Love Letter: Kanai Factory Edition
Once upon a time, there was a kingdom in which lived a beautiful princess. She was a sweet soul, kind to all and was thus loved by the whole of the kingdom. Several young men had fallen helplessly in love with the princess, but unable to enter the castle, all they could do was send her letters of their affection. However, to their dismay, they found that letters from just anyone would not reach the princess. So the young would-be suitors set themselves on finding allies among the castle’s servants, so that they might deliver their letter to the princess personally.
Love Letter has become a worldwide hit with its simple yet deep gameplay. With only 16 cards, it contains hours of fun for everyone as you attempt to win the heart of the beautiful princess, while preventing your challengers from doing the same!
Love Letter Kanai Factory Edition is based on the same rules and cards as the Love Letter Tempest Edition but features the charming art and graphics from the original game first published in Japan. The Kanai Factory Edition is a limited release by AEG and will only be available while supplies last!
User Reviews (3)
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What can I say about Love Letter. It’s amazing. The game is played in quick rounds. You draw a card and “discard a card.” The discard phase equates to playing a cards special abilities. Each card has an ability such as “look at target players hand,” (a players hand is one card). Your goal is to gain influence (highest point value of card) and get your letter to the Princess (the Princess is a card, she happens to have the highest value). You play until their are no more cards to draw (16 card deck) or everyone else has been knocked out (different cards have abilities to knock out other players). The game is quick and wonderful.
Pros
Quick
Some basic strategy and gamesmanship
Not cutthroat (can be a little if you want)
Cons
Some may want a bit more strategy (Try Coup)
None that I can think of.
This game can be a light in-between games game or you can really make a night of it playing it a few times.
Do you only have a couple of minutes to play a board game?
Play this game, you can play 5 rounds in less than 20 minutes.
Do you not have enough room to bring your favorite, yet gigantic, board game?
Stuff this game in your pocket, it’ll probably fit (unless you have tiny pockets.)
I’m not going to explain the rules, as you can learn them online, or even simply reading the instructions. But this is a great game, with a great mixture of luck, strategy, and bluffing. (You WILL have unlucky turns, but thankfully the rounds are so quick that it doesn’t really matter.)
I’m not in love with the theme, which is why I rated the components four stars. However, I LOVE the box, and the quality of the cards and the cubes. Ah, and if at all possible, buy some small wooden hearts to replace the cubes. The cubes are useful, but not at all thematically coherent.
I really can’t recommend this game enough!
The fact is, I spent 20 minutes typing and re-typing trying to explain the rules to you because of how easy, simple, intricate, and borderline perfect they are.
But I’m not going to do that. I’m sure you can find “How to Play Love Letter” articles all over the internet. Just gotta say that for the price of this game, (and assuming you’ve ever enjoyed a board/card game before), you are doing yourself a major disservice by not owning this game.
The short version is: you win by being the last person not eliminated from the round, OR by having the highest card in your hand after the deck draws out.This opens up possible victory via process of elimination, out-manipulating your opponents, having the best poker face, OR by (maybe subtly coaxing) your opponents into getting a little too greedy…
All of this depth from a game with SIXTEEN cards – it’s truly an impressive achievement.
There is some luck involved, as there will be with any card game with random starting hands, but not so much that skilled play can’t save the day for you.
One thing worth mentioning – this version: the Kanai Factory Edition, has a slight rules difference than most of the other versions. Again, I’m trying to avoid teaching you the whole game in a review, but the Kanai version has a rule where you can potentially instantly lose if you hang on to high value cards (which, recall, is the goal of the game).
The other versions (Tempest, etc) replace that rule with one that may either allow for more strategy….or may put you at a serious disadvantage. Personally, I like the sudden death version of the original Kanai Factory Rules, but you may want to do your research when choosing a version (although technically, you could play with either rule set with any version….shhh don’t tell).