Base price: $25.
2 – 12 players.
Play time: ~20 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 2 

Full disclosure: A review copy of Red Letter, Yellow Letter was provided by 25th Century Games.

I really appreciate that I thought I was going to go to GAMA Expo and have time to write, which has never happened in basically the history of any convention or trade show that I’ve attended. I always end up distracted by something, this time being the overwhelming deluge of demos that came out of Steam Next Fest that I ended up staying up until 3AM every night playing for an entire week. Then, on the way back to Seattle, both Slay the Spire 2 and Pokemon Pokopia dropped, so now I’m restlessly alternating between the two of them like a man possessed. There are too many riches. But I’m back on the grind now for y’all and we will see where we end up! This week, let’s try Red Letter, Yellow Letter!

In Red Letter, Yellow Letter, the premise is pretty easy. You’ve got three decks. One is Things, one is Red Letter, and one is Yellow Letter. You’ve guessed most of this so far. You’ll reveal one of each to the whole group, and then you have to go fast. First person to name a thing from the Thing Card that starts with the Yellow Letter but doesn’t contain the Red Letter wins a card of their choice. And then you keep going! Do you have the speed that it’ll take to win this one?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

Very little! This one you just need to shuffle three decks. The red letter deck:

The yellow letter deck:

And the things deck:

Once you’ve done that, you’re good to start!

Gameplay

So this is a category party game, which I always love. Here, the challenge is simple: name a thing the fastest. Too easy? Agreed, so there are two caveats:

• What you name must start with the Yellow Letter.
• What you name cannot contain the Red Letter.

Harder than it sounds, I promise. If you name something legitimate, you get to take one card of any of the three categories (Red Letter, Yellow Letter, Thing) and then replace it. Play keeps going, but note that you can’t repeat an answer for the same Thing card if just the letters change. If, at any point, you don’t think there’s an answer or you’re stumped, raise your hand. If everyone raises their hand, discard all three cards and reveal new ones.

If any player can collect three of each card type, they immediately win!

Player Count Differences

The core of the game doesn’t change with player count, though I begin to grow a bit suspicious about the viability and legibility of things at 10+ players. There’s no theoretical maximum, just limits based on how many cards there are of each type. You could play this game in a huge room where everyone has a buzzer, if you wanted, or you can play it with two people. With two, the game’s pretty amusing since it’s almost a bit more casual? There aren’t a lot of people trying to get their voices heard; it’s either you or them. With twelve, you’re really sifting through the noise and making decisions on who said what first. I mostly just don’t have a table big enough for 12 where everyone can also see, but that’s a different issue. I don’t have a big player count preference for this one, though I’ll side-eye any 10+ games.

Strategy

It’s a party game! Don’t overthink it!

