Triple Town's a charming match-3 puzzle game originally developed for mobile platforms. The gameplay is fun and simple but I found that I was unable to find documentation on hidden game mechanics, and I had to piece together what little I can find from searching and from extensive playing to gain some understanding. This guide is generally here to put everything I found in one place for future reference. Also this way, if I ever forget how to play, I can always come back to this guide to remember.

If you know what you're doing and are just here for the achievements, then just skip down to the Achievements section.

If you came across this while looking for info on the mobile game, I'm sorry but unless the Steam PC version gets an update to catch up with the mobile version and I update the guide accordingly, this guide is probably not that relevant to you.

• Feb. 21, 2022 - Published first draft

The game is a "Match 3" genre game, meaning that gameplay is mostly about putting three identical items together to combine them into a bigger item, and repeating for higher tiers. Every "turn", you get assigned a random item to place. Most of the time it will be Grass, but higher tier items will occasionally show up so you will have to adjust your building plans accordingly.

Here is a screenshot from the in-game tutorial that demonstrates matching:
As you can see, if you have three identical items grouped together, they will combine into an item of the next tier. You start with Grass at the lowest tier, and then you go all the way up to a Triple Castle at the highest tier. Every time you place an item, or you construct something by matching three of the same item/building, you will earn points. The general goal of the game is to earn as many points as you can before you run out of space on the game grid. The game ends when you are unable to build or place any more items.

As you can also see from the screenshot, matching does not require the items to be in a straight line. The only requirement is that the group of items are connected to each other in either the horizontal or vertical directions. Items only placed diagonally from each other do not count as connected.

An important thing to also note that the combined item will be formed at square you last clicked. So in the above screenshot, the Bush will form where the yellow arrow is pointing. This also takes us to our last point: combos. If you match three items, and the resulting new item at the location you clicked on can be matched with items of that tier, it will also match with that new tier of items, and so on, until it can't.

Here is an example screenshot:
The Bush you place will match with the other two Bushes and create a Tree. The resulting Tree will also match with the two Trees already there so the final result is the next tier of buildings, a Hut. If you are uncertain you will get a combo if you place an item, just merely hover over the square you want to place in. All items that will match or be part of the combo will wiggle towards the square you are hovering over.

Matching is also not limited to only groups of three. If you can create a group of 4+ items at once, they will combine into super buildings. Other than the lowest tier item of Grass, every building has a super form. These super buildings are notable because constructing a super building gives you coins, and also a chance at Capital City items. There are no other tiers for matching more than 4 though, so unless you need to clear large groups of items/buildings at once, you should try to avoid creating matches of 5 or more.

Giant Bears are items that you will be forced to place into your game. They take up one square each and will try to randomly move one square if possible in one of the four cardinal directions: up, down, left, or right. If you trap a Giant Bear, or group of Giant Bears into an area they cannot move, they will instantly die and each Giant Bear will turn into Tombstones. If there are three or more Tombstones grouped together, they will combine into a Church. Churches can be combined into Cathedrals, and Cathedrals can be combined into Treasure Chests, and finally Treasure Chests can be combined into Large Treasure Chests. Here is the full progression tree taken from the devs' official support documentation site:

There is also a second type of enemy called Ninja Bears. They are similar to Giant Bears where they try to move every turn but they will instead teleport to a random empty square no matter what. They are a bigger pain in the butt than Giant Bears. There are only two ways kill a Ninja Bear. The first is to run out of empty space on the map. If there is genuinely no space left, all the Ninja Bears (and probably any leftover Giant Bears) will die on the spot. The other option is to get an Imperial Bot item and use it on a Ninja Bear to kill them immediately. A dead Ninja Bear will turn into a Tombstone like a dead Giant Bear and behave accordingly.

One thing to note is that the bears will move immediately after you place them. So if you are trying to avoid having a bear block a specific square, place them into that square and they will immediately move out of it if they can.

The other important thing to remember is that when you kill a group of Giant Bears, the Church you build will be placed at the last place you clicked.
There is an exception to this rule where if you kill the bears by blocking them in with a regular item, the Church will not be built on or next to where you clicked. It might, but there's no guarantee and I have not been able figure out the rules. What I suspect is that the position of the most recently placed bear determines where the Church is built so wherever it ended up when you block it in, that is where it will be built. But I will have to run experiments to confirm.

Keep track of your bears, and keep them in a controlled area instead of letting them run loose.

