Illiterati

Today's review is of the 2023 release, Illiterati. For 2-5 players, it takes 30 minutes.

Overview

In this cooperative game, you and your friends are librarians trying to save the world from ignorance. Your job is to 'bind books' and outrun those villainous illiterati, who are out to stop you. Can you prevail in time, or is this your final chapter?

game components/example; image from here

To start, everyone draws a red or blue book. This lays out criteria they must meet, making words to do so with the letters they have. Everyone starts with 5 letters each, and there are 3 letters in a common library.

A key point: this is cooperative, and everyone can share letters with each other or take/give them in the library. 

This real-time (everyone plays at once) game has three phases:

1. Word Building Phase: each player draws 7 letters and has to spell words matching criteria on their active book . . . but you only have 3 minutes to do so! If you can't spell words matching your book, you can spell other words (and should) . . . because these letters you get to keep for the next round, and letters nobody uses can bring penalties (see next phase). Remember, you can share letters with others!

2. Book Binding Phase: the players collect unused letters from the prior phase and 'burn' them if they exceed the library limit (put one in the tracker and discard down to the library limit). They then 'bind books' (any player who has completed their book's criteria turns in the words they used to do so and flips the book over, showing it is complete). Keep letters from words you made that do not meet your book's criteria. Anyone who binds books then draws a book card of the opposite color, and looks to satisfy that book's criteria in the next round.

3. Illiterati Attack Phase: Draw an Illiterati card and do what it says.

The above phases continue until everyone has completed both a red and blue book. Then, a final round: one player chooses a new book (red or blue), and the "final chapter" condition on it must be met by all players in that round, or the Illiterati win. Do you have what it takes?

Review

This is a fun game. You'd think the sharing letter aspect would make it easy, but each person has their own goals to meet, so there is some tension there. In addition, it is impressive how quickly one's brain freezes when asked to think of words that match basic criteria. (One criteria yesterday was "foods"; I had a hard time thinking of any.)

One aspect that can make it hard is "deliberate inefficiency." You need to complete words that *don't* match your criteria, as those letters get saved for the next round. If you are efficient and use all your letters to bind your books, you will have no 'starting pool' for the final chapter round (that bit us). There is an interesting aspect that I should explore more . . . after one playthrough, I would rate this game as decent, but need more playthroughs to better gauge it.

Rating: B