• There’s a certain amount of variance you can introduce into the system whenever you score, so keep that in mind. You can change the Thing, which shifts the category; the Yellow Letter, which forces you to come up with a new example of the category; or the Red Letter, which just invalidates a different set of answers for that category. These mess with other players in different ways, and let you continue on a roll if you’re in a category you feel strongly about. They’re all good ideas.
• There’s a reflex where you want to say what you were thinking if it’s not quite right. Don’t do that. This happens a lot in a lot of games. You’ll say “oh, I was going to say this” if you missed it, but that just tells your opponent that they should either replace the yellow letter or the category to change things up on you so you can’t immediately get the point.
• Don’t be afraid to challenge! Sometimes challenging makes the game more fun, We had Building as a category and my friend noted that “Physician’s Office” wouldn’t count for her since that’s not really a type of building, it’s more of just a business location. That’s fun! Planetarium, on the other hand, is legitimate, since it’s a very specific building type as well. Empire State Building or Eiffel Tower are both buildings, too. You can say you disagree with something if someone else said it; half of the fun of the game is justifying things.
• Don’t just make something up and hope for the best. That’s rude. This applies a lot for like, Book and Song. You can say “Love” or “Destiny” or “Whoops!” and probably be correct (as of review, all three of those are both books and songs). That defeats the purpose of the game a little bit, I think (or it’s against the spirit of the game), so we’ve forced players to give their answers some other identifying characteristic if another player is suspicious. For instance, I said “Big Enough (the screaming cowboy song)” as one of my responses, and that was legitimate because I showed my friend the video and there is, to my credit, an aggressive shrieking cowboy in it. You can guess, of course, but don’t just try to throw garbage words in there and get lucky.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• I like that you have to collect different cards in order to win. I think forcing players to get three of each category is a really inspired move; it keeps the game circulating and changes what you need to think about between turns. Plus, if you only have a certain card left (I usually leave Red Letters for the end) you might be able to chain a few points quickly.
• Half of the fun of the game is the discussion. I think I say that three different things in this review are half of the fun, but you didn’t come here for fractions; you came here for opinions. I like getting to hear about new songs or listen to another player explain why their answer is valid. I think it’s neat and interesting, especially if you have different interests. You learn new stuff!
• Great downtime game since you’re mostly just speed-thinking about categories. It’s still a speed game, but it’s a pretty casual one. If you don’t immediately come up with something, usually someone will and you can just wait for the next example. It’s all fine.
• I’ve found that with books and songs and, in general, categories where you can just “guess”, forcing players to provide context with an answer is fun. It also keeps everyone honest. If I can name a book, I should be able to name the author or tell you a little of what it’s about or the premise or the movie based on it. Just a little bit to make sure I’m not just bullshitting the group.
• Very easy to set up and play, which is always good for a party game. Speed games are also nice as party games because they keep everyone engaged. Here, though, you just shuffle a few decks of cards and it’s time to play. I love that.
• I do like how with more players, things are shifting around more rapidly, but even two players is still a good count. With more players you get more churn without the game ending. After what, 16 rounds, a two-player game must end, assuming everyone scored. With 10, you could go up to 80 rounds without anyone winning. That’s nuts! But that probably makes the game run a little longer, to boot.
• A good variety of categories! Including some weird ones, which I appreciate. I think “candle scent” is silly, since you can just name a fruit or a baked good flavor, but I like that we’re broadening our horizons, here.

Mehs

• Kind of sub-optimal box design, in terms of space. The insert takes up a bunch of room and you could very easily fit more cards in there. Great if there’s going to be an expansion, but the game is just cards, so you could go for a smaller box. I know why publishers don’t want to do that (especially around price and such) but it always strikes me as a bit odd.

Cons

• You can get into a weird spot if everyone fills up their three “Thing” cards too quickly. Don’t do that. If nobody else can take Thing cards then you’re stuck for the rest of the game naming the same category over and over until everyone agrees to skip, which isn’t terribly fun. Obviously, mix it up a bit.

Overall: 8 / 10

Overall, I think Red Letter, Yellow Letter is great! Personally, I do think one of the best party game genres is the “categories” party game, and I’ve been playing that since childhood in one form or another. It’s also one of the better King’s Cup challenges (Don’t believe me? Next time you play, try making the category “English-language days of the week” and see what happens). Here, the twist is that you have to think about the answer semantically but also think about how the words in the answer are constructed, which makes for a fun challenge. Your brain isn’t designed to think like that. So coming up with a song title is easy. Coming up with a song title that starts with a Y is still easy. But making sure that the title doesn’t have an S? That’s going to require you to think through the actual spelling of the title, which is a different task entirely. Can you do that faster than someone else? Not if your first guess was “Yesterday”, by The Beatles. That’s for certain. “Young Blood”, by The Naked and Famous? Much better. But someone might still have beaten you to it, and that’s half the fun. Plus, you can learn new things while playing, and that’s fun too. I definitely paused our last game to show a friend a YouTube video that they hadn’t seen because it was extremely important and very terrible. The designer, Nathan Thornton, also has a strong party game pedigree, designing Medium, one of my absolute favorites in the genre, so I’m not surprised this is also a hit. Add in quick setup and quick play and you’ve got a recipe for a very good party game. If you like a category party game, you enjoy thinking about spelling, or you just really want to show off how many candle scents you can name, Red Letter, Yellow Letter might be right up your alley! I’d certainly play it again.

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