Masquerade
Created by Karina Chen, Mateo Larrea Ferro, Gabe Magaña, and Maimuna Muntaha
Artist Statement
Masquerade™ is a social deduction game centered around playing with a group of friends or family. Players respond to a chosen prompt in a unique style. All players read all responses and try to guess which player wrote what.
The goal of the game is to score points for correct guesses and successful deception. Masquerade is fun because players are challenged and put to the test about how much they truly know their friends and whether they can discern responses and players.
In Cards Against Humanity, players try to come up with the funniest responses to prompts, but the lack of open-ended responses can make the game seem repetitive. The design of Masquerade is centered around anonymity and open-ended prompts that encourage players’ creativity and humor to speak for themselves. Instead of having one judge like Cards Against Humanity, every player is the judge. We wanted this game to strengthen bonds between players who already know each other well.
We want to see how certain friend archetypes may roll over into the game responses.
We all think we’re not predictable, but this game puts our personality and our friends to the test.
Concept Map
Initial Formal Elements and Values
Our team had just played Wing It and we enjoyed the game a lot because we liked the creativity with the stories we could build with our general cards. We also discussed how much we liked social deduction games with judges for each round but we wanted the ability to have more open-ended responses, and we decided to mod Wing It and Cards Against Humanity by providing prompt cards and category cards that allowed players to come up with open-ended responses to prompts, but still following a certain category (e.g., haiku, one word). We wanted a game where the players would ideally be socializers and try to come up with the best responses to prompts and have a judge choose the best response. We modded this initial idea to a judge guessing which person came up with each response and every round the judge would rotate to a new player. However, we found that many games like Wing it and Cards Against Humanity also had one major downfall: the “judge” role quickly and too easily became repetitive and made the game less “fun” or challenging because of patterns in the game. Our group wanted a game where all players’ creativity was involved, social deduction was a major factor, and every player was the judge. We wanted to hone in on making a game that was fun because it promoted fellowship, using the game as a social framework, and challenged players, by making the game an obstacle course.
We began developing Masquerade with the idea to modify current fill-in-the-blank social games with open ended responses rather than providing the blanks to the audience. The core premise of our initial idea for Masquerade came with players providing their own unique creativity and humor into responses to come up with the best responses. Some key innovations to our game came with more playtesting and the addition of the idea of matching players to their responses. During our beginning stage of Masquerade, for mechanics, we considered having a judge, but as aforementioned, thought it would form a pattern that was easily detectable by players thus reducing the enjoyment of the gameplay. Therefore, we considered a mechanic where players would guess which player wrote which response.
We had many critical design questions with our main premise being open-ended responses. We thought making the game analog took too long, and the longer the time per round, the less enjoyable the game was to players. Should we make the game digital or analog? We discussed the pros and cons for both mediums for our game and found that if we make the game digital, then there’s no need for a judge. Everyone could participate in all rounds in terms of making a prompt and in terms of guessing who wrote what. We wanted our game to be inclusive, so everyone had an equal role throughout the gameplay. Our main concern was figuring out the interface for guessing and writing responses.
Therefore, we wanted Masquerade to bring already-established friends closer together by connecting them with their shared humor and testing how well and discernable friends were. We wanted friends to present their humor and not be limited to the game designer’s own creativity or own bias. Since the game responses are open ended, it almost feels like, depending on who you play with, you’re playing a different game each time you play with a different group. Each round is a loop of the same process (pick a card, pick a prompt, write response, guess response), but the unique aspects to each part of our game was designed to keep players engaged. Masquerade is a game meant to bring friends closer together by letting them see whether they can tell the difference between friends. The core values of Masquerade are creativity, deduction, and fellowship to promote fostering and learning more about relationships through games.
Testing Iteration and History
When we first came up with the idea of Masquerade, we wanted one judge and the rest of the players would create their own open-ended responses which the judge would then choose and rank as the best response. We then iterated our game to have players guess others’ responses instead.
Playtest 1
In our first playtest (5 players), we used a combination of Pollev for digital submission and paper-based response guessing. Players responded to prompts and then physically pointed at who they thought had written each response. The group responded positively to the interactivity and humor of the finger-pointing mechanic, which created a dynamic social atmosphere. However, not all prompts landed well, particularly answer styles like “talk like a CEO,” which felt too corporate for Stanford students, and “answer in a Haiku,” which was too challenging to answer in a short amount of time. The sequential guessing system was clear but started to drag as rounds continued. While the premise was well received, we realized the overall flow needed more structure and the prompts needed to better balance creativity with accessibility. We iterated our game’s prompts and categories after the first playtest, and decided the finger pointing was a good mechanic for engaging players, based on players’ opinions in the first playtest.
Playtest 2
Our second playtest (4 players) tested the same core mechanic but with a different group dynamic. Unlike the first group, these players found the finger-pointing system for guessing clunky and slow, especially as the game progressed. The lack of structure made the guessing phase feel chaotic, revealing the need for a smoother, more scalable mechanic, especially for larger groups. Based on this feedback, we introduced a significant change to the flow of each round: one player now chooses a prompt from a random selection of three, and another player selects a response style (i.e. one word, emojis) from a separate pool of three. This created an additional layer of interaction and surprise, while also reducing cognitive load by offering manageable choices. We also began building a fully digital version of the game, allowing us to eliminate ambiguity in submission and streamline the guessing interface. This version also removed the need for a judge entirely, which aligned better with our goal of making Masquerade fully participatory.
Playtest 3
During our third playtest (5 players), we tested the fully digital version and introduced simultaneous guessing via an on-screen interface. This eliminated the need for finger-pointing and reduced downtime between rounds. We also added ambient sound effects and visual feedback to increase immersion. Additionally, previous playtests had revealed that the rules and structure were unclear to new players, so we added clearer onboarding instructions and a simplified landing page to guide users through the game’s mechanics. This helped reduce confusion and made it easier for new players to jump in without needing facilitator guidance. While the digital version ran smoothly, we noticed that players were more quiet than we had originally intended, likely due to the fact that none of the playtesters were friends with each other. Thus, after this playtest, we wanted to test with a group that aligns more closely with our target audience as the testers really liked the core game mechanics, but were too unfamiliar with each other.
Playtest 4
In our final playtest, we found that the mechanics of the game were accessible to players. Even small details like the sound enriched the entire player experience. The written steps were easy to follow, and players fell into an easy round pattern where the rounds went by relatively quickly (3-5 minutes per round), yet the new prompts and new categories allowed players to not get bored of the game’s design.
Visual Evolution
Physical Version:
Digital Version:
Final Prototype and Rules
Final prototype link: https://games.gabema.ga
Description: A social deduction and creativity game where players anonymously respond to prompts, and players try to match each response to its author.
Components:
- Prompts: Questions or creative tasks (i.e. “The universe sent me a sign. It said __,” “If your life were a movie, what genre would it be?”)
- Answer style: Indicate the type of response (i.e. Emoji-only, Using a song lyric)
Round Structure:
- Draw prompt & category
- One player randomly selected chooses a prompt for the group to answer. They can choose whether to disclose the prompt or not.
- Another player randomly selected chooses an answer style for the group.
- All players submit their responses anonymously
- Guessing phase
- All players review all responses and try to match each to its author.
- Reveal & scoring
- Players receive one point for each correct response.
- Repeat!
- Play more rounds until the first player to reach __ points wins.
