For my critical play, I played “Snake Oil”, a social party card game created by Jeff Ochs. The game is intended primarily for teens and adults who enjoy being creative and improvisational. It can be enjoyed by both groups who have prior relationships and those who do not know each other as well, as the fast-paced and comedic nature of the game fosters a broadly enjoyable play experience.
Our team’s game, “The Game of Truth”, similarly incites creativity and humor from its players but differs from “Snake Oil” by encouraging players to share details about themselves, fostering deeper relationships and knowledge of one another. This is evidenced in the central differences of improvisation VS introspection and performance VS strategy.
Improvisation VS Introspection
Image of the “Santa” and “Trick of Treater” role from Snake Oil
“Snake Oil”’s play experience requires players to tap into their improvisational and comedic abilities. As a player in “Snake Oil”, I had to convince another player, the “customer”, to buy an absurd product built from cards I had in my deck. The customer themself was also assigned a specific role which I would have to keep in mind. For instance, for one round, I had to convince Santa to buy a banana swing (put together by two cards, “banana” and “swing”). I competed against three other “sellers” who were convincing Santa to buy their product as well.
“The Game of Truth” similarly requires players to be quick-witted to come up with funny answers, but their answers require introspection and self-reflection. The prompts in the “Game of Truth” ask about details for the writers’ personal lives–for instance, a prompt asks “What would you get cancelled for?” In addition to being funny, the answer should also reflect parts of the player’s personality that is grounded in reality.
Tapping into principles mentioned in “Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships”, “The Game of Truth” leverages vulnerability as a way to bring its players closer together. In order to play the game well, players are encouraged to reveal parts of themselves so the guesser can match their favorite answer to a person. While I enjoyed telling the customer to buy a banana swing so Santa would have an easier time navigating the tropical regions of the world, I thought my fellow players came to know me better when I wrote about my obsession with musicals during a round of “The Game of Truth”.
Performance VS Strategy
The winning pitch in “Snake Oil” is dependent on the individual’s performance, partially if they provided a convincing pitch but also mostly with what made the audience laugh the most. When I was a seller, I had to rely on comedic timing and dramatic presentation to win over my customer.
While “The Game of Truth” also requires answers to be funny to be chosen as the “best answer”, involvement in an answer is not just limited to one person. For instance, as a bluffer I can pretend to be the writer of the answer and convince the guesser that it was my answer so I may win the point. There are elements of strategy where I have to come up with a genuinely convincing argument as to why this answer is mine, keeping in mind prior information that I provided during the course of the game.
As such, “Snake Oil” is primarily a judging game, but “The Game of Truth” also becomes a guessing game. A customer in “Snake Oil” only has to assess which answer was funniest to them, but the guesser in “The Game of Truth” pushes themselves a step further to guess which of their peers was most likely to give that answer. On top of this, there is also the added layer of the writer having to prevent revealing too much about themselves—if a guesser is able to attribute every writer’s answer to the correct person, the guesser is able to win all the points in a round while all writers get no points.
Further reflection on “Snake Oil”
As a player, I appreciated several of “Snake Oil”‘s design decisions. The rules were very simple and easy to follow along with, so it was accessible even to my friends who do not play games often. When I was the judge, I really enjoyed hearing out my friend’s pitches and liked seeing them scramble to come up with ideas. It was fun to also embody the character I was in for that round, and, since I played with friends who were similarly immersed, we were able to banter as our roles. On the other side, as a product pitcher, I had to come up with half baked pitches and present them with full confidence–but, since every other pitch was also impromptu, we could laugh without judgement.
However, I wish there was more time to come up with and deliver the pitches; 30 seconds was quite short to sell a product, and not everyone was able to come up with a good idea before having to dive into pitching. I played a variation where the pitch was up to a full minute in the next round, and my fellow players and I found it more entertaining. Additionally, the game could sometimes be isolating for shier players who dislike acting alone. As such, it may be beneficial to introduce a variation where players deliver their pitches in pairs so quieter players could get more comfortable participating.
