Love Letter Review

Short, quick, and unassuming. No, we're not talking about me here but rather the small slice of cards Alderac imported from the Far East in 2013 that lit up the industry like the dash on a 747 careening towards the Earth in a terrifying dive. This completely inoffensive and simple game brought light gamers to the table like mice drawn to cheese. It sucked in the strategy purists. It even lured in the secretiv covens of abstract-only gamers like a siren breaking thin silence. Most importantly, it brought the stoic everyday man, woman and child who knew nothing beyond passing Go and collecting Tatum O'Neal's money owed. Love Letter came out of the void to unite an entire community of gamers, new and old, and it was showered with praise for its efforts.

How can such a slim set of components provide an output so much greater than what's shoved into its lean system? Love Letter's greatest trick is that it makes you feel clever. This powerful drug triggers an instant release of dopamine that hits your pleasure center in such smooth and concerted fashion that you don't even realize you're being duped. This isn't a new concept but cutting directly down to that core function in such a deliberate way removes any obstacles or red tape that could possibly obfuscate the enjoyment. Love Letter knows what it is doing and its aiming right at that bulbous vein on your forearm.

Mechanically you're just drawing a card and then choosing between two. The beauty is in how the different effects interact, producing compacted moments of celebration. Half the time your options will force your hand, but by giving you the choice of who you target and possibly a tiny bite of information you feel empowered as if you've somehow wrestled your destiny away from lady luck. When it works out, it's usually because the gods of chance threw a few coins your way while stepping on the neck of your opponent.

The game has a smooth flow that slightly ramps up over time as the deck gets whittled away and the pool of cards shrinks. The most common effect in the game - Guard, has you guessing the card another player is holding. If successful they’re out of the game for a few minutes while you finish the round. What's interesting is that the psychological deduction has opportunity to breath due to other interactions and effects cascading across the shrinking pool of cards. With simple logic you can narrow down your selection which gives you a shallow yet fully realized sense of agency that's hard to ignore. When you guess correctly the drug takes hold and you're given a rush like you read about. You're too hopped up and air high-fiving the table to realize the portrait you just composed was paint by numbers and you're no Picasso.

Working in strategic parallel with the quality of instant clever reciprocation is the game's short playtime and small price tag. By making the snack easy to digest it lowers any barriers or flags in a consumer's way and pulls you to the table like a gentle child asking to play. There's no risk beyond 5 minutes and you can convince nearly anyone to punch that ticket and give it a chance. Like a velvety bar of chocolate, the sustenance is hollow but the taste is quick and sharp.

Somehow, an instant reaction of "not bad" mounts the shallow incline of low expectations to produce positive word of mouth in mass quantities. Everyone and their grandmother picks up that endearing satin bag and actually gets it to the table. That quickly Love Letter became the Melissa virus of the tabletop industry and tore across the countryside like a galleon full of infested rodents unleashed upon the land.

Love Letter deserves its recognition and it has absolutely earned its pedestal. Hating this little card game is like hating Jill. That sweet, kind woman that everyone wants to be. You can't hate Jill.

Yet it's all Jill's fault. Blaming the trendsetter you love for the ensuing trend you hate is an irrational demeanor based solely on emotion. Still, this game is the chief culprit in spawning a legion of miniscule games that not only tossed the components but also chucked the fun right out the window of the moving car. Like Stripe and his cronies deluged in a waterfall, the ensuing birth of terror would blot out the sun.

In Love Letter’s wake this growing swell of microgames has to led to a large amount of noise with little to no signal. Everyone in a gaming group owns two or three of these small games with half a mechanic and no spark, and is eager to whip ‘em out and kill a couple of minutes. None approach the aptitude of that AEG original and amidst the deluge I can’t help but beckon for the real Slim Shady to please stand up.

Love Letter is absolutely worth five minutes and an Alexander Hamilton. It's the prototypical filler that eclipses the entirety of its competition. It's beautiful, direct, and sweet. Just make sure you lock its offspring in the basement and never speak of them again.