The goal of Hearts is to score as few points as possible. Each heart gives a penalty point. There is also a special card, the Queen of Spades, which gives 13 penalty points.
When the Hearts card game starts, 3 cards are selected to pass to one of the opponents. The opponent to whom the cards are passed varies, it begins by passing to the opponent on the left, then in the next game the cards are passed to the opponent on the right, in the third game the cards are passed to the player in front and in the fourth game the cards are not passed.
Each turn of the Hearts game begins with one player playing a single card. The suit of that card determines the suit of the trick. The other players play one card each. If they have a card of the same suit as the first card, they must play it. If they don't have it, they can play any of their other cards. After four cards have been played, the player who played the highest ranked card in the original suit takes all four cards from the table and then begins the next turn. Any penalty cards in the trick (hearts or queen of spades) are added to the player's penalty score.
The player who has the two of clubs at the beginning of the game starts the first hand with the two of clubs.
In the Hearts card game you cannot lead a trick with hearts until the hearts have been broken, this means that they must have been played in another suit. In the game settings screen you can choose if the queen of spades can always be played or if you have to wait for hearts to break.
Once all the cards have been played, the penalty points are counted and the player with the fewest points wins that hand. When one or more players reach 50, 100 or 150 points the game ends and the player with the fewest points wins. If there are two or more players with the fewest points, the game continues until there is only one winner. In the configuration screen you can define if you play to reach 50, 100 or 150 points.
It is generally bad to receive penalty cards, but if a player gets all the penalty cards (13 hearts + queen of spades), he scores 0 points and the other 3 players score 26 points each. This is called Break on the moon.
