Base price: $35.
1 – 5 players.
Play time: ~30 minutes.
BGG | Board Game Atlas
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 2
Full disclosure: A review copy of Illiterati was provided by Gap Closer Games.
Okay, now we’re on to the second review I’ve written in my new home. There are a few I’ve published or done the photos for or moved things around for, but this is one of the first from-scratch reviews I’ve done since I moved up to Washington. Still feels weird, to be honest; I keep thinking I’m just up here for a vacation or something and headed back to California in a few weeks. I suppose that will fade. Either way, it’s Gen Con this week, so I wanted to give y’all a heads up on a game that I think is worth checking out if you’re going (or even if you’re not). Let’s talk about Illiterati, from Gap Closer Games!
In Illiterati, the eponymous group has set upon books and learning everywhere to destroy every book they can get their hands on. Why? Because reading is hard. Which, as an audiobook guy, I get to some degree, but I really just need something to do while I’m stuck in traffic. Players take on the role of librarians in the League of Librarians (lol), binding books that have otherwise been destroyed to try and stop the Illiterati. But be careful! These villains have abilities all their own, and they won’t take kindly to your insolence. Will you be able to bind enough books to fend off these crooks? Or will this end up spelling your defeat?
Contents
Setup
There are a few things to set up for this one. To start, deal each player a Library Card; this just has the guides and round order on it. Then, choose a difficulty level (Normal / Hard / Legendary).
There should be two bags. Choose one and place all the letters in it:
The other bag will be used for discarded letters. Then, deal five letters to each player and place three in the center to form the Library.
Deal each player a Torched (Red) Book.
Set the Waterlogged (Blue) Books aside for now; they’ll be used later.
Shuffle the Illiterari Villain Cards and place them nearby, leaving a row for them to be drawn into:
Finally, place the Burn Tracker and the timer nearby. If playing on Hard or Legendary, draw one or two letters (respectively) from the bag and place them on the Burn Tracker.
You should be ready to start!
Gameplay
Over the course of a few rounds, your goal is to rebind books, fight back the Illiterati’s advances, and complete the Final Chapter! Do all that and you win! Each round is broken up into three phases; let’s check them out.
Word Building Phase
This phase is pretty easy. To start, every player draws 7 letters (10 if you’re playing solo). If you run out of letters in the draw bag, the discard bag becomes the new draw bag. Very simple. Once you’re ready, flip the sand timer and you’ve got three minutes!
During this phase, players are trying to spell words, specifically words that match the prompts on their Book Cards. That said, just spelling words helps you survive. Players can swap letters, swap words, or break up and remix words; whatever they need. There will usually be some communal letters in the Library; any player can grab those as well. Just don’t touch another player’s letters without asking. Similarly, avoid having more than eight words! That’s not ideal.
Book Binding Phase
Once time is up, you can attempt to bind your book! To do so, you have to avoid burning letters. If you have any invalid or misspelled words, you must move them into the Library. Then, if the Library Limit has been exceeded, you burn a letter.
To burn a letter, you flip all the tiles in the Library face-down, mix them up, and take one, placing it face up on the Burn Tracker. If the Burn Tracker fills up, you lose. Try to avoid that.
If you did not burn any letters this round, you may bind a book, provided you meet its requirements! Note that if any player burned a letter, nobody binds a book. Generally, each card’s left size specifies its requirements; they’re usually either one word of a certain length or multiple words that use a certain total of letters that adhere to a specific category. Most cards also require you use a certain number of symbols in your word or words. If you meet the requirements, flip your book face-down and draw a new book of the other color! If you finished binding all of your books, you don’t draw any more, but you can still help your co-players bind books (and you still draw letters).
If you don’t like your letters, you can discard up to seven as a group and redraw; you don’t pause time while you do this and, as a penalty, you’ll draw an extra Villain during the Illiterati Attack Phase. This second Villain doesn’t Chain Attack, though (more on that later).
Illiterati Attack Phase
Now, the Illiterati attack! Draw one of the Villain cards, place it face-up, and resolve its effect. If that weren’t bad enough, if the Villain has attacked before (at least one card from that Villain is already in play), place the new card above the old one (so you can read both abilities), and then activate all of that Villain’s other abilities! This is called a Chain Attack.
Keep going until every player has bound the required number of books or everyone loses!
Final Chapter Phase / End of Game
Once all players have bound the required number of books for your difficulty level, the Final Chapter begins! To start, you draw one book as a team (your choice of color). Now, each player must complete the Final Chapter (right side) of the book during the same round as if it were their own book. If you do so successfully, you win!
Player Count Differences
As with a lot of games, there are trade-offs as you increase the player count. At two, you can pretty much keep track of the entire play landscape, no problem. The trouble is, you don’t have that many letters to choose from, collectively. As you increase the player count, the scope of what you can do increases as well, but you start to lose the ability to take in the entire play area with just a cursory glance. It almost becomes worth it to have one player take on more of a management role each round, helping other players find letters and create words to satisfy requirements (while keeping a few words for themselves, if they can). I wouldn’t necessarily say the game becomes harder with more players, though; after all, there are now more heads to put together, as well. It’s just a bit more to process (and more people to process it with). I’d happily play Illiterati at any player count.
