I haven’t been able to post review in the last fiew days, life got in the way. Hopefully this week goes better!

Today’s game is Lovecraft Letter.

TL;DR

Score: 9/10

Positives:

• Very easy to teach

• Very fast

• Light-hearted

• Very nice components

Negatives:

• Some folks really dislike “accusing”, they won’t like this game

The Review

Lovecraft Letter combines the classic Love Letter game with an H.P. Lovecraft theme. This isn’t just one of those simple Batman re-themes, if feels more like an expansion to Love Letter.

Image credit to Petra on bgg, source here

The goal of the game is to be the last surviving person. In your turn you will draw a card and play one of the 2 cards in your hand. Each card has a number and an associated action that you can perform. For instance, the card number 1 lets you attempt to guess someone else’s card and if you succeed they are out of the game. The number 8 card cannot be played and if you are ever forced to discard it you lose the game. Though the game has player elimination, the rounds are very quick and it won’t take long before you play again. If there were no cards left to be drawn, the person with the highest numbered card wins.

In the base Love Letter game, this was the entire game and boy did we enjoy playing it. It felt really great to play after a longer and heavier game. It’s just such a chill and light-hearted fun game. You don’t have to think too much, we mostly didn’t even care too much about odds or anything. Folks just like to accuse me of being a Princess and that was fun. Sometimes we ended playing Love Letter for the entire evening. It was great but eventually we burned out a bit.

That’s when Lovecraft Letter was released. The game is essentially the same but it adds a push your luck mechanic. Now there is an additional 8 alternative, green cards (1 for each number). Playing or discarding one of these alternative cards will leave you insane. The green cards will now have VERY strong abilities at your disposal, however you will need to do a sanity check before each of your turns. For each green card you have played/discarded you have to flip a card from the deck… if it’s a green or 8 card you just lose. It was such a simple and subtle twist in the game but it REALLY refreshed the game for us. If I have a green card in hand do I want to risk using its amazing power? It will certainly pay off… If you survive long enough to use it!

The components are great for the price. The game comes with a really neat box, a nice organizer, sleeves and poker chips. You’re set. If, for some reason, you don’t like the push your luck component added in Lovecraft Letter, you can still play base Love Letter just by removing the green cards.

I have really great memories playing this game for so many evenings with my friends. I still don’t get how such a simple game hooked us so hard, but it really did. You can teach this game to anyone, it’s so easy and plays in like 5 minutes. Can’t recommend it enough!

Context Information

Number of plays: Certainly 100+

Suggested player count: 4+

Average playtime: A single game is like 5 minutes and if you win 2 games as insane or 3 games as sane you are the ultimate winner. Sometimes it takes a while to find the winner, depending on the number of players, but each individual game is super fast.

Honorable mentions:

• Fantasy Realms - Trying to build combos is super fun

• Arboretum - I tend not to like “mean” games, but I don’t think one is as mean as people make it out to be. I love building my Arboretum!