# of Players 3+
Age: 18+
Game Type: Card (Apples to Apples Style)
Gamer Type: Casual
Complexity: 3
Revenge of the Workers!
Admit it, we have all received an email from our boss that was so dumb or insensitive that we wanted to reach through the screen and choke the person. But because we are human adults, we have the clarity of mind to not assault someone and deal with it other ways. For many of us, the way that we deal with these problems is to fume about it for the rest of the day thinking of “what I should have said was.” Now, from Brain Sandwich games, we have the opportunity to do just that in As Per My Last Email (APMLE), a card game of how we would like to reply to management emails.
Story
The story of the game is something that almost everyone who is in the workforce today has lived through, the annoying email from a boss at the end of the day. In the game, you and your friends have the fun task of replying to these emails with the funniest or most appropriate card in your hand. This builds for a fun “could you imagine if we actually did this,” conversation after most rounds. While the story is very meta in this game, it still brings something we can all related with to the table. This earns a strong 6 out of 10 for story.
Artwork
The artwork for this game is very simple, as are all games within this genre. Apples to Apples, Cards Against Humanity, and, now, As Per My Last Email are literary games using wordplay to draw the player into the game. The box art and the card art are quite simple also, with a general email theme from what most people would imagine as a corporate email model. Overall, the art fits the game and earns a 5.5 for the artwork.
Mechanics
The game mechanics are classic for this genre. One player plays the “Boss” card and the other players choose the card in their hand that is most fitting or sees like the funniest response. One of the variants that we played in a small group was to have the “deck” play a random card to add to the number of replies. Sometimes this was just hilarious, other times you could tell which one was the deck card. Oddly, the deck won two out of three games. The mechanics are simple for a party game, which is good when your drinking with friends. 7 out of 10.
Strategy
This game is designed just to have fun. If you are hardcore and want to win the game at all costs, you are really playing the person rather than the game. What I mean is you are looking at the person playing the boss card and trying to judge what they will think is funny. There is really no offense, defense, rush, or engine building here. Just having a good time playing the game, 4 of 10.
Novelty
When I talked to my team about this game they said “Oh, it’s just Cards Against Humanity again, smh.” Honestly, they had a blast playing it. The Apples to Apples style game is now a genre of gaming. That means that there are going to be other games in the genre that put a new spin or a new topic on the mechanics. As Per My Last Email does this, and does this quite well. Rather than immersing itself in toilet humor or a ‘port’ theme from a movie, APMLE plays off of the office environment. This is very novel in an area that is hard to be novel in 9 out of 10.
Overall
With a total score of 31.5 APMLE would be considered a great game. However, I am going to use discretion to add another point to the score to bring the final score to 32.5. While we were playing one of the team members who works in tech stopped the game to send pictures of the cards to her team because she was laughing so hard. This means that the game is more relatable. This is a fun game, but remember – it is NSFW, lots of swearing because that is what we really want to do in many of these emails.
Noted Expansions
The IT expansion and the HR expansion really add to the spirit of the game. The one knock that I will give the expansion is that on the blue cards there is no way to sort them back out of the deck (the red cards come from another email). This means that if you are purist like me, once you combine the decks you cannot separate them unless you download a card list. Other than that the expansions rock. The take in the spirit of the game and diversity the market for players. This adds an additional two points to the total score (Novelty and Story), raising the score, when played with the expansions, to 34.5.
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