well, simple!

Each hand of Strawberry’s Truth is played over thirteen tricks where players take turns playing one card each. The hand will always start with the Deal followed by Bidding, after which, Play begins. Once all the tricks are played, the round is Scored and the player with the fewest points wins. There are a handful of quirks that make the game have the richest texture of all the Fruit Salad games.

First, if the combined bids of both players exceeds 60, then it is better to take more card points than you bid, or face double the penalty. The same is true in reverse if the combined bid is lower than 60. Second, trump cannot be led until broken (as in Spades), but if it is led, it’s led face-down. Finally, the cards used to announce a bid are kept face-up for the hand, leaving a lot of information on the table in exchange for control of the game!

The game was designed for use with Sean Ross’s Trifle deck, but is playable with a standard deck as well. Additionally, this game borrows heavily from an Indonesian trick-taker called Truf. Strawberry’s Truth is the fourth and final game in Fruit Salad, a series of games that pare down some of my recent favorites in order to make them more teachable and accessible to my family. Each game also features one suit as a fixed trump, which can be found in their titles.

—description from the designer