Letter Tycoon: Mensa Select Word-Building Strategy Game for Families and Friends, Ages 10+, 2-5 Players

Fun, family friendly vocabulary game that can be seen as an alternative to Scrabble. The game is card based with no board. The patents system helps encourage different spelling strategies by making playing certain letters advantageous to you or an opponent. Some patents for lesser used letters also have powers which might change your strategy in picking words.

We recently tried this game for the first time at a local board game convention. There was a possibility of winning the game just for having played it, but someone else was the lucky one. This only left one reasonable option... buy the game! It was sold out at our local gaming store, so we ordered here on Amazon. It's a light word building card game, where you get more points (in game: money) for building bigger words. You can buy "patents" for letters, so every time someone else uses that specific letter you get a buck from the bank. The more common the letter in the card deck, similar to Scrabble, the more it costs, and you can only buy a letter if you played it that turn. There are no "gotcha" mechanics - you never take letters or money from fellow players. The closest is that there are a few face up cards in the center which any player may use to help build their words, and fairly frequently other players will grab the one that you need to make an absolutely smashing word! Really long words can max out the spending cash, but you still get "stocks", which is money that's scored at the end of the game, but you can't spend it - a simple mechanic to making sure folks don't run away with the game, leaving no letters for anyone else to buy. The rarer letters (j, q, z, etc.) have special abilities, like "you can build two words" or "double points if your word has only one vowel" which can really turn the game in your favor with careful play, assuming you're lucky enough to get them. In the end, your score is every "dollar" you earned, so there is no real downside to buying letter patents. Younger kids can play, but a limited vocabulary and spelling ability might make it too challenging for some. It's hard to put an age on it. I was playing Scrabble at eight or ten years old, but I wasn't winning Scrabble often back then. That was too much description, but the tl:dr is... this is a great game! Simple, fast, easy to learn and play so long as you kinda know how to spell, and most importantly, fun.

This game is so much fun for family and friends!

I love this game. It challenges your mind but it also is fun because there is more going on than just building words. As you build a word you are "paid" for the size of the word. If you have enough money, you can purchase one patent from a letter you used. Each time opponents use that letter the bank pays you a dollar. The challenge of course is creating the longest word possible to collect the most money and stock. The fun is in several layers.

Very fun game for our whole family. The only game I purchased the first time I played when friends brought the game to our gathering. So much fun!

My students in remedial reading loved this one. It helped them spell in a way that didn’t make them groan and hate me. They also gained valuable social and emotional skills. A big win. 😁

We're a family that likes word-based games, and we've enjoyed this one. I think some of the letter special abilities are unbalanced (K and Z in particular are very strong, if I recall correctly, while Q is pretty weak). And naming the bonus victory points "stocks" seems needlessly confusing, since they do nothing in the game. But it's still fun and a game doesn't take all that long, so it's perfect to whip out for a short session.

I bought this game as an enrichment activity for my English III students, since it allows them to put their vocabulary skills into practice. They LOVE this game, and played for the entirety of the 90 minute block. I only have one, so I'm buying a couple more because the kids playing Scrabble, which they also like, were really intrigued about game.