Love Letter 

• Designer: Seiji Kanai
• Publisher: Z-man
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 14+
• Time: 15-30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4juD2xa
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In a quick game of risk and deduction, can you outwit your friends and earn the trust of the noble Princess? The noble Princess is looking for an ideal partner and confidant to help with her royal duties when she one day assumes the throne. You must prove your worth and gain her trust by enlisting allies, friends, and family of the Princess to carry a letter of intent to her. Can you earn the Princess’s trust and become her confidant?

In Love Letter, players are trying to get their love letter delivered to the princess who has locked herself away in sadness after the death of the queen.  The cards in the deck represent the various members of the court.  Players start with a card, draw one more, then play one of the two in hand.  At the end of the game, the member of the court remaining in one’s hand represents who carries your letter to the princess.  The player with the highest value card remaining in their hand wins a point, first to win a set number of points(depending on the number of players) wins the game.  What looks at first glance to be a simple game of luck quickly turns into a challenging game of deduction due to the special actions granted by playing each card. 

The deck of 21 cards ranges in value from 0 (low) to 9 (high).  Each card has a name (1’s are Guards, for example).  The cards have cleverly designed associated actions which are what make the game interesting.  For example, the level 9 Princess would be an automatic winning card BUT if you discard her for any reason you automatically lose the round.  This means if someone plays a 5-Prince (one player discards their hand) or a lowly 1-Guard (name a player and a card, if you correctly name their card they’re out of the round) they can eliminate that high-value 9 card from the running.  In a pinch, there’s the 7-King which lets a player outright trade hands with another player.

Other cards seek to grant information, the 2-Priest lets you look at a hand, while the 3-Baron makes it a competition between your held hand and another player’s with the low card holder eliminated from the round.  Holding the 8-Countess is great, but if you ever draw a 7-King or 5-Prince you are forced to discard her.  This not only drops you down in value but exposes to the rest of the players that you likely own a King or a Prince.  A player’s one defense is the Handmaid card which makes a player immune to any “attacks” for a single round.

Using astute card play and wise deductions makes for a fun, intense (but short) game.  While having a high card (via the luck of the draw) is helpful, it is even more important to play well.  I’ve seen games go to a high card of value “3” as well as some where everyone (but one, of course) was eliminated from the round entirely.  To keep the deduction component strong, one card is always secretly removed from the game before starting – thus making everyone just a little unsure where that “missing” card might lie.

The strategy in the game isn’t particularly deep, there is enough going on to keep you on your toes for the full ten to fifteen minutes.  A bit of “read my mind” going on as well as trying to read the other players to figure out what card(s) they are hiding.

This new version from Z-Man (2025) has a few extras from the original 2012 game.  There are two added characters – the 6-Chancellor and the 0-Spy.   They add two new actions to the game as well as providing enough cards in the deck to now stretch the gameplay to a max of 6 players.   The Chancellor gives you more information as you learn the identity of two cards in the deck.  The Spy gives you a backdoor way to winning a point.  If any player is the only player left at the end of the game who has played or discarded a Spy, that player also earns a victory point.  You can, of course, leave out these new cards if you want to play the classic original version – max 4 players.   

In this new 2025 version, the other change is the outer packaging.  Instead of coming in a blister hang-pack with the cloth bag inside, you now get the same cloth bag in a card-game sized box.  Yes, this means you have packaging within packaging – but my OCD brain much prefers having the uniform sized box to stack on my shelf as opposed to the freeform cloth bag!  If you’re one of those gamers who doesn’t care, you can always recycle the outer box.

If you don’t yet have a copy of this classic, this is one of those games that I think nearly every game collection could include.  It’s small – and this is one of the standby games  in my travel kit.  It’s quick to teach and play, and no gaming experience is really needed.   

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Matt C. – This game works quite well in my casual gaming family, primarily I believe because it moves along at such a brisk pace. Getting stung in one round isn’t too bad if you’re going to play another one in just a few minutes. There are so, so many flavors of the game out there but the basic is one of the best. One of the more interesting ones was an Infinity Gauntlet one that pitted several players against one. Not sure it was 100% balanced but it did change up the game in a fun way.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!  Dale Y
• I like it. Matt C.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

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