Game Name: Magic Circle (2024) – “The Spy Game”
Creators: Avi Romanoff and the Magic Circle team
Target Audience: Casual players who enjoy low-pressure, multiplayer games with friends
Platforms: Web(magiccircle.gg), Discord Activity
One thing that stood out to me was the medium: an online version of a tabletop game can help with learning the game and delivering instructions as well, as the game can deliver personalized (and more limited = simple) info to each player, allowing for them to learn and understand the game easier.
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For this Critical Play, I chose to play the game “The Spy Game”, available as a minigame within the Discord Activity Magic Circle. It’s based on Charmeleon, with a few small additions. Since my group’s game Weasel is based on social deduction, I attempted to find a game that had core mechanics of not trusting anyone, figuring out the hidden role(s), and hiding your lack of information about a core subject. With 3 of my friends in Australia, I chose and played “The Spy Game”, which had a lot of great similarities and differences from my proposed game.
Roles and Role Assignment
The game is a Social Deduction focused, in an everyone versus one hidden player format. This is similar to games like Mafia/Werewolf, Secret Hitler, and Chameleon, which have a core mechanic as acting as the mainstream/popular team. The Spy Game is similar, but different in the sense that all non-popular team players are on a team by themselves. My game is most similar to the Spy Game, but allows for more than one “spy” each on their own teams. As such, in an 8 person setting, my game allows for a 6v1v1 setup (main team – spy – spy), whereas The Spy Game has to be 7v1 (main team – spy) and Secret Hitler would be 6v2 (main team – fascists).
One additional aspect about the role assignments is how each role is determined. In each of the games mentioned above, roles are semi-randomly decided before the start of the game, either digitally, through tapping on a shoulder, or by dealing cards. The Spy Game is assigned digitally, and provides nice text box alerting the player as to why their game board is empty. I believe that this provides a direct and simple way to play the game without getting too complicated. However, my game diverges most with The Spy Game in this regard, with a variable Weasel (“Spy”) mechanic. Each group that forms has a shared interest/object on their card. Each player can lie whenever forming or joining a group. If they lie, they become a weasel (for that group). If they tell the truth, they’re an Otter. With the multi-objective system of forming either the largest group of Otters without Weasels(a tie = no winner) or being the only Weasel in the group, I hope that this role-changing system mechanic proves to provide unexpected occurrences and dynamics in which the state of the game is never really determined until the round ends. I also understand how frustrating it is to play a game where the result is determined before you finish the game, and hope to encourage players to play through the whole round through this mechanic. With this mechanic, I also hope to not include any elimination, and prevent players from sitting out.
In Summary (my MDA goals in contrasting with “The Spy Game”):
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Mechanics: Weasel allows lying to determine your role, unlike how roles are static in “The Spy Game”. The multi-objective system enables both pathways to win.
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Dynamics: The mechanics may lead to to late-game reversals or dramatic reveals at the end of the game. The multiple-objective system is self-balancing: too many Otters will encourage weaseling.
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Aesthetics: “The Spy Game” aims for tension + humor; Weasel provides aims more for surprise, satisfaction, and/or socialization.
Choice in Theme
One great thing I noticed about “The Spy Game” is the ability to choose between themes. Since the Spy Game has a random spy, it can feel like you have no role in the game. However, with the implementation of a theme-selecting role that travels around the players consistently, it enables the players to have a bit more agency on the game. Some themes can be harder to players, and this helps to balance out the themes that one personally doesn’t know much about (famous books, greek gods, planets). I personally really like this implementation, I now plan to include theme cards that one player can select from before starting the game. However, I’ve gotten a few themes that are both unsatisfying, such as bugs and historical figures. I see no issue with choosing from 3 options, and I think the game could allow for more choice. As long as there’s enough theme cards, the themes won’t get too repetitive, so I plan to playtesting with 3 themes to choose from.
Design Patterns for Friendships
Analyzing the game from the “Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships” perspective, this is a game that necessitates Hard Co-op. Since the game requires a shared discord server to join, the majority of players will also be at the Friends level. As such, the features of text-chat, voice chat, group chat, emotes, identity are all warranted and help to add to the levels of disclosure. And the coolest part is that since all of these options are available, one can choose to simply use emotes (bottom-right) or group chat(top-right), allowing for a very opt-in experience.
In regards to proximity, all of the positive tools that increase repeated interactions and density are implemented. There is a persistent identity, with daily rewards of bread, as well as a daily mini-minigame to check out. The ability to freely join and leave rooms contributes well to the density, and none of the anti-patterns of anonymity, sparse areas, many game modes, ranked skill systems, and matchmaking are implemented. In playing this game after completing the sketchnote, I’m realizing how well the game is designed.
Since my game happens to be a folk game, the majority of the 4 tools for Happiness in a game can’t be applied, and the in-person aspect of the game necessitates real-life connection. In this sense, there’s very little choice in disclosure, and lots of forced disclosure is included. However, because of the real-life aspect of the game, this information has been already disclosed. Furthermore, tools like daily incentives and game rooms are much harder to implement. However, the goals of these tools in creating repeat interactions, density, and trust(shared social norms) is just as important. In my game, the players need to form teams or approach existing teams, and interact to determine the weasels (spies), directly facilitating these goals. I’ve learned a great deal from taking this perspective of a game designer while doing this Critical Play, and I’ll be sure to reflect this knowledge in my first project!
