Name of Game:
Two Rooms and a Boom
Creators:
Alan Gerding & Sean Mccoy
Platform:
Cards to Assign Roles
Target Audience:
This game is for people who really like games that are completely social based and that involve hidden roles and social deduction. You can play with anywhere between 6-30 players, and ideally players age 10+ just because this game requires you to be strategic with the information you share, so it requires an age that is capable of upholding such strategy.
Argument:
Two Rooms and a Boom is similar to the game my group is creating in the ways that it requires you to try to figure out what cards the other players drew, and use that information to understand their objectives while also deducing what information to share/reveal, so that you can ensure your team wins.
Analysis:
This one of the few games that is reliant strictly through social interaction. Yes there are cards that determine what team you are on/but other than that, all the knowledge you obtain and everything you do is strictly based on social interaction and what you have found out about other people and what other people have found out about you, making it a huge game of fellowship. Similar to One Night Ultimate Werewolf where the game consists of primarily discussion but unlike Coup for instance, where you also have this other mechanic of coins and ensuring that you also try to obtain a certain amount of coins.
When I played the game on game night, we played with the least amount of people possible, 6, yet there were many different strategies that people chose. Some people were very bold and decided to show their card right away without trying to get some information first from the people they were in a “room” with. As someone who’s personal strategy was to keep my hands close to the chest and not reveal much information, having people reveal information to me was very useful because I can then deduce who was on each side, and then try to figure out who I needed to try to get paired up with. I also knew who I could trust. The people who ended up revealing the information, it ended up proving to be more useful than not, because they often were able to find a partner they could trust. We only played two rounds, but we learned by the second round that it is crucial to get the majority of people who are in your room on your side so then you have the power to vote for a leader, which is crucial to have the power to send someone to the other side. There was no better example of this than during the last round of the last game, and what was on that side was The President, A member on the blue team, and me, the Bomb. Since I am the bomb I am trying to get the person who is the president to stay and send over the person who is on the blue team, however they had already shared information and knew they were on the same team. I want to make myself a leader so that I can make the decision of who to send, so it’s up to me to deduce who is not president to send them over. However, because they are the same team, they have majority and are able to pick the President to be the leader (so not possible for her to move) and then to send me to the other side, because even if they didn’t know that I am the bomb, they know I am not on their side, and since they are unsure about me it’s safest bet to send me away…which they did. And since it was the last round, they won. This is why it’s important to have a majority, or at least have people think you’re part of the majority.
What I would encourage the game makers to alter about the game, would be to either eliminate the leader discussion and/or allow leaders to change their hostage after the discussion because it didn’t prove useful to the game and never revealed any new information. Any new information we would get from the other side would come from the hostage that shifted over. I think an interesting dynamic would be to still have the leader discussion, but in it you can try to see who they are thinking of trading, and then make your pick of hostage after the discussion because that allows room for deception to get one team to try to trade a specific player, which you can only know before revealing the hostages and fate talking to the person who is about to make that decision.
