1792

When my team and I first began ideating a social deception game, I wasn’t entirely sure how it was all going to work — how was it going to be any different from Secret Hitler, Mafia, or One Night Werewolf? I knew it was going to be a challenge to find the appropriate balance of learning and fun.

Our final product, 1792 — formerly Let Them Eat Cake — is a social-deception game themed around the French Revolution. Players, along with 4-9 of their friends, adopt secret identities of Royalists and Sans-culotte revolutionaries and vie to complete (or sabotage) tasks to determine the fate of the monarchy.

From Version 1, I was most intrigued about how designs and design elements could subliminally guide a learning experience and teach implicitly. We wanted 1792 to be immersive — not just in gameplay, but also in the components themselves. Game pieces were intentionally designed to maximize users’ learning experience, with inclusion of historical French Revolution relics such as the assignats on Finance Cards and the front-page excerpt from Le Père Duchesne — a French revolutionary journal — on the back of our event cards.

Image: The Event cards (left) include the design of Le Père Duchesne (right)

Image: The Finance cards (left) include the design of the assignat currency (right)

Mechanically, it was fascinating to build a social deception game from the ground up. Though games like Secret Hitler play seamlessly, I now understand how complex it is to ideate mechanics, find an adequate balance in play, and create a functioning, fun, and educational game. 1792’s play mechanics revolved around secret identities, forming teams to undertake missions, hidden sabotages, and strategizing what resources to keep or discard. Our learning mechanics were also seamlessly embedded into the game through Event cards detailing historical events throughout the French Revolution and chronological Success and Failure cards teaching players about the successes and failures of the Revolution until 1792.

Image: Example of the front of an event card, detailing the historical event, the date, and its effect on the Revolution / nation.

From this experience of designing a learning game — ideating mechanics, testing them through playtests, and iterating upon them — I came to appreciate just how difficult teaching and learning truly are. First and foremost, it’s difficult to create a game that’s both educational and legitimately fun; finding that balance requires a lot of effort, hours of collecting user feedback, and tireless late nights of revisions. The iteration process taught me to adapt — to quickly discard ideas that don’t work, no matter how attached to them I. Second, I learned to wear two hats at once: one as a game designer, and one as the player. And from this experience, I realized that learning, as a player, is also equally difficult. A game can have a plethora of carefully-designed teaching elements, but that doesn’t mean players will learn anything from it.

Watching players partake in our game, I was admittedly nervous. Honestly, more nervous than I expected. I worried the game wouldn’t function — that someone would exasperatedly sigh from one corner, or a flash a glance of boredom from one player to another. And occasionally, this happened. But each lull became a signal for improvement; and by the end of this project, I’m proud to say our game came a long way.