Critical Play: One Night Werewolf

Introduction

For this competitive analysis critical play, I decided to play One Night Werewolf, an extremely popular social deduction game that has much in common with our group’s social mediation game. I played a few rounds using the board game and the free iOS narration app with my housemates (6 players total). According to the App Store, the game is intended for an audience of “Ages 4+”— I suppose a 5-year-old would theoretically be able to play this game, but I also think a lot of the fun social elements might be better suited for an older audience and lost on young kids. For this reason, our group’s game is targeted toward players ages 8+ (despite having an even tamer, more kid-friendly theme of “Kitchen Mischief”).

The eponymous theme of this game is Werewolves vs. Villagers. There are also a ton of special characters that players can be, but the basic premise of the game is that the Villager team wins by correctly identifying at least one Werewolf, otherwise the Werewolves win. There is also only one round (i.e. one “night” and one “day”) per game — players deliberate for 5 minutes and then cast a deciding vote.

MDA

Mechanics that create Dynamics

• Vote to kill: the mechanic of having to vote on a player to kill creates the dynamic that players must convince other players they are innocent Villagers, whether they truly are or not. That is, this mechanic is what creates a lot of the interesting social elements in the gameplay — players must deliberate in order to figure out who the Werewolves are to vote out.
• Countdown timer (i.e. fixed duration of round): helps to reduce the amount of irrelevant discussion during the “day.” With a limited amount of time before voting, there is a stronger sense of urgency and players seem to have more intense engagement with the game.
• Only one round: the fact that this version of Werewolf only has one night / day is interesting because it completely alters the game theory strategies behind the multi-round game. For example, unlike in the multi-round game, the Seer has no incentive to stay quiet even if they didn’t see a Werewolf in the night — with only 1 round, there is no longer the possibility that they will be killed by the Werewolves in a future round if they reveal themselves too early. This mechanic has a huge ripple effect throughout the game — when we played, the Seer would immediately reveal what they saw, but then the secret Werewolves would lie to create more chaos and confusion during deliberations.

Aesthetics

• Fellowship: Fellowship is immediately established for the Werewolves, who open their eyes and identify each other during the night. Due to the one-night element of this game, Werewolves can only win together — if any of the Werewolves gets killed, the Villager team wins. Similarly, the Villager team must kill a Werewolf in order to win — with only one chance to vote a Werewolf out, the Villagers have to work hard to identify their true allies.
• Narrative: Werewolves must do a good job blending in with the Villager team in order to avoid getting killed, while Villagers must identify their true teammates in order to win. Narrative is a huge part of the fun intended for a player — without the narrative, this game would just be people pointing fingers at each other.

Graphic Design

The graphic design of this game aligns really well with the overall theme. The thoughtful design of the characters sets the tone of the game and is likely also particularly appealing to the game’s younger audience. Given that it’s a social deduction game where players are intended to assume thematic identities, the dark, eerie visual design also does a good job of establishing the game’s boundaries and encouraging more enthusiasm among players.

Thematic visuals establish a stronger sense of the “Magic Circle”

When players are deliberating, the timer screen uses the same stone background to set the scene — this is important because we looked at this screen multiple times to check how much time was remaining in a round, so the visual design served to reinforce the theme (despite the fact that we were all just playing in our living room). The large in-your-face font size of the countdown timer is also effective in establishing a sense of urgency.

Handling Abuse

One Night Werewolf does not do anything explicit to address abuse. That being said, I found that the narrative elements of this game and the boundaries of the “Magic Circle” do significantly help to mitigate risks of personal attacks / other forms of toxicity among players.