Designed by: Daryl Chow
Alphabeasts Attack! is a co-operative game where the beasts of the title are letters, and words are made to defeat them. Each player has a deck of scavenge cards: two of them (Helpful Hammers) start face up, the rest are shuffled into a face-down deck. Then everyone is dealt three Alphabeast cards, with a few more (equal to the number of players) placed centrally. As each Alphabeast (except the bosses, which we’ll come to later) is also a letter, your job is to figure out a word that uses as many of your own letters as possible, and hopefully some of the shared letters too. You can mix in as many non=present letters as you like: if my alphabeasts are J, K, and R for instance, I could say my word is Joker, even though I don’t have an O or an E.
Although players can’t say what words they are thinking of, they can tell each other which letters from the shared area they can use. They can also help each other by suggesting words – you do this by playing a Helpful Hammer card (which can also be used to push one of your personal cards into the shared area). Once everyone’s happy, words are announced and – one hopes – as many letters used as possible. Any left over flip over and become Scars: if you ever have as many scars as there are players, you all lose!
All used letters go into each player’s ‘Defeated Alphabeast’ area: if you have five different-coloured alphabeasts, or four of the same colour, you can cash them in for your next scavenge card in your deck. This might be something helpful, like another hammer or similar, or it might be a Brain. Scars and Brains are kept out on the table for subsequent rounds: if the players gather as many Brains as there are players, they win!
We did mention Alphabosses. These aren’t letters but rules; and if you have one in your hand you have to follow it. It might be No Repeat Letters in your word, or Use the Same Letter at the Start and End of your word. These can make things rather tricky at times, but if the rule is followed then alphaboss is defeated and placed into your Defeated Alphabeast area: all alphaboss cards are grey, but can function of a wild of any colour once claimed.
The rules can be tweaked to suit younger or less wordily-enamoured players.
None - everyone works together to defeat the beasts!
Low, although some players may take longer to figure out what they might do than others.
It's just makin' words! And using up as many letters as you can. Oh - and maybe defeating the odd boss.
There's no in-built variants other than the level of complexity, but the scavenge decks and monster deck are shuffled before each play, throwing up doses of tactical wordiness.
2-5
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
Word games can be tricky to pull off, especially for children. But Alphabeasts Attack allows you to tailor the deck and the rules to make it easier/trickier depending on who's playing: it's still a challenge for adults with all the cards in play, but trickier letters and potentially alphabosses can be removed to introduce younger players to it. While it might not be a quantum leap forward in game design, it takes existing ideas and implements them deftly, wrapped up in a small and affordable package. Good stuff.