Game Review - Letter Jam

Word based board games have never been my favourite. I'm the type of lazy Scrabble player that will put down silly 3 letter words rather than actually spending the time to try to find a higher scoring word. I just want the game to be done so we can play something more engaging. When we decided to play Letter Jam for our monthly feature, I was not optimistic that I would enjoy myself....but boy, was I wrong! Letter Jam was not only much more engaging than most word based games, I actually found myself laughing throughout most of it!

Czech Games Edition is known for producing fantastic party games (such as Codenames, Pictomania, That's a Question and Trapwords, just to name a few) that are comprehensive, visually appealing and widely loved by diverse groups, so it really should not have surprised me that Letter Jam followed that model. Letter Jam is a cooperative card game in which players work together through several rounds to guess the mystery word another player passed them. The game starts off by each player choosing letters from the letter card deck to spell out a 5 letter word. Once everyone has chosen a word, they shuffle the letters and pass that scrambled word, without revealing it, to the player on their right. The letters are spread out face down in a row in front of each player, then the first letter of the word is placed into the letter stand, facing AWAY from the player who the card belongs to. You should be able to look around the table and see every player's letter except your own. Players then take turns giving word clues that help players guess what their own letter may be. For example: In the picture below I can see the letters E, L, R, U and F. I can use any of these letters any number of times to build a word and I also have the special wildcard (the asterisk card) in the center which counts as a wild card letter but I must use it as the same letter (meaning I can't use it to represent a T in one part of the word, then use it again to represent an M later in the word).

Once players have a word they can spell out of what is visible, they give the rest of the players a few details about their word, without revealing the word. The main goal is to use as many of the individual players' letters as possible and ideally without using the wild card. There are a few rules about what can be said to describe.

Can Say:

How many letters are in your clue word.

How many players your word helps.

If your word uses the wild card.

Can't Say:

How many times your word uses a specific letter.

Who it helps.

How many times it uses the wild card.

I look around the table and I see I can spell the word “REFUSE” by using the wild card as an S. I can now tell the rest of the players “I have a 6 letter word that will help 4 players and I do use the wild card”. Other players can lobby for their clue words this same way and everyone agrees on which clue word to follow through with that seems to help everyone the best. For this example, let's say my clue was the best and we've decided to use it. I take one of the RED small tokens on the flower in the center of the table (I'll take a green one when I give a second clue word). These tokens show how many clues a player has given and a player can only have one red and one green token. This ensures all players have an opportunity to give clues. I then take the super tasty looking numbered fruit tokens and spell out the word by handing the players a token that indicates the order their letter appears in my word. I distribute the tokens so all players can see them like so:

Players then write down the word on their coloured guessing sheets and represent their own letters with a ?. The more word clues that use their letter, the more certain they'll be about what their letter is. Let's try to guess my own letter now. Another player says they have a 4 letter word that helps 4 players with no wild card. I have been handed the 1 token and the following letters are U, R and F (in that order).

I write on my guessing sheet the letters provided, making a ? represent my unknown letter. For this word, it's possible my letter could be either a T or and S to either spell Turf or Surf, so I'm not sure what my letter may be. I would prefer to wait for another clue before moving onto my next letter.

The next clue given uses my letter as the 1st letter again followed by R-U-F-F-L-E

I can write on my guessing sheet “?ruffle”. I can now pretty confidently guess my letter is T to spell the word “Truffle” and not S as “Sruffle” is not in fact a word. I can now solidly say my first letter is a T and I write it in one of the white boxes at the bottom of my guessing page.

Now that I'm confident about my first letter, I can move onto my second letter and go about the same process to guess it. Most of the other players have moved onto their second letter too but unfortunately, Mr. E isn't sure about his letter yet so he's going to wait and get more information before moving on. Now that some of us have moved on, there is a whole new set of letters available for spelling words.

Rounds continue like this until all tokens from the flower have been taken. Players can then begin trying to unscramble their guessed letters and come up with the exact word handed to them at the beginning of the game. With careful calculation and some luck, hopefully each player guessed their letters correctly and they successfully unscramble the correct word.

Each players reveals their cards to see if they guessed the letters correctly and each player reveals the 5 letter word they sent to each other at the start of the game.

Of course, sometimes you guessed one or more of your letters incorrectly and you were not able to form the correct word. In a previous game, I was sure I had the letter H instead of C, which lead me to believe the word I was given was “White”. However, when I revealed my cards, I found I was mistaken and the word I was actually given was “Twice”. Ultimately this means I failed.

