I chose to play One Night Ultimate Werewolf, which is a casual social deduction game with a physical card format published by Bezier Games. The target audience is any group of 3-10 players. One Night Ultimate Werewolf is similar to Mafia and adjacent games, but uniquely being fast paced by having only one night round and having more roles than a standard Mafia game. One Night Ultimate Werewolf and our team’s game, Alien Mafia, are both social deduction games that involve deception and group discussion, but with different goals.
In my analysis, I will discuss how the differences in the dynamics and aesthetics of the two games contribute to different experiences of the two social deduction games. Although One Night Ultimate Werefold and Alien Mafia share many of the same formal elements, Alien Mafia makes intentional modifications to create a longer term strategic experience based on evolving information and dynamic incentives rather than creating a single deduction puzzle.
The main mechanic of One Night Ultimate Werewolf is assigning each player a secret role with multiple different special roles being able to perform an action during the single night round. The game comes to an end after a single round of discussion followed by a vote. Communication and teamwork is quite important since there is only one conversation that takes place in which each role must convince the others in the group to vote in favor of their objective. The mechanic of having hidden roles and a single vote for the entire game creates the dynamic of bluffing and accusing.
What stood out most to me in my experience of playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf is that the game is notably simple and fast, creating interesting interactions between a group of players with minimal confusion or unnecessary delay or inaction for players of any role. My group was able to play many iterations of the game in a set amount of time, which has not been my experience playing other Mafia-style games. The design minimizes downtime and creates newer experiences/choices often as a player just because of how quickly repeatable the game is and how different people and personalities map to different combinations of roles that contribute to different discussion dynamics, which is one of the game’s biggest strengths. In a game such as Mafia, it was not uncommon to spend 15+ minutes in a game as a single role, which would sometimes get boring especially as an ordinary villager. However, I did sometimes feel that certain plays were unsatisfying since the discussion wasn’t that complex. Because all meaningful information was already guaranteed to be created before discussion began, the design of the game resembles solving a fixed puzzle that required social interaction rather than having some sort of suspense factor as I’ve experienced with Mafia in watching the game unfold and discovering new things slowly.
Alien Mafia is built upon many of the same mechanics to create a game of a different structure. One of the most notable similarities between the two games is their use of asymmetric player roles. In One Night Ultimate Werewolf, each player’s role has a unique ability. For example, the Seer and the Drunk all contribute different information and interactions in the night. Similarly, Alien Mafia assigns players to the role of Alien, Scientist, or Researcher and each of these roles have different responsibilities. Since each role has different information and objectives, players can interpret conversations differently depending on what they know and what they suspect.
Alien Mafia introduces another important difference by allowing roles to change during gameplay. Players infected by Aliens become teammates with the other Aliens during the game. This mechanic creates some uncertainty that propagates as the game progresses because no players are truly trustworthy throughout the entire duration of the game. Players need to continuously reevaluate information and interactions. Alien Mafia is also different in its procedures, with a repeating day and night cycle more similar to Mafia with repeating discussion and voting processes. This allows strategies and evidence to develop gradually. Another difference is with the introductions of resources. One Night Ultimate Werewolf is built mainly from communication and deduction, whereas Alien Mafia adds the concept of tokens that allow each role to purchase actions to advance their objective. This introduces resource management and more considerations for the actions of each player.
Alien Mafia derives a lot of inspiration from social deduction games such as One Night Ultimate Werewolf such as using hidden roles with asymmetric information, discussion, and teamwork, but with the modification of many of the formal elements, namely through dynamic roles, repeated procedures, resource management, and changing objectives, it turns shorter deduction games into a longer game with engaging incentives for strategy.
