San Juan (2004) marked a pivot point in game design. It was the first of the super fillers, which supported serious gameplay in a short period of time. Race for the Galaxy (2007) improved upon the design with its simultaneous play, truly fulfilling the promise of playing a full, dense strategy game in an hour or less.
And then deckbuilders came along, and the whole industry shifted in a different direction. But now, a few more years have come and gone, and Love Letter (2012) is offering another opportunity to revamp the way we think about traditional “fillers”.
A Love Letter to Love Letter
The most popular name for the category of games created by Love Letter seems to be the “microgame”. This denotes a game played with an extremely small set of cards and with a very simple set of rules. In fact, most of the rules tend to appear on the cards, not in the rulebook.
