You know the story. Boys meet girl, girl’s mother is arrested for high treason, girl locks herself away, boys attempt to woo her by passing notes to all the castle staff, including the King, girl won’t give up the goods for less than four letters, you know the drill.
Love Letter does however make the story rather more compelling. Branded as a micro-game (a board/card game with very few components), LL uses a deck of 16 cards, 13 red cubes and a minimalistic rulebook to tell the tale of young suitors passing their romantic scribblings to the Princess.
The gameplay is remarkably simple. Each card has an ability, which when played comes into effect. Each player is dealt one card from the deck, then at the start of their turn the player draws a second card and chooses which one to play; the card then sits face up in front of that player until the end of this round of play.
The cards include the Guard (where the player tries to guess what is in an opponent’s hand; if they’re right, the opponent is eliminated), the Prince (which forces the opponent to discard their current card and draw a new one) and the Handmaiden (which prevents the player from being targeted by their opponents until the player’s next turn). The cards are also ranked according to their importance in the castle, so the lowly Priest is only ranked a 2, whilst the Countess is a lofty 7.
Once the deck is depleted, all players who haven’t been eliminated compare their remaining card; the highest rank card is the winner, meaning that player has successfully passed their yarn d’amore to the Princess and takes a red cube for their trouble. The players reset the game and play again until one player accumulates four love cubes, at which point the Princess is so impressed they ride off into the sunset together, or something equally romantic.
As you’ve probably guessed, a lot of the game revolves around figuring out what cards are in other players’ hands. At the start of each round of play, one card is randomly removed from the deck before card are dealt to the players. This leaves some intrigue in play, as there’ll always be an ‘unknown quantity’ that players will need to work around in their bids to eliminate the other players. However, even with this extra feature you’ll quite often end up in situations from which you cannot escape unless your opponent can’t count or read. This can either be taken as design excellence in keeping the game to a predictable time span, or a restriction within gameplay that sometimes makes tactical decisions moot. I’d hedge towards the former, since these situations only seem to arise when the deck is nearly depleted anyway, and supports the multiple play throughs per game required. Still, it can be galling to end up being stuck in a no-win situation.
Each game is relatively short, so you’d expect playtime to be short too. Well, it CAN be, but often games take anywhere up to 45 minutes to finish as everyone clings on to claim the last love cube they need. It’s still not a deal breaker, but just bear in mind that Love Letter is not the 10 minute, between-games filler it appears. Also, repeated play throughs can make the game a tad repetitive. I just got the feeling the game was trying to be a quickie but actually filled an evening slot I’d reserve for a fuller game.
The art work is beautiful, understated but highly detailed. The card-stock is decent quality, but I would recommend sleeving as soon as possible since you’ll be shuffling these bad boys A LOT. The basic edition also comes in an awesome faux velvet bag with gold lettering that sets it apart from other micro-games.
So Love Letter is a ’quick’ game that takes longer than expected, but with its simple mechanics and gorgeous artwork you won’t mind too much! Plus this is a cracking game for people who are just starting to dip into the board game hobby, and its small size keeps the cost down whilst being portable enough to chuck in your pocket and take to the local gaming club. Love Letter makes a great addition to any collection.
Images courtesy of Sarah Wallace.