Strategy
- Sometimes, surviving is better than making progress. Don’t necessarily force yourself into a knot trying to bind books, especially if you’re running out of time. If you manage to clear (or pretty close to clear) the Library, you will hopefully be able to survive until a future round. Just try to keep your letters together if you can.
- Also, sometimes you’re not going to be able to make progress. Sometimes you lack the letters or the symbols to necessarily bind a book! Noticing that relatively quickly when it happens can be pretty key, since that will let you focus on helping out your partner or just planning for subsequent rounds.
- Help your partner out! You’re on a team! Make sure you’re trading them letters that they need with symbols that they want. You can also suggest words if that’s helpful! Just remember, under the rules, no touching their stuff without permission. Keeps things aboveboard. Just help out as you can and where you can.
- I find that keeping the Library clear is generally good, both because you need it at higher difficulty levels and also some Illiterati Villains punish you for Library letters. There are a few Illiterati that really hate leftover letters in the Library (and for good reason! They’re useful), so they tend to go after them. Similarly, to complete the game at higher difficulty levels, you have to have cleared the Library entirely. It ends up making more sense to just try to constantly keep the Library empty as a result. You can’t pull it off every time,
- Do keep in mind that the Illiterati Villains will become more punishing over the course of the game, so you do want to move fast. The Villains Chain Attack by activating all of their previous attacks every time you draw a Villain that you’ve seen before. That’s bad, since it means they’ll gradually overwhelm you and knock out all of your letters. Try to do better than treading water each round, otherwise you run the risk of getting caught in a loop you can’t get out of.
- You are absolutely allowed to look up words, but you can’t stop the timer while you do it. Not sure about a word or a category? Look it up! Just be quick about it. This is one of the few word games that is totally fine with you looking up words, so, might as well.
- Everything is legal (basically) as long as it matches the category of your book. You can use proper nouns, acronyms; heck, one of the cards asks you to build out a complete sentence! As long as you can justify that it’s in service of your book’s category, it’s all legal.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- The theme here is a lot of fun! I really like the various villains as well. You’re saving words from a bunch of fancy bad guys. What’s not to like? Plus, the villains have a great set of characteristics between them. They’re very fun, and Audrey Jung did a great job on the art; everything really pops.
- This is a very atypical word game, which I like; how many times have you had to spell out a complete sentence before? I like how distinct the categories are; the blue cards tend to be about the structure of the words themselves and the red cards tend to be more about the words thematically. It’s a good mix.
- The cooperative play elements are great! I really like working with another player (or players) to come up with words and trade letters. I’ve been enjoying cooperative games more and more lately; they can be difficult but the stakes still feel a bit lower than playing competitively, sometimes. Plus I just prefer collaboration when possible.
- The real-time element is pretty perfectly executed, as well; there’s almost exactly enough time during the round for the game to feel stressful. I didn’t realize three minutes feels both so short and so long! It’s a good amount of time. Sand timers can be a bit finicky, but functionally, it’s still enough time to have a bit of a spelling-related breakdown and then pop right back into it.
- The Final Chapter is an extra entertaining boost of challenge onto the game. It’s basically an extra challenging round where everyone has to complete the same challenge at the same time, individually. What I like about it is that it lets you more specifically collaborate on a solution, but the problem is much harder. It’s pretty tricky!
- I just really enjoy word games. They’re one of my favorite genres pretty consistently. I think this goes back to being a spelling bee kid growing up. Never that good, but I liked doing it.
Mehs
- It’s a bit funny how hard that eight-word limit is to remember during gameplay. It just clean vanishes from your mind every now and then, which can be gently frustrating. It doesn’t come up that much either, though it’s likely designed to prevent players just hoarding letters and creating words forever.
Cons
- From a play perspective, it’s a bit frustrating when you start a round that you know you won’t be able to bind a book during (since you lack the letters). It would feel better from a player standpoint if we just skipped it, drew another Villain, and then went again, but I imagine there’s some level of gameplay integrity where you still have to put the effort into surviving.
Overall: 9 / 10
Overall, I loved Illiterati! As seen in some other relevant reviews (Ponkotsu Factory, for instance), I’m a sucker for a good word game, and this is a great word game. I find myself tilting towards cooperative games more and more lately, and it’s always nice to find another one that I am excited about playing and teaching and playing again. During our first game, we paid the game pretty much the highest praise possible, which was starting a second game immediately after finishing the first one. To me, that kind of says it all? Illiterati was engaging and dynamic and fun and frantic and all of those things combined to make for a game that we really just wanted to dive back into. We bumped up a difficulty level, immediately regretted it, but still somehow survived. Illiterati has great difficulty scaling; the various levels feel hard, especially because the harder tiers tend to make the game longer (causing you to get hit by the Illiterati Villains’ Chain Attacks, which can really mess you up). I do kind of wish I could skip a round where we already know we’re not going to be able to get any books bound, since it feels a bit rote to go through all the motions, but it’s still fun to play, even if I struggle to think up short city names on the fly. I’m looking forward to my next game, even now. If you’re looking for a thrilling word game, a fast-paced cooperative title, or you want to go full danger and just smoosh them both together, I’d definitely recommend checking out Illiterati! It’s a lot of fun.
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