If you’ve ever sat at a stop light, trying to decode the vanity license plate of the car in front of you, you’ve played this game before. VNTYPL8S is a party game for three to eight players, designed by Clarence Simpson and published by 25th Century Games. Be creative and quickly decode other players vanity plates to earn the most points.
Rules of the Road
Each player is given a license plate white board that has eight letter spaces. In each round, players will have an Owner Card that gives them guidance on what their vanity plate should share. Your Owner Card may say “Baseball Player”. On your license plate, you can use use consonants and numbers, but cannot use vowels, spaces, emoji’s, or symbols.
You want to put a clue on your vanity plate that will help a player correctly guess your owner card from all the variety of cards in the center of the table. Each plate is limited to eight letters, so giving short and snappy clues work really well.
After everyone has created their vanity plate, players submit their Owner Cards facedown in the center of the table. Six additional Owner Cards will be tossed into the pile and mixed around. Flip all the Owner Cards face up in the center of the table for everyone to see.
In each round, players are also given a Requirement Card. This card gives players three letters/numbers that will earn you an additional point IF you use all these characters on your vanity plate.
Creative Drivers
Going around the table, a player will reveal their vanity plate, allowing everyone to make a single guess as which Owner Card belongs to that plate. This guessing has no turn order and a player can only make one guess per vanity plate. If you blurt out an incorrect guess, you’ll need to keep quiet until the next player reveals their vanity plate.
The player who makes a correct pairing between an Owner Card and a players vanity plate will take that card, representing a victory point. Players take turns revealing their vanity plate while the other players at the table work to earn points for correct guesses.
VNTYPL8S is not a game where players are trying to “stump” their opponents. You want players to guess your vanity plate. If your vanity plate is not correctly guessed, you’re not able to score your Requirement Card, even if it was integrated into your plate.
Final Thoughts
I used to be VERY bad at this game. I was the player that everyone was waiting for during a round. I almost never scored a Requirement Card. My first couple times with VNTYPL8S was pretty frustrating. This is a game where going with your gut actually works a lot of the time. Players can ignore letters or proper word structure and it can still totally make sense to everyone else at the table.
The more I played the game, the more I realized that I was overthinking my clue every round. While the game does award points, we’ve found that people rarely care about the points at the end of the game. VNTYPL8S is at its best when you just have fun and create common sense clues. This is a game that works well when players aren’t super familiar with one another. There’s very little room for sharing inside jokes or clues that would be isolated to a single player at the table.
Because of the restrictions in creating your clue, some players may struggle to commit their clue to the white board in front of them. Players have to keep in mind that using the Requirements Cards are totally optional and sometimes, it just might not work out.
VNTYPL8S is not going to be everyone’s favorite party game, but it’s one that feels original and gets lots of laughs at the table. This one has grown on me a lot and it’s a game that our family really connected with. The high player count and shear number of owner cards in the game keeps this game on the table when we have a lot of people at the house.
VNTYPL8S is available at your local game store or through the 25th Century webstore.
This game was provided to us by the publisher for review. Read more about our review policies at One Board Family.
Highs
- Players come up with some fun and creative clues around the table
- The stack of Owner Cards is impressive and keeps the game fresh
- Theme really works well with the clue requirements
- High player count makes this a great party game
Lows
- Players that have analysis paralysis when creating a clue slow down the game
Complexity
Time Commitment
Replayability
