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Then Codenames was released, and CGE became two companies in the eyes of many people: the company that still released games similar to earlier titles (Pulsar 2849, Adrenaline, and the upcoming Sanctum) and the company that releases $20 party games aimed at mass market audiences.
The newest title in that latter category is Letter Jam from Ondra Skoupý, a member of the CGE digital team. I believe that I first heard about Letter Jam at the GAMA Trade Show in March 2019, the design being a co-operative word deduction game in which, Hanabi-style, you saw everyone else's letters in play but not your own. That description is accurate, yet not at all helpful in conveying the feeling of the game and a sense of what you're actually doing while playing.
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Paul Grogan teaches Letter Jam at Origins Game Fair 2019
In spirit, Letter Jam is akin to Codenames: Duet in that someone is going to give a clue during each round of the game, with the clue helping others and not the clue-giver. The more clues you give, the worse your own situation because you're not learning anything about what you need to know. Thus, you need all players to pitch in and contribute in order to get the most out of play. I played two games of Letter Jam at Origins 2019 and I saw this in action, with everyone in our first game being involved and trying their hardest, and with a sandbag in our second game who just couldn't grasp what was going on.
How you decide who will give a clue is worked out by the group without anyone ever saying what their clue is. Instead you say things like, "I can give a six-letter clue word that uses letters from three players, one dummy letter, and the wild letter." No matter the player count, you use dummy players so that everyone always sees five letters in play and the wild letter in the center of the table. You can re-use letters in your clue word, and you want to do this as it will often help others determine what their letter is. If everyone decides that I should give the clue, I then take numbered tokens and lay them out in front of the letters:
1 - T
2 - ?
3 - M
4 - ?
5 - R
6 - *
Your letter is the one with the 2 and 4 next to it, and the wild letter was used for the 6. Can you figure out what your letter is? If so, you mark it on your sheet, put that letter face down on the table, then pick up your next letter without looking at it and place it in the plastic stand. If you don't know the letter, hopefully you have a few guesses as to what it might be, and the next clue will lock it in for you.
Chad insists that he gave me the word "snipe", but I don't think so
If you've identified all of your letters before the game ends, you draw a random letter from the top of the deck and place that in your stand; if that letter is used in a word, you have one guess to state what that letter is, and if you're correct, you place that letter in the center of play, giving everyone another letter to draw upon when creating clues or putting another letter into play for the end of the game.
Once you've run out of clues or everyone thinks they know all their letters, you anagram those letters — still without looking at them! — into a word. If you want and others agree, you can "write over" one of your letters with the wild letter or bonus letters that have been guessed, either to simply spell a word (in case you guessed some letters incorrectly or can't anagram successfully) or to create a longer word (to show off or to score more points, if you happen to be playing the game for points, which is optional). If everyone has created a word, you win!
Letter Jam inspires cleverness along the lines of Codenames in that you need to present clues that give everyone as much unique information as possible. I'm still filled with satisfaction over coming up with the clue word LACTATES in a six-player game as all five players figured out what their letter was. (I'm also filled with regret that I couldn't use the perfect clue word in my first game because I didn't know anyone in the game and didn't want them to think that BGG employees were uncultured filthmongers. Sometimes it's better to be polite than to be clever.)
I present more thoughts on the game, specifically how it plays with differing player counts, in this overview video:
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