As you saw in the building infographic, there are also items called Crystals. They have actually serve two functions. The first is the most important one, where they serve as wildcard items. What this means is that if you have two or more of an item or building, you can match them with a Crystal regardless of what tier they are. So you can match Grass, you can match Castles, you can match Cathedrals, etc. Anything that isn't a Triple Castle or a Large Treasure Chest, since you can't go higher than that. Crystals are very valuable and rare so they should be saved for only combining higher tier buildings together.

The second function Crystals can be used for is to just place on the ground and turn into a worthless Rock. Yes, if you cannot match anything with a Crystal, you are forced to drop it as a Rock. This isn't the end of the world since you can either destroy it, or as you can see in the building infographic above, you can combine three Rocks to form a Mountain. Then you can destroy the Mountain to get a Treasure Chest, or you can match three Mountains together to create a Large Treasure Chest. I personally don't think that's a good use of Crystals but you play however you want.

The last important part of gameplay is the Storehouse. Sometimes, you will get an item or building you do not wish to place right now. So what you can do is put it in the Storehouse. It won't count as a placement and won't match with nearby squares, so it will be safe until you take it out again. You can put any item of building on your cursor into the Storehouse, which means this also includes bears.

After the first time you put something into the Storehouse, it will never be empty again. Every time you click on the Storehouse, you will swap the Storehouse item with whatever you are holding at that moment. And you can keep swapping the same two items repeatedly as long as you want, though it means nothing gets done. In the worst case, if you do something like put a bear you don't want to deal with into the Storehouse, and then get a second bear, you are basically stuck until you place at least one of the bears.

One possible temporary solution is to purchase a Crate item with coins (not available from regular play). Crates act like temporary one-time-use Storehouses so if you are stuck with items you don't want to place, you can put down a Crate on a square and put the item into it. Once you pull out the item later, the Crate will be destroyed.

Every time you place an item, or match three items, you will generally get points.

Every Grass is worth 5 points.
Every Bush is worth 20 points.
etc.

If you match 3 items you will get the points for the item you placed, and also the resulting buildings. For example, if you match three 3 Grass to make a Bush, you will get +5 points for the Grass, and +20 points for the Bush. If that Bush also matched with two other Bushes in a combo, you will then get +100 points for the Tree you constructed.

Other sources of points:

• Super buildings are generally worth double the points of their regular counterparts.
  
• Giant Bears or Tombstones however, do not give points. Churches and Cathedrals do though.
  
• Tool items that you can place such as Crates do not give points.
  
• Treasure Chests occasionally give points.

Deleting items with the Imperial Bot item will however subtract points. And the point loss penalty is generally greater than the points you got from placing/building the item in the first place. So do try to not delete expensive buildings often when the game inevitably forces you to (assuming you don't have Giant Bears to deal with).

There are five Game Modes in the Steam PC version of Triple Town. Each with their own differences.

• Standard Colony
  
• Peaceful Valley
  • No Ninjas
    
  • No Giant Bears
    
  • Lakes
    
• City on a Lake
  • Central Lake
    
• City on an island
  • Lakes
    
  • No Ninjas
    
• A dangerous forest
  • Many bears spotted
    
  • Lakes
    

(Note: "Lakes" means the map is surrounded by water on all sides)

You can access the different game modes from your Capital City. There are five boats at the harbour of the bottom left of your Capital City. One of them is guaranteed to be the Standard Colony game mode, and another is guaranteed to be the Tutorial boat so you can revisit the Tutorial anytime. The remaining four game modes will rotate out among the remaining three boats every 24 hours. You can stop specific boats from rotating out if you keep saves.

When you click on a boat to start a game, you start a save. This save will be persistent and always be there until you finish that particular colony. This enables you to leave a game mid-way, come back to the Capital City, and then start a game on a different boat / game mode. People trying for Triple Castles or high scores will be doing this often to farm coins in one mode, and then use said coins in another.

Once a boat has a save going, it will never rotate out. If all four available boats have saves, then none of them will rotate out. This is how you can keep a desirable game mode like say, Peaceful Valley around forever. If you have to quit after you finish a game, just click on the boat to start a new one before quitting. You can tell if a boat has an ongoing save by looking at the sails. If the sails are rolled up, then there is no save. If the sails are unfurled and visible, there is a save. Here is a diagram from the devs' official support documentation:

















The full table of differences between game modes is below:

There are a number of items that you can use in-game that aren't just bears and buildings.

These things let you delete a single item or kill a single bear. When you delete a building, generally they will subtract points equal to some multiple of the building's point value. Exact amount deleted depends on building. You can find the full table of values in Appendix A. They can spawn during normal play, and you can also purchase them in the coin shop.

