VNTYPL8S – R3STR1CTD 1D3NT1TY

I grew up in New Hampshire where vanity plates were inexpensive and therefore plentiful. From a young age I imagined what my vanity plate would be. B04RDG4M3R was too long. Other things weren’t important enough. It also made for great road trip fun, trying to figure everyone’s plates out. Eventually I grew out of wanting to express myself through my license plate, but it was still in the back of my mind.

Now there’s a game that lets me get those creative juices flowing again. VNTYPL8S is a game designed by Clarence Simpson for 3-8 players all about making your very own vanity plates. 25th Century Games brings us this party game for gamers 10 and up. As a party game, it officially takes around 20 minutes, but you can come and go as you please.

Setup

Each player takes a dry-erase marker and license plate board.

Shuffle the OWN3R and R3QRMNTS decks and put them in the middle of the table.

That’s it. That’s the setup.

Gameplay

A game of VNTYPL8S lasts three rounds. Deal one card from the OWN3R and R3QRMNTS decks to each player. This sets up each player’s puzzle.

Then, each player must create their own vanity plate containing the three letters and one number on their R3QRMNTS card that clues everyone else into their identity on the OWN3R card.

The plate must use only upper-case letters, and cannot exceed eight characters. It also cannot use vowels (other than “Y”), punctuation, or emoji, nor can it have spaces.

After creating their vanity plate clue, each player puts their OWN3R card face-down in the middle of the table. Add six more OWN3R cards to the pool in the middle. Shuffle them all together and lay them out for everyone to see.

One at a time, each player reveals their plate to all other players. It’s a race to discern the correct OWN3R! If a player answers incorrectly, they cannot answer again for that plate. But when a player does guess correctly, they take the OWN3R card and keep it as a trophy. If anyone guesses the plate, check the R3QRMNTS card. If the clue-giver used both letters and the number in their clue, they keep their R3QRMNTS card for their own point stack. (Otherwise, discard the R3QRMNTS card.)

Repeat this process around the table until every player has shown their plate and everyone else has had a chance to guess the OWN3R.

Once everyone has shown their plate and guessed, discard all of the remaining OWN3R cards, and play another round.s

After three rounds, whoever has the biggest stack of OWNER and R3QRMNTS cards wins!

Impressions

VNTYPL8S is an immediately recognizable concept. Everyone has seen vanity plates before, and they provide an immediate puzzle to solve, even in real life. We found this familiarity to be true with the game as well.

We pulled VNTYPL8S out on a recent group camping trip. Almost immediately we had eight players at the table, clamoring to give it a go. It turns out VNTYPL8S makes a great spectator game, too!

The idea of vanity license plates is ubiquitous. So, explaining the concept of replacing vowels with numbers was understandable even for the casual gamers at the table. And because it’s simple enough for kids to play, we could praise them when they came up with clever clues.

VNTYPL8S gives you the opportunity to fudge the rules a little bit for a less experienced gamer, too. You can let them use vowels if they need, or allow them to remove one letter from their requirements card without penalty.

We enjoyed how simple it was to get players to the table for VNTYPL8S. The raucous laughter of a ridiculous clue brought smiles from everyone around, even if they weren’t playing.

Do you have a vanity plate? For less than half the cost of putting one on your car, everyone at your table can have their very own. To do that, pick up a copy of VNTYPL8S directly from 25th Century Games or at your friendly local game store.

Or enter our giveaway to win a copy for free! Thanks to 25th Century Games for enabling us to give away a copy of the game.

VNTYPL8S giveaway

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25th Century Games provided a copy of VNTYPL8S to The Family Gamers for this review, and another to give away.

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