❓Is there a combination of mechanisms you could’ve never imagined until you tried it?

Illiterati by Gap Closer Games is a co-operative real-time word game. Even though word games are not my first choice, I love experimenting and this is not a combination you see often! 

You play as the League of Librarians 📚 fighting against the Illiterati ⚔️ – an evil organization hell bent on destroying literacy and every book. 👿

The game has 3 phases:

1️⃣ The real-time part: Everyone draws some letters – we have the deluxe version with chunky 4mm thick wooden tiles. They are incredible! 🤩

You turn the hourglass and have 3 minutes to assemble words. You have 2 goals here:

📖 Make as many words as you can – if you have too many unused letters as a team when the timer runs out, you have to burn a letter, which brings you closer to defeat.

📖 Make words for your objective. Everyone has a book card that requires specific words with a given amount of letters, icons or topics.

This is how you can win the game 🏆 – if everyone manages to “bind” enough books by completing their objectives, then you draw the Final Chapter which is an extra difficult objective that all of you have to fulfill at the same time.

2️⃣ Check if everyone made correct words without any typos 🕵️, or else you discard and burn some letters. You can have no more than 8 complete words before you – so you have to be creative and can’t spam 3 letter words.

3️⃣ Draw an Illiterati Villain card! These make your life harder by changing some rules or discarding letters. This way you can’t just keep the same words, but have to think of new ones all the time. If the Villain deck runs out you lose. 💀 

Thanks to the co-op nature of the game you can help each other and even trade letters or words with each other. This is especially important, as letters can have certain colors that might be required for objectives. You can also break up old words to create new and longer ones. It turns out I immensely enjoy the game flow! It is really satisfying as you move and push the tiles around. With the timer and variable difficulty levels, there is enough tension and challenge for a cozy, fun game night, be it with friends or family! 🥰