199 cards · one deck · twelve games
Letterhoard is a single 199-card deck with twelve complete rulesets — from a five-minute matching game a three-year-old can play to a forty-five-minute word-stealing duel. Every one of them is playable free in your browser, right now, before the deck reaches Kickstarter.
No account. Nothing to install. Works offline once loaded.
The twelve
These are twelve different games, not twelve variants of the same one. A memory game, a push-your-luck game, a co-op, a bluffing game, a grid-builder and a word-stealing duel all happen to run on the same letters.
Try it
This is the real thing — all twelve games, solo against bots or pass-and-play with people in the room. Nothing is held back and nothing is for sale in it.
Loads about 2 MB once, then runs offline. Best on a phone held upright.
That was one of twelve. The physical deck launches on Kickstarter — want to know when?
Prefer paper? Get the print-and-play PDF and build the deck yourself.
What is in the box
One hundred and ninety-nine play cards. The counts are not decorative — they are what makes a memory game and a word-building game work from the same shuffle.
| Group | Letters | Each | Cards |
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Plus twelve reference cards, one per game — 211 cards in total. Poker size, 2.5 × 3.5 in, identical backs so face-down games stay honest.
Why one deck
Most letter games ship a board, a bag of tiles and a rulebook you read once. Letterhoard ships letters. Each game carries its own reference card, so the rules travel with the deck instead of getting lost in the box lid.
It weighs about 250 grams and fits in a coat pocket, which matters more than it sounds — it is the difference between a game you own and a game you actually take somewhere.
Print and play
A 39-page PDF: all 199 cards, the twelve reference cards and a sheet of backs, laid out for 2.5 × 3.5 in cuts. 250–300 gsm card stock is ideal; ordinary paper in card sleeves works too.
The file opens here in the browser — nothing is emailed to you except one message when the Kickstarter goes live.
Kickstarter
One email when the campaign goes live, and occasional notes on how the deck is coming together. No more than that, and unsubscribe from any of them.
Questions
No date yet. The deck and all twelve rulesets are finished; what is left is prototyping and campaign work. Sign up above and you will get the date the day it exists.
No. It is all twelve games, complete. It exists so you can find out whether you like the games before spending anything on cardboard.
Not for all of it. Kids Mode is three games for ages 3+ built on matching letters, first sounds and alphabetical order. Brewed Memories needs no reading either. The word games do.
Between one and twenty depending on the game. Nine of the twelve have a solo mode; The Brew of Fresh Air is co-operative and scales to a table of twenty.
Because 199 is what the games needed. The counts came out of balance testing — twelve of each vowel, seven of each ordinary consonant, four each of the six ability letters, ten wilds. Rounding it up would have meant an extra card that made some game worse.
Still being decided between a US printer and an overseas one. It comes down to the final run size, and the answer changes which one is cheaper to land on your doorstep.