You cannot delete Castles or higher tier buildings with Imperial Bots. Once built, they're there forever until they're used to build higher tier buildings.

These can be used as wildcard matches, or to place on the ground as Rocks. They are part of the regular item pool, and you can also purchase them in the coin shop.

This item lets you see the next five (5) items that will be coming up after your current one. In the example screenshot, the current item is a Giant Bear (cursor next to item panel), and the Fortune Cookie is saying the next five items are Grass, Giant Bear, Grass, Grass, and Giant Bear in that order. Make sure to remember them though because once you click on the Continue button, you can't go back and look again. They are not part of the regular item pool so you can only get them via buying them from the coin shop, or as drops from your Capital City Military buildings.

This item, once placed on the field, will tell you the next item that will spawn after your current one. In that sense, it is basically an unlimited but short-ranged Fortune Cookie. If you buy more Time Machines, you can see more moves ahead past one. They are not part of the regular item pool, so you can only get them via purchasing them from the coin shop. I do not know if they drop from Capital City buildings at this time.

This item, once placed on the field, acts as a temporary Storehouse in case you need to save more than one item temporarily. Once you put something in the Crate, and then take it out, the Crate is destroyed so use them carefully. They are not part of the regular item pool. They can be purchased from the coin shop, or obtained as a drop from your Capital City Military buildings.

This item lets you undo one move. You cannot undo multiple moves at once, only one, so while they are very useful, remember that they are limited and you cannot just buy a bunch of them to undo multiple moves at once. They are not part of the regular item pool and can only be purchased from the coin shop.

The devs' support documentation for the Steam PC version mention these items but I have never seen them in-game and I don't know what they do. If they turn out to be mobile-only, I will remove them from this guide.

The Capital City is basically your home base, or the game's version of a main menu. From here, you can choose to start or resume a game via the boats in the harbour, build Farming/Industry/Military buildings, or decorate with decorations.

You can also expand the Capital City beyond its initial 5x5 size by purchasing expansions with coins. I do not know what the maximum dimension size is, if there is one. There is no way to delete expansions as far as I know, so you cannot delete land on it's placed so plan accordingly.

You can have as many ongoing games as you have boats, and switch between them as much as you want. For detailed information on how the boats work, see the Game Modes section.

These buildings in the Capital City are also part of the Match 3 gameplay. You have to match three (3) Tier 1 buildings of the same type (e.g. three Seeds, or three Ores, or three Lumbers, but not a mix) to get a Tier 2 building. Then you match Tier 2 buildings to get Tier 3 buildings, all the way to Tier 10. You can also match 4 buildings to get super versions of these Capital City buildings too. There is nothing special about super Capital City buildings so unless you care about their appearance, there is no need to construct super buildings in the Capital City.

Capital City buildings also give out awards based on the points you collect. Every point you gain in an ongoing game is added to the running total (aka. game doesn't have to end for the points to count), and once you pass the threshold for a reward, the Capital City building will glow to indicate it has a drop available for you. The reward is dependent on the highest tier building you have placed of that building type. So for example, if you have a several tier 5 buildings and a tier 6, then you will get tier 6 rewards from the tier 6 building. The buildings also give out only one item at a time and extra points do not roll over and furthermore, the reward counter will not count points until you collect your latest reward. So if you want to maximise your rewards, you should check in on your Capital City frequently during a game. The Capital City buildings will also tell you how many points are left until the next reward to help you keep track.

Farming buildings will drop a reward every 40,000 points. They will drop lower tier Farming buildings, or drop buildings you can use in-game, ranging from Grass to Houses at tier 10.
Industry buildings will drop a reward every 120,000 points. They will drop lower tier Industry buildings, or small amounts of coins. The official dev support documentation also mentions getting "additional turns" but I am unsure what that means because the Steam PC version has no limit on turns.
Military buildings will drop a reward every 320,000 points. They will drop lower tier military buildings, or items you can use in-game such as Fortune Cookies, and Crates.

You can check out the full list of drops in Appendix B.

Decorations in the Capital City are purely cosmetic as far as I know. They do nothing so they exist only for aesthetics.

When you first start the game, you get your choice of a unique decoration item.

The Capital City coin shop also includes a "Crane" item. In the case that you make a mistake placing something in the Capital City, or you changed your mind and want to move it elsewhere or take it off entirely, you can pay 1,200 coins to pick up that item off the ground. You can place that item elsewhere, or put it back in your inventory (untested). Note, if you pick up a super version of a building with the Crane, it will turn into the regular version. The devs said there are no plans to fix this any time soon. So if you're going to build a super version of a building, make sure you're absolutely sure you're putting it in the correct place.

