This is a home-made clone, cobbled together in a couple of days, of someone else's game that I downloaded from VersionTracker. I found the game an enjoyable time-waster, and not being a visual person, the practice seemed to do me good; but it had some irksome behaviors, so I made up this knock-off for myself to play.
The game supposes a deck of cards, where each card has four attributes: number, color, fill, and shape. Each attribute on any given card has one of three possible values:
The cards are unique, so the deck contains 81 cards (34).
The game consists of a rectangular face-up layout of some of the cards. (I like a 4-by-4 layout, but preferences let you choose anything from 3 to 5 on a side.) The object of the game is to spot, amongst the visible cards, any three which, for each attribute, are either all identical or all different.
It takes a little practice to grasp what constitutes a legal triple (what you're looking for), so let's look at some examples. Consider this layout:
What about the first three cards in the first row (circled below)? No, they do not meet the requirements. They almost do, but not quite. They are all different in number (one, three, and two); that's good. They are all different in shape (rectangle, diamond, and oval); that's good. They are all the same in fill (empty); that's good. But in color they are neither all the same nor all different: two are red and one is green. Either they need to be all different colors or all the same color.
What about the first three cards in the first column (see below)? No, they won't quite do either. They are all different as regards number, all different as regards color, and all the same as regards fill (empty); that's good. But they fall down in the matter of shape. Two of them are rectangles, and one is a diamond. Either they need to be all different shapes or all the same shape.
This next illustration (below) points out three cards that do meet the criteria. They are all the same number (two), and they are all three different with regards to the other three attributes:
Here are is another set of three cards that do meet the criteria. In this case, they are all three different with regard to all four attributes:
So, having spotted a triple of cards that meet the criteria, you click on them to highlight them. (Click on a highlighted card again to unhighlight it.) If you highlight three incorrect cards, the computer beeps, and you have to unhighlight them and try again. If you highlight three correct cards, they are replaced with the next three cards from the deck. This continues until the deck is exhausted and no valid triples remain in the layout. At that point, you've won, and the game is over; the computer shuffles the deck and deals a new layout.
That's all. In my rendering of the game there is no timing or scoring; it's just a pastime. All you can do is win, or give up and ask for a new game. If you're really stuck you can ask to see a valid triple (Game > Reveal), but I warn you that doing so is depressing, because you'll feel silly you didn't spot it for yourself!