Since half of our game is based on truth-or-dare, I played a social game called Most Likely To with a group of 8 friends. This game does not have a known creator; it spreads through word-of-mouth with many different variations. It is often played at parties, especially with alcohol. When playing this game, the main things I wanted to understand were (1) how and when does fun arise in this game and (2) what kinds of questions are good questions? The reason I focused on this game is because the “truth” cards we created for our game are mostly “most likely to” questions, so this Critical Play allows me to dive into this portion of the game while other team members analyzed the Twister element.
The game Most Likely To has any player start by stating a most-likely-to, like “Who’s most likely to be President?” They then count down from 3 and everyone at the table (including them) points to who they think fits the statement. This player has to drink and they pose the next question. In an alternative version, players simply alternate posing the next question in a circle.
This game is fun in terms of fellowship: it brings people together and makes them laugh. I felt this when playing the game: people were laughing and connecting with each other over shared opinions of their friends. There was one member of our group who didn’t know everyone else very well, and they were still engaged and laughing. It’s more high-energy and fun than Paranoia and typical Truth-or-Dare because all players are engaged during each question. People can disagree or agree and laugh about that. The pointing aspect is fun because it makes outcomes slightly ambiguous; you have to look around to see who got the most hands. Sometimes, people ask unkind questions. It’s on players of the game to reject questions that are harmful, which we did 1-2 times.
I think the biggest thing that makes the game fun is that everyone is mentally engaged at all times. If I could change something, I’d want better, interesting questions to be asked. Often players struggled to think of good questions and the game lagged or got repetitive. A fix for this is to have cards with particular “most likely to” questions pre-made that differ from the typical set people ask. I noticed that the most interesting questions involved scenarios; the more detailed, the better. I’m going to try to replicate that in our game.
