Schadenfreude is a trick-taking game. The game ends when any player has scored more than 40 points, and the winner is the closest to 40 without going over.

The card distribution includes some ranks of negative value, is a "must follow" game, and does not include any trump suits.

The winner of a trick is the person who played the second highest card of the lead suit. That player collects their card and any cards which did not follow suit into a score pile. However, a player can have at most one card of each rank in their score pile. If they would collect a second, both cards are instead discarded. At the end of a hand, a player scores an amount of points equal to the sum of the ranks of the cards they have collected.