Playing – Power Hungry Pets / Love Letter

Back around 2014, I picked up a quick social deduction / logic card game by the name of Love Letter. It’s been reskinned a bunch of times (Munchkin Loot Letter, Letters to Santa, Batman, and more with varying degrees of changes made to the cards like Marvel Infinity Gauntlet Love Letter, Lovecraft Letter, Star Wars Jabba’s Palace) and even had a few releases like adding cards to shift it from max 4 players to 6 players. There are way more versions but I’ve only played those few (Wikipedia has an extensive list and is way easier to navigate than Board Game Geek in this case). The 2014 version had the plotline of your suitor trying to get a love letter to the princess, or at least closer than anyone else like perhaps to the Countess or King.

It’s a simple mechanic. Start with one card. One your turn draw a card and play one of the two. The card effects range from “Guess what card another player has and eliminate them if correct” to “Secretly compare the value of your remaining card to that of an opponent; the owner of the lower card is eliminated” to “Swap cards with another player” and so on. Winner is the last player remaining or the highest card among those players remaining when there are no cards left to draw. Winner gets a token. First player to get enough win tokens (around three depending on the number of players) wins the overall game. One card is buried at the begining so there is usually a little bit of mystery but depending on how the cards play out, logic can provide some pretty strong clues, like a player comparing values and being eliminated with 7 in their hand (8 being the highest value usually) tells a lot.

When my middling nephew got Power Hungry Pets as one of his Christmas games, little did I expect it to be another game in the family by mechanic if not officially adjacent like Jabba’s Palace. Seriously, it’s the City State of Tempest and there’s at least three other games from Asmodee set there. It’s been a while so I doubt we will see much more of that setting but you never know …

Back to Power Hungry Pets. With art and humour by the creator behind The Oatmeal but essentially the same mechanics. Draw a card. Play a card. Don’t be the last to be eliminated. I do like that it plays up to six players and it remains a pretty quick game so even being eliminated doesn’t know you out for very long. The art is pretty distinct for each animal / card number and each card details the power. I do wish they had a reference card for each player to consult, but they do at least have the list of cards on an easy to reference side of the instructions.

I wasn’t familiar with a couple of new cards added into the mix (and apparently similar to ones found in some other Love Letter games) but so far I do like how they add to the play. Jittery Jiggler (7) has everyone put their cards back into the deck and shuffled back out. Another allows you to peek at the buried card and potentially switch with it. The most tactical card is one that allows you to peek at the next card and return it into the deck where you choose, counting ahead to try to get it yourself or know what an opponent is getting. Then there is the upset of the Royal Robovac (0), normally a loser except if it reaches the final scoring where it will beat the King Cat – the highest card in the deck.

Both games are ones I recommend. Both easy to tranport, quick to explain and play, and help fill that void of while waiting for that player running late.

Fun Fact – Love Letter at the time of this post can also be Print and Played