Illiterati

The Illiterati are an evil secret organization that has taken over the world. Your job as a member of the League of Librarians is to save the world's books — one word at a time.

Illiterati is a real-time, co-operative word game in which players work together to form words and bind (complete) books. Each round, you'll have 3 minutes to work as you balance two different objectives. On the one hand, your goal is to bind books so that you can win the game. On the other hand, if you have too many unused letters when time runs out, everyone loses.

To make matters worse (or more fun), at the end of each round, a member of the Illiterati comes to attack your hard-earned words, making victory an even more herculean task.

Once everyone has finished 2 books, the team tackles a last book called the" Final Chapter." The Final Chapter must be completed individually by everyone at the same time. If the Illiterati Villain deck runs out before you're able to complete the Final Chapter, everyone loses!

Welcome aspiring Librarians to the world of Illiterati! We'll see who has the final word...

At the end of the round, draw an illiterati villain card and resolve its effect. If you've drawn this villain previously — and the deck contains five copies of five villains — then all of the previous effects from this villain also resolve in a chain attack from newest to oldest. Villain attacks often strip letters from words, which means you'll need to create new words with what's left during the next round to avoid burning another letter.

Once all players have completed two books — or three or four depending on your difficulty level — draw one more book, the Final Chapter, with all players needing to complete this challenge in the same round, e.g., using 12+ tiles, create words in which all of your vowels are the same color. If all players meet this goal during the same round, you win; if even one person fails, another villain attacks, then you draw new tiles to start another round. You can discard and redraw up to seven tiles at the start of a round, but you must draw a second illiterati villain card that round — and if the villain deck runs out, you lose.