Ugh, it is 9:42a on Monday morning, and your boss just sent you an email to come to her office. You really aren’t awake enough to want to deal with whatever is about to come; it would be so easy to respond with some smartass reason why you can’t come…but should you?
| Per My Last Email (2019) | |||||
| Designer(s) | Mark Stogdill, Brian Snyder | Artist(s) | Tori Snyder | Publisher |
Brain Sandwich Games |
 |
4-8 |  |
17+ |  |
30-60m |
Most of us deal with annoying emails everyday. Often, they are just spam or emails for subscriptions you accidently signed up for when you simply wanted to see the contents on a webpage. Then, there are those emails that you are stuck dealing with because you are paid to read them. Work emails can completely ruin a day with a few simple words like "Can you write this report?" or "Come to my office." I know I have personally had a few times when I wanted to respond with something that would clearly get me fired, and based on how I felt that day, I almost hit send...
Per My Last Email is a party game that lets you and your friends respond to these emails however you want without the risk of losing your job. It is a fun theme for the party game genre.
Box and Components
The game is a standard card game that comes in a box perfectly sized for the game. Often when I get a card game like this, the cards are a mess when I open it, but luckily, there is a divider to keep everything neat. The only downside is there is no additional room in the box for the two expansions, but that is pretty common of party card games. There are nice cases on Amazon you can purchase to fix that.
There are 60 (red) email cards and 240 (blue) reply cards. The cards design/layout reflect a generic email format including a send and discard button and To/From/Subject/Body email fields.
Mechanics
The gameplay very similar to other popular card games like Cards Against Humanity. Essentially, one player will be the boss while the other players are the employees. The Boss will send an email (red card) and the employees will provide a Reply (blue card). The Boss will shuffle the replies and read out loud each of them; everyone will laugh, and The Boss will select the winning reply providing that player the red email card as their point.
The game will resume in this fashion with each player being The Boss. Like many party games, it can be played for as long as everyone is having fun. The game will last either a set number of rounds, until all email cards are played, or until a player reaches a certain set of points.
The nice thing about the game having the same mechanics as many games, it requires virtually no time as all for new players to jump right in.
Mechanically, the game isn’t doing anything unique; it is the theme that makes the game fun and stand out among the other party games of this genre.
Expansions
There are currently two expansions that each add 25 email and 75 reply cards. The HR Deck and IT Deck each have themed cards that reflect their respective departments within business. The jokes/comments on the cards certainly line up with what you would expect to see with emails regarding each of these departments.
The only slight issue I have with the expansions is all of the reply cards still address "The Boss" and have no markings of HR or IT to know which set they belong to once you mix them together. The email cards have HR or IT shown in the icon for the sender. This doesn't impact the game in any way; it just makes splitting the game back up a little more difficult. Many people will likely find a card case and merge them together so it probably isn't an issue to a lot of people.
Final Thoughts
I imagine some of you are thinking it is just another Cards Against Humanity clone; you are technically correct. However, I think many people get tired of games that rehash the same types of jokes. I like that most people can relate to getting dreaded emails that you really don’t want to respond to or want to say something that would get you in trouble. From what I have noticed in the cards, nothing is too unreasonable or simply there to be disgusting or cause conflict. I don’t necessarily find anything wrong with those other games; I enjoy them with the right group for a while. You can only play so many games that are pushing jokes about human anatomy, borderline racist/sexist, religion, and politics.
So I think this game is refreshing and will certainly be great for those burned out on other similar games. And to be fair, there is a reason the Cards Against Humanity formula works; it is easy for anyone to learn and can be molded into many different themes. I can’t wait to show this to a couple of our other gaming groups.
Links/Media
Per My Last Email Kickstarter Page
Disclosure
We received the product in order to write an honest review; all reviews reflect the honest opinions of the writer.