My game of the week is Paperback by Tim Fowers, illustrated by Ryan Goldsberry. I saw this in a Tucson board game shop years ago and immediately felt attracted to it. I asked for it as a birthday gift and finally played it recently. I love it! If you like word games, like Boggle, Scrabble, or Bananagrams, you will most likely love it too! It combines spelling with card-drafting and deck-building.

In the game, you are pretending to be an author, Paige Turner (get it? LOL!) who is writing words for her novel. You “write” the words by using letters on cards. You gradually have to make bigger words and then you get more points to buy more letters. Special effects for certain cards and a special power for each player as an author spice the game up. If you make a word that fits the theme of the game you get extra points. The winner is the one with the most points.

Watch over here to learn how it works and hear Tom Vasel’s review. Spoiler: he says it’s a great game that he loves!

Then over here you can watch about the sequel, called Hardback. Warning, it can feel overwhelming at first when you unbox this game and take out all the cards. Watch Tom’s video above to give you a basic idea of how to play and push through the learning curve, you will enjoy it, I promise! It’s for ages 10 and up, although some precocious 8-9 year olds may enjoy it. I give Paperback 5 out of 5 stars! You can get it here.