Coins by design were an important part of the game in the original mobile versions of the game and some of the design principles follow the game here to Steam. Unlike the PC Steam version, you had a limited number of turns you could play so you have to buy extra turns with coins. On top of that, you can use coins to purchase items to help you with your game. They can help you out of jam, undo a mistake, and clear out squares. The PC Steam version does not require you to purchase turns to play, but it does still let you farm coins and then use them for gameplay. This section is about all the ways you can earn coins.

Coins can be earned from the following sources:

• Endgame Rewards
  
• Constructing Super Buildings
  
• Treasure Chests
  
• Capital City Industry

Your main income source for coins will probably come from the rewards you get at the end of a game once you are no longer able to build because you ran out of space. There are three types of coin rewards that are awarded at the end of the game: Colony level, Buildings, and Points. In that order.

Your colony level is based on the current point value at the top of the screen. You start out as an Encampment at tier 1, all the way to Megalopolis at tier 11 at 5,000,000 points. Depending on your colony level, you get a different amount of coins. The higher the colony level, the better the coins.

You get coin rewards based on what high-tier buildings you have on your map at the end.

The final source of endgame coins comes from the final score. Once the game finishes awarding you the Colony Level and Building coin rewards, you get a final batch of coins depending on the endgame score. It will tell you that you got X,XXX coins + some capital city drops. I could not find any information on the relationship between point and coin rewards (read: can't find the equation) so I cannot say more than that. I plan to re-visit this in the future and collect some data but until then, you'll have to make do with this vague handwave that usually I get between 1,000 to 3,000 coins on a 100,000 to 300,000 point colony in the Standard Colony game mode.

As mentioned before, constructing super buildings gives you coins. How many coins you get depends on the tier of super building. For example, the lowest tier super building is a super Bush and that gives only 2 coins. Unfortunately, super Castles and onwards do not give coins so super Mansions is the highest tier building that will give you coins so if you are trying to optimise your games for coin gain, you probably want to stop building super buildings at the Castle level and higher. The full table is below:

As far as I can tell, no other buildings reward coins. So Churches, Cathedrals, etc. do not reward coins if you use 4 or more buildings to make them. If you want coins, you will have to progress them into Treasure Chests.

Treasure Chests can give coins. Whether or not you'll get some will depend on the luck of the draw.


I don't have access to the game internals so I don't know probabilities. If you find a reliable source and can link me to them in the comments, I'll update the guide to include them.

The last source of coins in Triple Town are the Industry buildings in your Capital City. Every 120,000 points you earn will trigger a drop in the Industry building of the highest level in your Capital City. Once you click on the building, they will drop something. Sometimes it's more Industry buildings, sometimes it's coins. Farming and Military buildings do not drop coins, only Industry.

The coins you earn can be used on in-game shops. There are three type of items you can spend coins on: Capital City Upgrades, Capital City Decorations, and In-Game Items
The game does not have microtransactions so you cannot just buy coins when you need them like in the mobile versions. You will have to earn every coin you need to use via gameplay.




These are available in any game mode. The shop restocks every 750 moves.

As of 2022, there are only 10 achievements. They are not particularly complex or require you to go out of your way to do them, so if you're the kind of person who gets anxiety about starting a new game because you are worried you'll never 100% it like me, you can rest easy. All of these achievements will come about naturally as part of regular gameplay. Well, most of them.

The breakdown of the achievements is split into three general parts:

• Regular building progression (4 achievements)
  
• Building super buildings (3 achievements)
  
• Bears (2-3 achievements)

There are none related to the capital city. Theoretically they can all be done in your first game. While that's unlikely for somebody who's never played before, that's just how simple they are.

Upper Class - Built your first mansion



Royal Welcome - Built your first castle



Walking on Air - Built your first sky castle



Triple Castle - Built your first floating Triple Castle ... the pinnacle of civilization!



These achievements are for building regular buildings, in increasing order of progression.
To get Upper Class, you just need to combine 2 Houses and a Crystal, or 3+ Houses together to build a Mansion.
To get Royal Welcome, you just need to combine 2 Mansions and a Crystal, or 3+ Mansions together to build a Castle.
To get Walking on Air, you just need to combine 2 Castles and a Crystal, or 3+ Castles together to build a Sky Castle.
To get Triple Castle, you just need to combine 3 Sky Castles and a Crystal, or 4+ Sky Castles together to build a Triple Castle.

You cannot miss these on your way to building a Triple Castle.

