Love Letter as a classroom game

 There are a couple of classes that I sometimes sub for where board games can be used for learning purposes. And, I honestly have more than enough material to last until the end of the school year, I still keep thinking about even more stuff.

And if part of the lesson is having the kids figure things out for themselves, having components that help teach the rules is something to look for.

One game that I have already been discussing using is Cunning Folk, the game that got me interested in Button Shy (and that’s an interest that has been very good for me. Button Shy is awesome for the casual PnPer) yYou can’t learn the game just by looking at the cards but you can learn a lot.

But another game that fits my needs (relatively short playing time, informative components, easy to learn) is Love Letter. That’s a game that you can practically learn just from the cards.

The individual  decisions the kids would get to make are very simple. Two cards per turn and every card tells you just what it does. But every decision affects the game and you have to pay attention to what everyone else is doing. There’s a very small jump between learning the rules and making critical decisions.

I am reminded why Love Letter was a watershed event. It channels interaction and decisions is tiny, focused format. I don’t know if I will ever have the chance to use it in the class room but I am confident it would work there.

Love Letter, the tiny game that started a revolution

If there is one game that I have to thank for having a lot more micro games to look at, it is Love Letter.

Love Letter didn't create the genre and I don't know if it's the best one out there. But it has breathed new life and new interest into micro games and has become the new yard stick to measure them by.

Love Letter consists of sixteen cards, plus some little red cubes that are just a handy way of keeping score. You could replace them with a pencil and paper or a good memory of you want the game to be just pure cards.

The idea behind the game is that everyone is trying to get their own love letter to the princess, passing through various people who are close to the princess. It's a pretty thin theme but I think it manages to work pretty well for just 16 cards.

The game is very simple. After everyone is dealt out one card, you draw a card on your return so you have a hand of two. After you play one of those two cards, it's the next players turn. After the deck runs out, whoever has the highest card in their hand wins that hand. Or the game, if you're playing by the original rules which just has a single hand be the game.

But you knew there had to be a twist. Every card has some kind of special power. They range from the guard who lets you guess another player's card and knock them out of the hand if you get it right to the princess who can win you the hand if you have her at the end but if you ever reveal her before then you automatically lose.

The game is all about bluffing and the interaction of the different cards. Honestly, there is only so much bluffing that you can do in the game because you are limited to two cards. However, Love Letter play so quick that I don't see how that's a problem. And only having the choice of two cards isn't that restrictive, again when the game is so short. It practically becomes a feature.

For us, Love Letter hasn't been that great as a two player game. However, I have had a lot more fun with it as a four player game. Which has made me come to this conclusion about it. One of its great strengths is that it plays well as a three to four player game. In fact, I think that is key why the game has gained so much popularity.

You see, there are plenty of two player micro games out there. I think that is one of the natural spaces for the genre. Pico 2, R, Tides of Time, Coin Age, all well regarded micro games that are designed for two. After that, we start looking at social deduction games for large groups, like Werewolf.

Love Letter plays like a Euro with a Euro theme and is for a Euro-sized group. I do think it's a pretty good game but I think it did an amazing job finding an audience.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/129622/love-letter

What is a micro game?

What exactly is a micro game?

Micro games are a concept that has fascinated me pretty much from the start of my interest in boardgames. Before I helped create a regular board gaming group, a lot of my gaming was done at restaurants or coffee shops or the like. Games that didn't take up much space and were easy to teach and quick to play for something that I was looking for.

And, quite frankly, something that has kept on being pretty darn handy.

The concept of micro games has been around since the 1970s, when pocket-size wargames started coming out with Ogre being the first and still one of the most famous. More recently, the tiny card game Love Letter has inspired a wave of little games aimed at hobby gamers.

Frankly, I'm not going to say that size or portability is the distinguishing feature of the micro game. a travel chess set is pretty darn portable but it is not a micro game. It is everything that a regular chess set is, just smaller. A regular deck of cards can fit in your pocket but I don't think anyone would consider that a micro game.

(Of course, I own a travel chess set and decks of regular playing cards and am glad of them. They just don't really fit into this particular discussion)

If you were to play a game of Ogre and a game of Love Letter back to back, they would be completely different experiences. The only thing that would be similar about the two games is that they would be fairly small. Ogre is a more complex game with more pieces and definitely takes longer to play. Since I've already ruled out size, what makes both of them definitively micro games?

This is what I think is the real defining aspect. They both have fewer pieces then you would expect. Ogre is an old-school wargame but it only has one small sheet of counters. Love Letter consists of just sixteen cards, plus some cubes for scoring. For their genres, they just don't have a lot of components.

And it really depends on the genre. You don't need anything to play charades and no one will be calling that a micro game.

Mind you, what is important is that micro games, as a concept, have been around since at least 1977. Probably longer but that's when the name got minted with Ogre. And, over the course of nearly four decades, a lot of micro games have been developed and made. And there are enough of them that are good, even great, to make them worth playing and enjoying.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5206/ogre

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/129622/love-letter