Love
Letter

Love Letter (2012) is a push-your-luck card game about winning the princess's affection. You use cards with different abilities to knock out the other suitors. With a small number of cards and characters, it's as much about gaining information about what other players have, as simply having the winning card.

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Play involves drawing a card from the deck and adding it to the one in your hand. You then choose which card to keep and which to use. It's an important risk-reward decision. Do you choose the most attacking card to knock someone else out or the best defensive card which is least likely to be guessed by other players?

As you progress players use cards and leave them face up so you can see what has been played. Because there are only 21 cards and you know how many of each character value, things become increasingly tactical. Not only to avoid having common cards that may be guessed by others but working to ensure you have the highest card at the end of the round, as this wins.

The variety of the cards and their actions make this a really tactical game. The King card lets you swap cards with someone. The Chancellor lets you draw 2 new cards. The Guard lets you guess someone's card and force them out if you are right. The Priest lets you look at someone's hand. The tactics on how to play (and not to play) cards slowly change as you close in on the end of the game.

The result is a simple card game where you work to gain information about other players' hands as much as directly attacking them.

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Love Letter 23 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 9 days ago.