Designer: Seiji Kanai

Artist: Noboru Sugiura

Publisher: Kanai Factory

R is a game that came to my attention after Kanai Factory’s Love Letter became a worldwide phenomenon. I mean everyone wanted to play Love Letter and the other Kanai-designed games quickly became the center of attention as publishers grabbed different games in the portfolio and published them in multiple languages. I have played many of the games designed by Mr. Kanai, and a few are fantastic – Cheaty Mages, Mai-Star, Say Bye to Villains. But none of those are micro games in the same vein as Love Letter and I would say that it is hard to recapture the magic of Love Letter. However, if you look back at the history of micro games from Kanai Factory, you will see a couple of oddly-titled games : R, RR and RRR. The first in the series is called R and has been reprinted as BraveRats by Blue Orange Games.

The first impression of R is that the game feels very much like a precursor for Love Letter, except in this case, it is for two players. In R, each player has a set of eight character cards from #0-7. If no special powers are involved, a high card will beat a low card. This is essentially the card game War. High cards win. Except like Love Letter, each character also comes with a specific traits that when played, bends the rules in manner that makes character selection more than a random draw. In short:

#0 – The Jester nullifies the current round and the next hand wins both sets of cards.

#1 – The Princess win if the opponent plays the Prince

#2 – The Spy forces the opponent to reveal his/her cards first in the next round

#3 – The Assassin allows the lower value card to win in this round

#4 – The Minister win counts as 2 points

#5 – The Wizard nullifies the special traits on the opponent’s card

#6 – The General gives a +2 strength to the next card played

#7 – The Prince wins the game automatically (unless a Princess is played)

Each character has a counter, so to speak and what is important is to keep tabs of what is available and how that might influence the next card chosen by the opponent. For example, The General is strong when the next card played is a Wizard, but is rendered useless if the Jester or Assassin is still available. Hence, playing cards in a specific sequence is beneficial and knowing when your opponent is playing a card is crucial to play the right counter. This is pretty reminiscent of Love Letter in terms of flavor and mechanism, but is designed for the two player experience. The game is short and the first player to win four points wins the game. I suppose you can always play multiple hands or best of 3- or 5-series.

Needless to say, there is a lot of luck in these types of micro games, but just enough variation to make the game slightly more than a random draw. The main goal is to try and outguess your opponent by timing certain card plays, but even that has limitations. There are no guarantees at all that you can correctly anticipate the outcome of each round because there seems to be a good counter for most characters, but none of that really matters because the game is over even before you have time to ponder the loss of any specific match-up. The calling card for these micro games is portability and also ease of setup and play. So, R checks all these boxes.

R comes with an incredibly long list of variants, as you might expect. The variants are all small tweaks to the base rules. There are some intriguing variants and some silly ones as well. For example, variant “I” allows drafting of the sixteen cards. This could present some interesting tactical combinations that could allow a player to gain an advantage. Variant “N” is named Last Chance as you get to grab a previously played card if your opponent has 3 points and on the brink of a victory. I could easily see at this stage, a lot of cards have been revealed and grabbing one off the table could potentially swing the tide. Curious. There are of course a few silly ones like the Loser where the the losing player wins. So you are playing to lose, I suppose. In another variant called Telepathy, which is sort of a precursor to Wolfgang Warsch’s The Mind, players try to play identical cards to and earn points.

In summary

R is an interesting look at how Love Letter came to being. There is no doubt both games have a similar bent to the mechanism and narrative. I love Noburu Suguira’s artwork and that alone is enough for me to grab the Japanese version. I have since reprinted the game in English with a DIY copy, but retaining all the original drawings. I suspect that R is a pretty decent game with kids, maybe really young kids because they have a decent chance of winning and the duration of the game agrees with their short attention span. This is also not a terribly thinky game and the entire nobility aspect usually lures them in. I suppose you might have to explain what an assassin is, but otherwise, the BraveRats version is probably more PG.

Initial impression: Average