A game that I love to play is Clue! It is a staple that my siblings, my cousins, and I play during family gatherings, and that always succeeds in encouraging our competitive spirit. Some of the game’s mechanics involve having a hidden set of cards with information about a murder that happens in the game (murderer, weapon used, and location), having an investigation sheet hidden from other players where you mark down your findings (i.e. all of the people, places, and weapons that you have ruled out), and having a secret subset of cards that help you personally rule out some suspects/weapons/locations. The fact that everybody starts the game with a limited set of secret clues leads to every person having different, incomplete information about how the murder happened. As the game moves forward, people need to make up for their incomplete information by trying to get into rooms to make accusations which help them learn new, secret clues about what actually happened in the murder, something that stirs up an immediate sense of competition and discovery as every individual player slowly learns new things about what weapons weren’t used, who could not have committed the murder, and where the murder could not have taken place so that they can build up to a final accusation in an attempt to win the game.
So, the mechanic that every user starts the game with a subset of clue cards leads to the dynamic of users competing to strategically choose rooms to visit so that they can make accusations which leads to the exploration and discovery of new clues as they learn from their accusation (i.e. learn which parts of the accusation were wrong and deduce which were correct). This is the core of what drives the competition and “fun” of the game!
