How to Play
Truth or Carol · the Christmas party card game
Truth or Carol
Part truth-or-dare, part terrible karaoke, all heart.
3 to 10 players · ages 8+ · about 20 minutes
What This Is
This is the free digital demo of a physical card game that is still in the making.
The app deals the cards, moves the calendar and keeps the tree. Everything else happens in the room. You answer out loud, you sing out loud, you guess out loud, to the people around you. There is nothing to type. Gather your group first, in person or on a video call, ideally with a phone or laptop each.
How To Win Together
- Hang 12 ornaments on the tree by Christmas Eve to win and put a star on top of the tree.
- Each round, the group sings or answers a question together while acting out a secret Challenge. Two guessers try to work out what the Challenge is. Guess right, and you hang ornaments on the tree.
- As Christmas gets closer, Chaos cards add rules everyone has to follow, or ornaments will fall and break!
Nobody wins on their own. You win together, or you miss together.
Choose Your Christmas
Some Christmases last forever and some go by in a blur.
| Christmas | About | First round | Star moves | Ornaments per correct guess (or break) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dasher, A Quick Christmas | 20 min | the 3rd | 3 days | 3 |
| Prancer, A Proper Christmas | 30 min | the 2nd | 2 days | 2 |
| Rudolph, The Most Christmas | 60 min | the 1st | 1 day | 1 |
The demo plays Dasher. Prancer and Rudolph are coming soon.
The Truth or Carol deck is built for your Christmas (in Dasher, 2 Truths and 5 Carols) and runs out exactly as you reach Christmas Eve.
The Guessers
The app picks the first guesser at random. The second is the person after them. After every round the pair shifts one seat along, so you are a guesser for two rounds, paired with someone different each time.
The group is everyone who is not a guesser.
At a table of three there is one guesser, and the other two are the group.
Challenge Cards
A Challenge is one word or phrase. Sleepy. Snowball fight. Robot. You don't describe it, you do it, all of you, while you sing or answer. The group sees it. The guessers don't.
With a Carol: act out the Challenge while you sing.
With a Truth: the Challenge changes how you answer, not what you answer. Act it out, don't make it up. If the question asks what you miss most about past Christmases, answer as yourself. It's just happening while you're freezing cold, or a royal, or trying to sneak a look at presents.
A Round
- Move on the advent calendar. The guessers move the star forward by however many days your Christmas uses.
- Draw two cards. The app deals the top card of the Truth or Carol deck, showing whichever side is face up, and a Challenge that only the group can see.
- Perform it. Carol: the whole group sings it together, in the style of the Challenge. Sing at least 30 seconds of it, and keep going if you're loving it. Truth: everyone in the group answers, one after another round the table, in the style of the Challenge.
- Guess. The guessers get 3 guesses. They can talk it over, but the guessing shouldn't take more than a minute. They can guess at any point: they don't have to wait for everyone to finish. The group decides if they got it right. Close enough counts. Either way, the Challenge is revealed.
- Hang the ornaments (or don't). Got it right? Your Christmas's number of ornaments go on the tree. Wrong 3 times? Bummer. The ornaments stay on the side and the round ends.
- Pass it on. The guessers shift one seat, and the next round begins.
The songs. Every Carol card links to lyrics and music, and they are all at truthorcarol.com/songs.
Chaos Cards
Three days on the advent calendar have tangled lights: the 6th, the 12th and the 18th. When the star reaches one, a Chaos card comes out, face up on everyone's screen. If you skip past one, you still draw the card.
A Chaos card is a rule everyone follows: guessers and group (unless it names a certain kind of player), during rounds and between them, for the rest of the game.
Chaos cards stack. By Christmas Eve you'll be juggling three.
Anyone can and should call another player out for breaking a Chaos rule! Tap Someone broke a Chaos rule? and pick the rule.
If anyone breaks a Chaos rule, ornaments break. Your Christmas's number of ornaments come off the tree and land underneath it. Though a rule might be broken several times in one round, ornaments only break once per round.
Things Get Serious
When the trees on the advent calendar turn dark green on the 19th, the Truth or Carol deck flips over to its dark side. Deeper questions and harder songs. If you skip past the 19th, it flips anyway.
If you have kids under 12, or just feel like keeping it light, tick "Keep it light all game" when you start, and you'll stay on the light sides.
Christmas Eve
When the star reaches the 24th, the game ends. Count the ornaments still hanging on the tree.
12 or more: pick a star, then pick any song you like and sing it all together while the star goes on top. No guessers. Everyone.
Fewer than 12: no star this year. But Christmas comes anyway.
Either way, give your tree a name. The last screen shows it the way the box has you write it inside the lid: the year · who played · what you named your tree.
Merry Christmas!
Play at truthorcarol.com/play