However, if you guess all the correct letters but come up with a different word, you still succeed! So, when I was sent the word “Trash” and came up with “Shart”........technically that's still a win!

There is an optional rule to score the game at the end but since it's a cooperative game with no real consequences for messing up, the scoring is pretty irrelevant. It's a nice to option to have for those who like to have a final score or grade when playing games, though. The score represents how tasty your jam is....which is just adorable.

Okay, now that I've finally finished the game play walk through, we can talk about why I enjoyed this game so much. First off, let's talk about the aesthetics because this game was a superstar in that category. Letter Jam has hit that fine line of being absolutely adorable and colourful, but still being clean and concise. I love that the little fruit tokens and guessing sheets are a rainbow of colours but that the letter cards are large, black and white, clean text so there's no confusion or squinting necessary. I find the black and white with small pops of rainbow make the game feel really classy.

Speaking of classy...check out that glossy embossing on the back of the cards. Awww yiiisssss.

A common aspect of super aesthetically appealing games is the...how do I put this without sounding insane...deliciousness of the pieces? I know I'm not alone in this but sometimes games are made with translucent tokens and pieces that seriously look like candy (take a look at the cubes in Pandemic and Terraforming Mars and you’ll see what I mean!). Letter Jam's red and green clue tokens literally look like those sweet little candies you get after a meal at a restaurant. As strange as it is, these delicious little pieces of plastic really sell a game for me! (Scenic City Game Emporium DOES NOT condone the ingestion of game pieces. DO NOT EAT THE GAMES.)

Another reason I really enjoyed Letter Jam so much is because it is a cooperative game, which is out of the ordinary for word games. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I am not a competitive person so I enjoy games where everyone is just having a good time and working towards a light goal of making delicious jam. Because there is no official rule book for what words can be used, you can absolutely use proper nouns and slang words. This gives you a wonderful opportunity to be surprised by the people you play with. Perhaps one of the players is very shy, reserved person but one of their clues was the word “Diarrhea”. Perhaps you find a common interest with the person beside you when you realize the word they sent you was “Bilbo”.Or maybe you just spend half an hour laughing at the fact that you were convinced someone sent you the word “Shart”. I found myself laughing out loud during this game far more than any word game or cooperative game I have ever played. Maybe I have an immature sense of humour, maybe the game really is that funny, but all I know is it was a hilariously good time.

With all the laughing and sharting aside, this game does actually have a pretty decent difficulty to it which is great because that's one aspect that makes a game engaging (let's be honest, shart jokes are only funny for so long. Am I there yet?). Between the laughter, there are long periods of silence where all players are silently staring at the letter cards, counting out letters on their fingers and scratching their heads while they're unscrambling their letters to make words. The constant rotation of new letters keeps everyone on their toes and keeps the game interesting from start to finish. This gives the game a great deal of replay value too. The game would play exactly the same each time, but there is nearly an endless amount of words to choose and pass and word clues that would make each game different from the last. Although it was a very fun game for us adults, the silent moments of deep contemplation makes me wary of playing it with anyone under the age of 13 or so, even though the game box suggests ages 10 and up. I think it would take a very particular type of 10 year old to not get a bit bored with this one.

If you are able to play board games with that particular younger player though, Letter Jam would be a fantastic choice. Again, because of the evolving game state and colourful fruits, it's exciting and fun but also very educational. Not only are players creating words with individual letters like in Scrabble, they're also trying to use the most diverse combination of letters while making it as long as possible AND working with unknown letters when regarding the wild card or their own mystery letter. I find this opens up the possibilities of words way more than just the 7 letters you're provided in a game like Scrabble. Even into my adult life, I love a game that can teach me new things or at least really exercise my brain to keep me mentally nimble. From my experience, kids also love to play educational games...you just can't say the “e word” or they'll run away from it screaming!

Another beautiful feature of this game is that it can be played with people who have English as a second language! They can use it to improve their English vocabulary or, if they're in a bilingual group with a shared second language, they can use the English letters to spell words in a different language. Czech Games Edition has crossed this lingual boundary before with the release of multiple versions Codenames that are entirely picture based. It's not often, but occasionally I do get asked if we have anything in the store for ESL gamers. Codenames: Pictures has always been my go to suggestion, but I'm thrilled to now have another game to offer.

I really have to hand it to Letter Jam this month. This game took me by surprise and with a price tag of $30.00 you really, truly can't go wrong with this one! Find it on the party game side of Scenic City Game Emporium!