Illiterati Review

As a former spelling bee champion (not to toot my own horn) I'm a bit of a word nerd. Illiterati provides an interesting challenge; building a set of words from the tiles you've drawn from the bag along with fighting off an attack from one of the villains. Each round, players will draw 7 tiles and they can trade freely amongst each other and the ones in the library to build words. Players are free to help each other as much as possible while the 3 minute round is going on. Any leftover letters will be sent to the library where if you exceed the limit you must burn a letter. You can burn 4 letters throughout the game (less if you play harder difficulties) and if you go beyond that it's game over. If you've completed your objective in one of your books, you can bind it and draw a new one. After the binding phase, the attack phase begins. Draw a villain card and do what it says. If there's already one of their cards out, do both of the negative effects. It's fun. All players need to complete 2 books in order to start the final chapter. During this round, players must all collectively complete the same objective of the book. Do this and they win. Burn too many letters or run out of villains and you lose.

The Good: I was expecting a different take on Scrabble with Illiterati but it's much more. You need to spell unnecessary words to your objectives in order to make it work but you are free to rearrange them all as needed. Be careful because they may also cause you to exceed your library limit. Not to mention, you can only have 8 words max during a round. If you have more, you're moving them to the library and burning for sure. There's a ton of variety in the cards and I love that using different symbols can apply to objectives further narrowing your words. The entire game is tense. 3 minutes to make words amongst everyone doesn't feel like a lot but it's amazing the way your brain will trigger in those moments.

The Okay: There's definitely some imperfections with the rulebook. The publisher has updated it to make it more clear but it's still not perfect. You'll likely need some videos to totally grasp the game. One thing I would have liked to see is player powers that could be used in the game as well. Sometimes you just have nothing that works and there's no way to cycle anything so it would have been cool to see gamebreaking powers that could be used once per game/round.

The Not So Good: This is a game that could have one or two players quarterbacking the whole thing. Because it's essentially a big word scramble, if you have players that may not be the best with spelling or language then it could be a tough game to table. There's also an easier mode that removes the timer and the chain attacks but this takes away a lot of that tension and excitement of the game.

Final Thoughts: Illiterati did everything it set out to do. It's a challenging word game that is tense from the first round and it doesn't stop until you win or lose. Admittedly, I prefer this game solo. It's a great exercise to stretch your mind and an excellent way to start your day. If I were a coffee drinker and didn't live my life in chaos, I would start my mornings with this game. For now, it's energy drinks, screaming children, and a puppy but one day...

Thanks to Gap Closer Games for providing a review copy of the game.