This week I played the most traditional way of Werewolves. The setup of the game I played is one seer, one witch, one hunter, three villagers and three werewolves. The platform of the game is a App called Werewolves and the target audience is anyone who can clearly state their logic.
The basic logic of this game and the game we designed are the same. As a god or a villager, all you need to do is trying to find out the position of the werewolves using your logic and convince others to believe in you and vote together with you. I got the identity of Seer in the round of game I played. I was quite nervous because this is an essential role in the game. I need to make full use of my role to help the good team win the game. Furthermore, the essential source of information is also the same as the game we designed, which is speech and voting. During the game, I collect all the information through the words other people said and figured out the werewolves based on their words and their voting. Though the werewolves can lie during the game, they often expose themselves in their words: no matter whether they would show out that they already knew some of the identities in some sentences, or they would vote together towards some players. In the round of game I played, I did not found out the hole in one player’s words, but he was the only person who voted together with the werewolf who claimed himself as the Seer in the last round. As I have nobody that I can 100% defined as a werewolf, the best choice for me is to call for the other players to vote him out. It turned out that he was actually one of the hidden werewolves in the end.
The first difference between our game and the version of Werewolves I played is that social experience of the game I played is much more less than our game. In our games, players can get to know each other by releasing some of the characteristic cards in order to revive. Then players can get to know each other beyond the game and help them start a conversation after the game ends. However, in the online Werewolf I played, it doesn’t matter whether you knew some other players or not. All you need to do is trying to figure out the holes in their words. It actually helps little to the boost of relationship between players.
The second difference is that our game is more complicated and have more information hidden in the game. Unlike the werewolves in the game I played, the small werewolves in our game does not know where the big wolf is. They cannot directly blindly push someone out without a second thought because losing the big wolf means the lose of the game to them. This point is a little bit likely to Avalon: some players need to protect a person that they do not know the exact position the identity lies. This would add more interest to the game as the werewolves are no more omniscient.
Moreover, players can type in the chat group in the game I play, which means players can change information not only in the speech time for each player, but also any time they like. That makes the order of speech not very important as both teams can summarize shortly in the chat group. However, in our game, players are only allowed to communicate during their speech time, which makes the game more challenging because both teams must fight for the Sheriff to get a better speech order. Also, the game had no Sheriff because players actually do not need it. But this would also help the Werewolves because the Seer can not left the information it get at the day it dies. In our game, the Seer can give the Sheriff ( if it has) to the player that it confirms good the night before in order to provide the good team more information.
