Love Letter (calculator game)

*Love Letter* is a calculator game for the Casio 50FH based on the Seiji Kanai card game of the same name. Like most of Tangent's calculator games to date, they have not been publicly released. The game is ported later to the PC as *Love Letter to the Hidden Princess*. There is a sequel to the calculator game called *Love Letter lyte*, which uses a lot less space but has only 1 computer opponent.

Later, version 3 of the PC port was released, which had AIs target whoever had the higher score, to ramp up the otherwise easy difficulty.

## Background

The original *Love Letter* micro card game was a game for 2-4 players (though ideally played with 3) where players played cards on their hands against other players, hoping to knock them out, or alternatively, get the highest card at the end of a round. It received an expansion called *Love Letter Premium*, as well as several other versions which minor gameplay differences. The most famous release of LL is probably the English version, which replaced the original Minister with the Countess.

## 50FH game

Like most of Tangent's calculator games, the game requires a bit of imagination, a trait shared by Atari 2600 games.

The calculator game takes the concept of avoiding getting knocked out due to an opponent holding a card that could interact with your card. Players (human or computer) have to try to guess a number chosen by another player. If the guess is correct, the opponent is knocked out. The numbers represent potential cards that is in a person's hand, and therefore the range of numbers decreases as the round progresses, as more cards have been "played". Alternatively, the person who draws the last card from the draw pile would win, the idea being that they survived being knocked out and played till the end, getting the highest card.

This calculator game was unique in that it featured 2 distinct computer opponents that were on equal grounds with the player.

## PC port

*Love Letter to the Hidden Princess* is a faithful port of the calculator game and the gameplay is unchanged except for the improved AIs starting from version 3. It had a number of firsts, within Tangent's video games.

It allows for the player to choose between 2 cardback skins and 2 BGMs, which is not common in Tangent's games, though it has been seen before. The BGMs are fully performed by Tangent, and thus it is the first time Tangent fully did the music for the game. One music piece was chosen to be more relaxing, and the other more upbeat. They were also chosen to be somewhat different genres. The title screen is reused a lot throughout the game, which is characteristic of Tangent's calculator games but not so much of their PC games.

The card numbers never actually represented precise roles, but just to make the game more visually appealing, the roles have been used for the card numbers. However, to keep the graphics faithful to the updated gameplay, no role descriptions are present.

Most of the buttons change colour when lit up, and darkens when pressed. The darkening is only first found in this game, although the lighting up has been seen in previous games.

Also, the "speech bubbles" feature text where part of it could change depending on variables, which had not been done in Tangent's games before.

Also, like the calculator game, this game is the first of Tangent's PC games that simulates (more than 2) multiplayer action, and also in the "true active player" sense, as the computer opponent in *Capitanía General de Puerto Rico* "played" passively.

The card faces and cardbacks used in the game are either from the pictures of the Tangent drew for the Roll20 adaptation, or from the Moon Rabbit Games adaptation, whose cards have been featured on the Roll20 adaptation as well.

## Trivia (PC port)

* The 0 and 9 roles are from LL Premium.
* The 8 role of "Minister" is from the original Japanese version, although there, the Minister is role 7 rather than role 8.
* The black and white "cardback" is used in the Roll20 adaptation as the Japanese version of LL.
* The 2 cardback skins are from the Roll20 adaptation's "LL Basic" (the "pouch" cardback) and "LL Premium" decks.
* "Hidden Princess" was a subtle reference to Secret Hitler, and is named so because whoever draws the last card is represented as holding the Princess card.
* The restart button is modelled after the role number circles from the Japanese version of LL.
* The fullscreen button has been graphically updated from its *Puerto Rico* (Tangent's PC adaptation) counterpart to better reflect what the top bar buttons look like.
* The overall pinkish theme is modelled after Valentine's Day and the English version of LL's cardback colours.
* The "king" character picture is the same as the one in the Roll20 adaptation of *Citadels*. Various other references of character pictures in general have been put in, such as using *Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon* for the guard role.
* This game was released during the second video game depression period.

## Source code (50FH version)

Love Letter, 50FH, COMP Mode, 494 bytes

Summary: Pick a card (A) and on your turn, target (X) player 2/3 (B/C) and guess their card. While on their turns, avoid having your card guessed. Winner of the round is the one who KOs both other players or reaches D=0 (0 cards remaining). Play to 5 points (M).

Lbl 5: Norm 1: 1°μe-1etter◢ ClrMem◢ Lbl 1: Fix 2: M◢ Fix 0: Rnd(M)-M>0⇒Goto 5: 10M→B: Rnd(B)-B>0⇒Goto 5: M≥5⇒Goto 5: 10→D: 1→B: 1→C: Rnd(2Ran#→A: Norm 1: A=1⇒Goto 2: A=2⇒Goto 3: Lbl 0: A<0⇒Goto 2: A-μp◢ D-1→D◢ D=0M+⇒Goto 1: 23→X: B≥0⇒C≥0⇒?→X: B<0⇒3→X◢ C<0⇒2→X◢ D÷10→A: ?→A: Fix 0: Rnd(DRan#◢ Norm 1: If A=Ans: Then X=2⇒-1→B◢ X=3⇒-1→C◢ IfEnd: B<0⇒C<0M+⇒Goto 1: Lbl 2: B<0⇒Goto 3: B-μp◢ D-1→D◢ D=0⇒.1M+⇒Goto 1: If A≥0: Then D÷10→A: ?→A: IfEnd: Fix 0: 1+2(Ran#>Ran#→X: A<0⇒3→X: C<0⇒1→X: X◢ Rnd(DRan#→B◢ X=1⇒B=A⇒-1→A◢ Rnd(DRan#: B=Ans⇒X=3⇒-1→C◢ Norm 1:<0⇒A<0⇒.1M+⇒Goto 1: Lbl 3: C<0⇒Goto 0: C-μp◢ D-1→D◢ D=0⇒.01M+⇒Goto 1: If A≥0: Then D÷10→A: ?→A: IfEnd: Fix 0: 1+(Ran#>Ran#→X: A<0⇒2→X: B<0⇒1→X: X◢ Rnd(DRan#→C◢ Rnd(DRan#: C=Ans⇒X=2⇒-1→B◢ C=A⇒X=1⇒-1→A◢ Norm 1: A<0⇒B<0⇒.01M+⇒Goto 1: Goto 0

## External links

* Youtube tutorial of the calculator game
* Game Jolt download page for the PC port (with soundtrack on page)
* PC port download page on Tangent's blog