Upper-Upper Class - Built your first two-tier mansion using four or more houses



Kings before Dukes - Built your first mega-castle using four or more mansions



Showoff -
Built your first mega-sky-castle using four or more castles (yeah, yeah, we know you're good at this!)

These achievements are potentially miss-able so you will have to put in a little bit of effort to get them.
To get Upper-Upper Class, you will have to build a super Mansion, where you need to use 3 Houses and a Crystal, or 4+ Houses at once to build it. If you build a regular Mansion, it will not count.
To get Kings before Dukes, you will have to build a super Castle, where you need to use 3 Mansions and a Crystal, or 4+ Mansions at once to build it. If you build a regular Castle, it will not count.
To get Showoff, you will have to build a super Sky Castle, where you need to use 3 Castles and a Crystal, or 4+ Castles at once to build it. If you build a regular Sky Castle, it will not count.

Bear Bane - Terminated six bears in a single blow.



Bear Apocalypse - Terminated a dozen (12) bears in a single blow.



Ca-ching! - Created your first treasure chest



The first two achievements should happen naturally as you play in any mode with Giant Bears. Just have a closed off section of the map with at least 12 squares, and just keep dumping Giant Bears in them until the area fills up and they die. With a little bit of planning, you should be able to kill enough bears to construct enough Cathedrals to convert into a Treasure Chest for the third achievement.

An example of how to kill 15 Giant Bears at once:
Before:
After:


The last achievement isn't necessarily restricted to just Giant Bears because you can construct Treasure Chests via Rocks and Mountains but I personally would rather use Cathedrals to construct Treasure Chests instead of using Crystals since Crystals are a precious resource for getting higher tier buildings faster.

Note: I do not know if building/buying a Large Treasure will count for this achievement.

To be filled at a later date. I apologise, this section would've been the main reason anybody would've bothered to click on a guide but I promise I'll finish it in due time.

Disclaimer: The drops are hand-collected by me. They are by no means complete.
The only drop % I have is the 1% for Super Bush that is mentioned in the official dev support site. I do not have enough data to guess drop rates for other items, though I can say the drop rate gets significantly better the higher you go.


(Yes, you don't get coins for matching 4 to make Mega Castles and higher. That is not a typo)

You don't seem to get any coin or item rewards for anything Bear-related, and super versions of these buildings also do not seem to exist. Probably because Treasure Chests are reward enough.

Disclaimer: Drop lists are hand-collected by me. They are by no means complete.

Farming Set will produce basic game rewards such as Grasses, Bushes... and if you create a Hotel (highest level Farming Set building), you have a chance for a House to drop!"

Farming Buildings drop a reward every 40,000 points regardless of tier.

Industry Set will produce coins for you... and if you create higher level buildings in the set, you have a chance for additional turns!

Industry Buildings drop a reward every 120,000 points regardless of tier.

Military Set will produce special items such as Fortune Cookies, Crates, Time Machines, and so on. The higher level buildings you have in the Military Set the better the rewards!

Military Buildings drop a reward every 320,000 points regardless of tier.


Needing the equivalent of almost 20,000 copies of the Tier 1 item means if you want to build a top tier building of each type (or even a super version), you're going to be playing for a long, long while. Hope you're buckled down for the long haul. ;)

This section is for listing what drops I got from Treasure Chests. The list is hand-collected and by no means complete.


(Honestly, I don't remember super chests existing so I don't know why this section exists in my drop notes. I'll re-confirm/de-confirm in a future update.)

Note: The in-game description says that Large Treasure Chests give four (4) drops at a time. If duplicate drops are a thing, probabilities can be >100%.

I would like to thank Spryfox for making this fun game, and for posting a very helpful set of documentation to get me started. Couldn't have understood the game (or written this guide) without it. And to you, for managing to survive reading through the whole thing. The guide turned out several times larger than I imagined it would be but I had fun writing it (Now to just fill in the holes I left X_X).

As for things that I plan to add to the guide, I plan on at least working on the following:

• Filling out the Strategy section, specifically going over thought processes for high scores, tool usage, optimal coin farming strategies, and also common matching combo patterns.
  
• Editing pass.
  
• Include pictures of every item.
  
• Update the infographics with the latest item graphics.
  
• Fix any errors, mistakes, and omissions I made about gameplay.

Thank you again for reading my guide. I hope that you got something out of it and/or the information here helps you in your future colonies, and/or it will help once the guide is more complete. If you spotted an error, or just want something included, or have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment and I will do my best to address it. And be sure to check out the official documentation on Spryfox's site. They don't have forums anymore, but a lot of the information in this guide came from their support site.

Happy matching~