Review: Jabba's Palace

Finding yourself in the Outer Rim on a planet that is part of a bianary star system. The suns are unrelenting and to get out of the sun you descend into the palace of the most vile gangster on Tataooine. This is the setting for some of the epic scenes in the original Star Wars movies, the Book of Boba Fett, and the latest edition of Love Letter. in today's review we will have a look at the 2022 Jabba's Palace designed by Justin Lemppaien and published by Zman games

Love Letter was originally designed by Seiji Kanai in 2012 and has been fairly popular since. It has had over 20 versions of the game based on American, German and Japanese pop culture phenomena like Batman,Adventure Time, Yozakura, and Pummeleinhorn (Chubby Unicorn). Somehow I have managed to avoid playing this game for the last decade. I am a sucker for Star Wars and we were headed out on family vacation so I figure it would be fun to grab the Jabba's Palace themed version of Love Letter. I am glad I did the family loved it!

Jabba's palace come with a 19 card deck and 4 agenda cards, some player aid cards and 13 solid tokens and it all comes in a nice cloth bag with the logo on it. All the parts that come in the small format game are high quality and all the art work is really well done.

When playing Jabba's Palace each player is dealt a card from the deck and one card is set aside to help add some mystery to the deduction aspects of the game. There is an Agenda card drawn and this is the win condition for the game. You will keep the win condition for the entirety of the game. The starting agenda states the player with the highest numbered card at the end of the game is the winner and takes a victory token. depending on how many people you have playing you need between 3-6 of the tokens to win. the more players the less tokens.

The game play is simple. Pick up a card on your turn (now you have two) and play a card. You will always have one card in your hand and that is information you know that others do not and will help you to deduce the other players cards. All cards are played face up in front of the players so there is not too much information to keep in your head this is especially important on a family vacation if you are playing after the kids bedtime.

The round is over when all but one player is out of the round or if the draw pile has run out of cards. If there are more than one player left award the tokens per the agenda card that is being used for the game. There is also the Han Solo card if you made it to the end without getting knocked out then you are awarded a token also or in addition to the one awarded from the agenda card. I found actually making it to the end with Had is rather difficult and out of the times we played I managed it one time.

Jabba's Palace is a fast pace game of deduction that is a hit for fans of Star Wars that are not ready to commit to a larger game like Star Wars Rebellion. Its fast and fun and the version of Love Letter that finally got me playing it. This would make a great hostess gift for the next game night your invited to. This game is wildly available at your FLGS

Players: 2-4

Year Published: 2022

Recommended Ages: 10+

Time to Play: 20m

Transparency Statement

A review copy of Abstract Academy was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games for review purposes .