Love letter is a quick card based game in which players take turns drawing and discarding cards based on characters from a royal court. Players are dealt a single character card and on their turn they will draw a second card and decide to discard one of the two. Each character is worth a different number of points when held at the end of the game and has a different ability when discarded. Play continues with each player drawing and discarding a card until all but one player are eliminated or the deck runs out and the player with the highest value card still in their hand wins the round.
This is a fun and snappy game that still manages to produce unique rounds each time for a high level of replayability despite the simplicity.
Unlike other character-based card games, in Love Letter players aren’t forced to “take on” a certain character role for the entire game. In contrast to a game like Coup, for example, in which players have to keep the identity of their characters secret for the entire game, in Love Letter you are constantly cycling through characters. The random element of drawing any combination of characters each round contributed to the high replayability of the game, as each round is ensured to be different from the last. Love Letter does not force players to keep the identities of characters secret for very long. As long as they can survive until their next turn, they will have the opportunity to discard a character whose identity has been revealed. Thus, keeping your characters secret is still an important mechanic, but it isn’t stressful because you aren’t committed to a single character for the whole game.
The only exception to this is the character of the Princess, who is worth the most points but cannot be discarded. This leads to interesting moments of gameplay where, if you draw the princess, your entire strategy has to rework itself around that card.
Ultimately, Love Letter is a game in which you may be eliminated before you even get a chance to take a turn (generally something that games need to avoid!), but the rounds are so fast and enjoyable to watch that it doesn’t really matter if you don’t get a chance to play.
Despite its simplicity, Love Letter fosters an interesting metagame, in which there’s joy in being the first player that gets eliminated who then gets to look at everyone’s cards and know each player’s secret identities. Overall, this is an excellent game that manages to be accessible to players who may not have a lot of experience playing board games and is very replayable.
