Belratti Game Review

Written by Dan York

How to play Belratti

Each round, the table is split into directors and artists. Directors reveal two cards from the deck, each of which depicts an object of some kind. The revealed objects form the two “themes” for the round and the directors must then decide how many paintings the artists must supply. It’s then down to the remaining players to work out which cards from their collective hands they can put down that match one of the two themes presented to them. Communication is limited and you have to try and intuit who has the best options. After the paintings have been submitted, a few more are added at random from the deck, the work of Belratti the forger! Points are scored based on how well the directors can sort the real from the fake and assign them to the correct theme. Once Belratti sneaks too many forgeries into the museum, the game ends.

Belratti Game Review

This has all the trappings of a great party game, it’s easy to teach and the rules are straightforward to grasp for all players. I’m a big fan of how well it suits a larger group of players, something not always easy to find. A lot of the fun comes from trying to read the minds of your artist players, there’s a perverse joy in trying to determine whether that painting of a chessboard is supposed to pair with the pizza box theme or whether it’s an unfortunate random fake. Just as in modern classics like Wavelength and The Same Game, Belratti is a vector for playful arguments between friends and feels designed to balance punishing overconfidence with the need to make occasional wild stabs in the dark. 

Depending on your stance, it’s either quite frustrating or very funny to watch the director players flip over a card you realise is a forgery but that matches the theme so much better than anything you have contributed. You sit in silence, hoping your teammates can use subtext and prior knowledge to deduce what cards you might be hoping to score. For my playgroup and I, it was a hit, it doesn’t take long to play so losing to a few random flips off the deck never feels punishing and as often with party games the cliché is true, it really is about the journey, not the destination.

There are bonus powers that you can use to help make a few tough rounds a bit easier, they feel nice and well thought-out, mitigating some of the luck inherent in the system. However, I think the game would work fine without them. There’s even a way to buy them back for re-use, but in all my games of this, we never quite managed the very specific set of requirements to do so.

This is a fantastic party game that grows with the number of players. The more voices at the table to argue about whether a painting of a bee is more closely related to a guitar or a wheelbarrow the better. The rules are breezy and easy to follow and the scoring generally feels fair, if you’re the type of group to push for high scores then there’s a good puzzle to enjoy here too. 

It’s a small box with a lot of fun packed into it and I’m always up for another round! 

Play Belratti?

Yes. A great icebreaker to see how well you and your friends think alike. You should try this game if you liked Herd Mentality –  a little less competitive and a little more abstract, Belratti and Herd Mentality are both great for seeing how well you can think like someone else.

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