One player starts the game kwa asking another player, "Truth au dare?" If the queried player answers, "truth," then the questioning player asks a question, usually embarrassing, of the queried player. If the queried player answers, "dare," then the questioning player asks the queried to do something, also usually embarrassing. After answering the swali au doing the dare, the queried player asks "truth au dare?" of another player and the game proceeds as before. The game may be expanded upon kwa adding additional options to choose from, such as making the dare apply to both the questioner and the queried, au incorporating Spin the Bottle to select the inayofuata person to be asked; this results in many different "variants" of the game, limited only kwa the players' creativity.
The game's title is sometimes extended to reflect additional options, for example: "truth, dare, double-dare, kiss, torture au promise". When double-dare is chosen, the person chosen is requested to do something but the person making the request is also expected to do the dare as well. When kiss is chosen the person must kiss a certain person sometimes of the same sex but not often. Torture, the person will be put in a scenario that will often embarrass au cause pain. Promise, wewe must make a promise and keep it (works similar to dare). The inayofuata person to make a dare can never copy that dare that was just aliyopewa to them.