Playroom EntertainmentPlayroom Entertainment Unspeakable Words Deluxe

Unspeakable words is a word game that's not like any other I've played (and I've played a lot more than scrabble). TL;DR: it's cheap, easy to learn, and fun, and incorporates both skill and luck. Buy it.Let's start with the basic gameplay:You have a hand of 7 cards that refills every turn. On your turn, you can make a word or get a new hand of seven cards. If you make a word, you score it, then you roll a 20 sided die to see if it brings you closer to insanity (your sanity is represented by cute plastic cthulu pawns). If you lose all 5 pawns (become insane), you lose. If you get 100 points without going insane, you win.Underneath that basic gameplay is an interesting sort of "press your luck" style game (big money, no whammies!). Should I make a big 15 point word, even though it will be hard to roll higher than that to keep my sanity? Do I use all low point words? Do I try to get to 100 as fast as possible? The game gets slightly easier if you're very close to insane (1 pawn left), because you no longer have to use real words.The cards have cute pictures of lovecraftian monsters on them, and the number of points a letter is worth is based on how many corners the letter has. This means that you don't get punished for using easy letters (RSTLNE) or rewarded for using hard letters (JXQZ) nearly as much as in most games. This makes the game a lot more accessible, as PEEL (3-4-4-1, 12 points) is just as easy to make as, and more points than OOZING (0-0-2-4-2-2, 10 points).The included rulebook has lots of fun variants (proper nouns? regain sanity when discarding hand? players must define their fake words when nearly insane?) and is well laid out. The cards are high quality, if not playing card level. The cthulu pawns are cute, and there's enough for 8 players (you can play with more players if you want to grab some more pawns). Two of the colors glow in the dark, which is a gimmick, but a cool gimmick.Overall, this is a super easy and fun word game to pick up for kids and adults. I highly recommend it, even for people who don't usually play word games.

Cathulu pawns! Scrabble & squares have nothing on adult oriented geeks & Cathulu pawns fleeing failed rolls.This game cam be mild & G-rated, or you can let your crazy, X-rated, geeky friends risk their sanity big words & against dice rolls. The game is simple in premis...•Each card in the box has a letter of the English alphabet. •Each letter has a score equal to the number of angles in the letter. "C" has 0. "T" has 2.•Deal 7 cards & 6 Cathulu pawns per player. (At the end of your turn, draw cards until you have 7.)•Each player takes a turn spelling a word. Any word can only be used once. Add together the letter scores for a word score.•Roll equal to or below your word score to keep your sanity. If you fail your roll, you lose a pawn representing your sanity.•Loose all your pawns, loose the game. Reach 100 points, win the game.Even my friends that "hate playing games" were playing along & laughing all the while.

A fantastic game of words and madness. I love it!

Theme and ease of play

This game comes in a well constructed box that will stand up to many years on the shelf and game table. I found that once the cards were put into protective sleeves I could no longer fit them into their card slot in the box.The Cthulhu minis are good quality plastic, though some had nubs from their pour that I had to shave off.I haven’t had a chance to use the provided polyester bag. It seems like it will work well.The deluxe D20 looks nice and rolls well. It is a soft edged die so it has a bit of a tumble to it.The letter cards feel a little thinner than standard playing cards but are solid and will hold up to many many games.

I love this game, and wish I'd thought of it first. I first watched Will Wheaton and his buddies play it on Youtube, and it was then that I knew that I had to have it. Spell words with the letters on the cards you take from the draw pile. Instead of the point values of the letters being based on their rarity, however, they're based on the number of angles it takes to form the letters! Oh, the sanity (or lack thereof)!When it's your turn, you spell a word with the cards from your hand, tally up the points, and then roll a sanity check. If the result on your D20 sanity die is less than the total number of points in your word, lose a point of sanity. If you ever get down to 1 point left, you can spell anything you want, even if it's gibberish! I spelled 'FUSYPEX" in a last-ditch effort to catch up with the leaders. It didn't work out so well for me in the end, but it did get used in random sentences for the rest of the day.First person to get to 100 points or more without going completely insane wins!I have only one teeny-tiny criticism for this game, and that is the packaging. The box that the game comes in wastes a lot of space. The components of this game could easily be packed into a box half the size. However, that does not take away from my overall enjoyment of the game. I threw the box away and carry the entire game in the drawstring bag that was included.

My kids and I love this game! We saw it played on Tabletop and had to have it! I admit that I purchased it because I love the cards and the cute little Cthulhus. However, it has become a word game that my kids love to play with me as well as younger friends, since the score is not completely dependent on the quality of your words. It levels the playing field a bit between older and younger players. Great, easy to learn and play game for multi leveled groups!

A lot of fun for the price.

great game lods of fun

Finding a copy of Unspeakable Words has been a bit of a sore spot for me. I first heard of the game while watching Wil Wheton's Tabletop a couple of years back and immediately went to go purchase it only to find that none of my FLGSs still had a copy and that Playroom Entertainment had jacked the price up from $30 to $250 thanks to its new publicity. Disgusted, I checked out a variety of online resellers, but no one had the game listed at a reasonable price. After checking the online marketplace roughly monthly for over a year, finally I was able to find a copy that was only scalped to $70 and I happily purchased it, only to have the game never arrive and be unable to get a refund. Another year or so went by before I was willing to try searching again and lo and behold, Playroom Entertainment was offering the Deluxe edition of the game for an appropriate price. This time, the game actually made it to me.As far as the game itself goes, the card stock is the same used in Killer Bunnies, which is to say uncomfortably thin for a playing card, making the cards feel like they'll only last a handful of shuffles before they start to wear around the edges and the Cthulhu tokens are low detail, cheap plastic that come in one of the most confusing color palette choices I've ever seen. Luckily the d20 that comes with the game seems reasonably well balanced and of decent quality, so I will probably use it for other games as well.Despite all of its flaws, the game plays well. It would have been nice to have seen a slightly greater number of "effect" cards in the deck since it's fairly easy to not see ANY when playing in smaller groups, and it's odd to be playing a word game that doesn't have a "bingo" mechanic (playing your full hand doesn't do anything special for you unlike in Scrabble or other similar games) but that's easy enough to house rule, so it's more of a minor inconvenience than a major flaw.It took way too long to get and the quality isn't that great, but the game is every bit as fun that I was expecting it to be so I am glad that I made the purchase.

I like how anyone can pick up the rules to this game very easily. I don't like though how child like the cards look.