Flash Review — Hardback

Players: 2-5
Works well with just 2: Yes!
Solo quality: fun
Age: 10+
Playtime: 45-60 min
Complexity: low

A deckbuilding game of words!
You start with a basic deck of letters, draw a hand of five cards, and proceed to spell words for points, special effects and/or money that’s used to purchase more letters and add them to your deck. The end goal is to score 60 points, but how you get there is up to each player.

The idea feels so obvious, it’s a wonder nobody did it before. And in fact, the design team did do it before: it was called Paperback and it didn’t turn out great. But the concept was fantastic, so I’m happy they decided to go back to that well and come up with a much-improved sequel.

There’s not much more to add. All the letter cards are shuffled together, and players buy them from a seven-card “offer row” with the money they generate spelling words. Letters come in several colors (themed as literary genres: romance, adventure, horror…) and work best together: in other words (ha!), you’d better stick to a couple of genres, so your cards trigger each other’s bonus effects more often.

Several optional rules (and related materials) are included in the little box, two of which I found essential: adverts, which enable players to convert money into points in the second half of the game (otherwise why not just buy point-scoring cards and cycle through your deck as often as you can); and events, which add some spice to the proceedings, by preventing players from using the letter E in their words, for instance, or by limiting the length of words to four letters.

The solo game is actually a coop mode for 1-5 players. The AI scores points in a variety of ways and acts as a timer: players need to collectively reach 60 points before the AI does (i.e. before the clock runs out).

Hardback is fun, quick and easy. I don’t even like word games that much, but this one’s a winner.

Most easily forgotten rule: If you spend an ink marker to draw an additional card, you must use that letter to spell your word, otherwise you forfeit your whole turn.



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