Love Letter is a fun and simple game with a brilliant theme. You are trying to court the princess who for reasons is being kept in the castle. So in order to reach her you can only send her love letters, the game is you trying to get your letter to her by petitioning people to hand it to her. But no one else must know or all will be undone!
This is done through cards, each representing a different person in court. There’s guards, priests, barons, handmaids, princes, kings, countesses and the princess herself. Each card type has its own rules aimed at helping you identify your opponent’s cards and making them discard them.
The game starts with you holding one card, each turn you will pick up a card and then play one of the two cards you are holding, using them to try and figure out the other player’s card and force them to discard it. The winner of the round is the person who still has a card in their hand at the end, or the one with the highest value. First person to get 4 letters to the princess wins the game.
The game has had many reskins, there’s a batman one where you are trying to identify the joker, adventure time where you’re trying to reach Princess bubblegum, lovecraftian letter trying to summon cthulu etc.
Questions to explore character:
1) Why do you think the princess is being kept locked up in the castle?
2) How would you cope if you were kept somewhere against your will?
3) Why do you think the countess makes the prince or king be discard?
4) What would you write in your love letter to the princess?
5) Do you think 4 letters would be enough for you to want to marry someone?
The game has a couple of links to faith in it. Firstly there’s the Priest card. This allows you to look at the card of any other player. It represents confession, so can be used as a conversation point about the sacrament of reconciliation, and how we are called to confess our sins to Jesus, through doing so we are forgiven and given access to heaven. The reason we do it to priests (or vicars) can be seen in John 20:21-23.
Again Jesus said, “May peace be with you! The Father has sent me. So now I am sending you.”He then breathed on them. He said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” – John 20:21-23 NIRV.
The second scriptural link is in its name. Love Letter. It’s all about love. So you can use it as a springboard to talk about how God is love, and what it means for us that we have a loving God as our Father. After all…
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. Anyone who believes in him will not die but will have eternal life. – John 3:16 NIRV
All images courtesy of Alderac Entertainment Group