Subject: This will be good!
We had an opportunity to play the prototype at Gamestorm 11 (Vancouver WA, March 28, 2009) with the design team. Players 6: Kristin Looney, Andy Looney, Mike Selinker, Boyan Radakovich, myself, and my business partner Steve Ellis.
Andy described this game as a variant of the werewolf/mafia game, but with two changes: First, there are rounds and each round is short. Second, there is a win condition. For me, this made the game way more fulfilling but still also accessible to many people. The objective of this game is quite simple: There is an evil team and a good team. Each round, cards are dealt out randomly. With 6 players, we played with these roles.
4 Guards as follows: 1 Keyholder (good), 2 guards (good), 1 traitor (evil) 2 Wizards as follows: 1 Good Wizard, 1 Evil Wizard. The keyholder reveals him/herself to the other guards (including the traitor). So guards have one more piece of information than the wizards have.
Each round played different as each player tried to fool others into tricking them to accuse them in different ways. The only rule here is you can't show your card. Good or evil wins each round and then those players get a treasure card, which are variable value (and there are some clever special ones). The round ends when a player yells stop and calls out one of the players. If he/she correctly identifies the role, then that side will win. For example, the keyholder tries to identify the good wizard. I found this little "state map" a clever aspect of the game. The list of game ending actions are:
* evil wizard calls out the keyholder
* good wizard calls out the traitor
* guard calls out the traitor
* keyholder calls out the good wizard
* note that the traitor cannot call anyone out
So in the first round, I was dealt the good wizard card and Kristin was the evil wizard. She immediately told the table she was the good wizard and started to work on finding the traitor. So my response was "clearly, evil is speaking first to deceive you!" Unfortunately evil did win this first round, with the traitor successfully manipulating the keyholder. In the second round Andy kept kicking me trying to call out Kristin as the keyholder, but I didn't trust him. Sure enough he was right (he was the traitor and I was the evil wizard). But we still won that round as the guards falsely accused a different player of being the traitor!
During the mid game, Mike was very successful in reading the players quite quickly. In later rounds I was much more successful as an evil wizard. We played about six rounds and the game ended when one player had at least 10 points of treasure. After those rounds where Mike was guessing well, he incorrectly guessed me as the good wizard in the final round (again I was the evil wizard). Andy won with 12 points and I was second with 11 points. One of the treasure cards was a "goose egg" - I don't remember the exact name, and it was worth zero points. Steve had it early, but Kristin stole it with a special Ring treasure card, so that was a highlight of the game.
Per Kistin and Andy, this game will be out in June. The card art and box look great. I think this will be a hit!
Jeff Abramson, co-owner
Rainy Day Games, Aloha OR
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Posted Tue Mar 31, 2009 5:26 pm
