Monsters: The Complete Collection

"It feels like a Love Letter version of Fantasy Realms! A great simple, quick, card game that provides a lot of fun." - How Lou Sees It

Monsters is as portable and easy-to-learn as Love Letter and Coup. It features bluffing and strategic planning. Players with creativity and deductive reasoning will love it. There's multiple unique sets/cycles of the game. Once you know the rules for one set, you pretty much know the rules for all the sets. The game plays best with 2 or 3 players, but supports up to 4 players. (Well, okay, technically goes up to 6, but this is really a game for 2 or 3.)

•  Each Monster grants between 1 and 12 points at the end of the game, but watch out: most Tactical cards ("things") cancel 2 specific Monsters!
•  Your turn: Take a card into your hand from the pool of 4; if it's a monster, it wakes up, triggering its ability.
•  If you are over your hand limit of 3, discard face-down to your personal discard pile. (Peek at your discards at any time.) 
•  When the deck is empty: Everyone discards down to 2 cards and compares their scores to determine the winner. 

Read the complete rules.

How to Play

Note: In the video above, Sam says "shipping to you in 30 days" – this is an old video from the first Kickstarter; the new content won't ship quite that quickly, but will still ship this year (2026).

Playthrough - 'The Dinos'

A Note on Sleeves

Reviews and Playthroughs

More detailed rules:

End the game with the best combo of 2 cards (Monsters and/or Things).

•  Draw a card from the Pool; say its name and number out loud. 
•  If it's a monster, it triggers – resolve its chain of effects one at a time.
•  If it's a Tactical card ("thing"), its primary effects don't resolve until Resolution – but if you are playing The Dinos set, each Tactical card that you trigger gains you an Egg token (worth +1 at the end of the game).
•  Refill the Pool back to 4. 
•  If you are over your hand limit (3), discard face-down to your personal discard pile. (You can peek at your own discards at any time.) 
• When the card deck is empty (once players have had an equal number of turns), everyone discards down to 2 cards.
•  Players reveal their choices (highest-value card first, then the other card).
•  If you reveal a Tactical card ("thing"), it resolves at this time (for example, Fire destroys The Monster and Mummy). 
• The player with the strongest surviving combination of cards wins the game!

Monsters can be canceled, so watch out if you haven't seen the Tactical card that cancels your monsters! High point-value monster are not always the safest choice to hold onto. I might know that you have the 12-point card, but you know that I know that... so you might discard the 12-point card, hoping that I make the mistake of saving the 1-point card that would cancel it.

Shipping - EU, UK, and Canada "friendly!"

I can't accurately estimate shipping until I have some idea how many backers there will be. Most likely this campaign will be printed in the USA (in small quantities) and shipped via my shipping partners in the USA, Canada, and the EU. I have a way to pre-pay for tariffs using my brokers in the EU and UK. I'll be using BackerKit as a pledge manager to resolve shipping - probably in October.