Love Letter: Deliver Your Heart (Carefully Folded)

[BalGAmor]

In a quiet castle full of secrets, suspicion, and the occasional dramatic betrayal, there’s one goal that matters above all else: get your love letter into the Princess’s hands. Simple? Not even close.
 
Welcome to the new revisited version of Love Letter on BGA, the wonderfully sneaky card game where romance is risky, deduction is essential (unlike seduction), and your heartfelt message is constantly in danger of being intercepted, discarded, or, worst of all, thrown into the fire.
 
You don’t deliver your letter directly. That would be far too easy (and far too honest). Instead, you rely on a rotating cast of castle characters to carry your message. Each character has their own personality and ability: some help you gather information, some eliminate rivals, and some quietly ruin your plans while smiling politely.
 
Every card matters. Each decision reveals something. And every move sends signals to the other players whether you mean it or not. Some cards give you power and control, letting you knock others out of the round or peek at hidden information. Others are subtle, helping you stay under the radar while you quietly build your advantage.
 
Love Letter is not just about delivering a message. It’s about surviving the castle long enough to send it (and there is an easy way to learn that trick). And maybe, just maybe, winning the Princess’ heart along the way.
https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=loveletter
 
Thanks to Seiji Kanai, the game designer, and Z-Man Games, the publisher, for allowing us to have their game on BGA. And a huge thank you to Moof for putting so much heart into revisiting this now-classic title.
 
This was your Friday release.
Get ready to feel the love this weekend. Take care and play fair…

[Zalk]

No way! At last release!

[Ursula1972]

What's new?

[EllieK]

The Assassin, Cardinal, Jester, etc. are all gone. I'm not sure why. The opportunity to score 3 hearts on a turn is gone. I loved the 5 player expansion. This one falls short. Sorry new publisher, why not get rid of the Prince while you're at it? Boring.

[thefilmcritic]

Brilliant - I love playing this, looking forward to trying it out!

[gamingjj]

Thank you! I've been playing the Beta for a little while now & it's a much better implementation than previously. Love it

[Tzinacantli]

I adored the old Love Letter game so, so much. It was pure fun. When I tried this adaptation, I had no desire to ever play it again :c

[corbyers111]

I'm sorry but this new version is terrible. Each turn takes at least double the time to play of what it used to take. BGA decided to take out several of the fun cards when playing with five players including the priestess and the 9 card. Also no jesters, assassins, psychophants and now 6 is a new card (which is actually a decent addition) And we have pointless spies that are just completely luck based. This game is now 75% luck whereas before if you were playing the five-player version it was 75% strategy. Plus now it takes almost an hour to play because of the clunky Windows 98 style setup.

Also, forgetting the gameplay for a second, it takes three clicks for every play, the players do not show up in clockwise order so it's hard to tell who's going next. The font is way too small on the cards, and instead of just getting simple numbers beside each player now we have to see the entire card, which I guess is more realistic compared to the physical version but it was so much more intuitive to just see the numbers and be able to deduce that way without having to scroll down to the bottom of the screen. I was very very much looking forward to this game being re-released and now I'm never going to play it again unless something major happens.

[BarnardsStar]

BGA decided to take out several of the fun cards

Wrong. Most changes to games come at the request of the publisher. Occasionally a change may be needed for technical reasons (this isn’t one of them), and even then the publisher would need to sign off on it.

In short, this site used to have Love Letter (2012) and now it has Love Letter (2019), a different enough game that BGG has a separate entry for it.

BGA doesn’t have a lot of control over the sorts of implementation details you are upset about, sadly.

[Darkgreenblue]

In short, this site used to have Love Letter (2012) and now it has Love Letter (2019), a different enough game that BGG has a separate entry for it.

BGA doesn’t have a lot of control over the sorts of implementation details you are upset about, sadly.

True. And more specifically, the expanded version with a fuller deck of additional cards (Bishop, Dowager, Assassin...) which was formerly available here, when playing with 5+ players, is Love Letter Premium (2016). I agree that it was easily the most compelling version, with far more opportunity for strategy. Sad that the publisher of that version must have decided to withdraw it from BGA. (Do we know why?)