This Game is Killer: Frozen Horror

During the lifetime of a game taster, once in a while we stumble upon unheard of games which take us by surprise. This Game is Killer: Frozen Horror is one such game for me. It is not a ground-breaking genre nor is it a highly unusual setting. It is just how well the game is put together in a concise way, plus some genius ideas thrown in. 

First and foremost, this is a one-vs-many secret identity game. One of the players is the horror, and the rest are humans. The game is played until the horror kills all the humans, or the humans manage to kill the horror. You win if you are still alive. The twist in this game is you draw identity cards every round. Every round, the horror might be any of the characters still alive. Imagine a ghost which jumps from body to body to possess them. 

The setting is a research station in the Arctic. You can start in any of the four rooms. They are connected to other rooms via doors in specific colours. The colours are important because movement cards let you move through doors in specific colours, and some cards let you temporarily lock a door in a specific colour. 

Every round you draw two cards and you will play them both. One must be played for movement, and the other for its power text. After all cards are played, you check whether the horror is in the same room as any human. If so, the horror kills some or all of these humans. When you are human, you need to try to guess who the horror is and you want to avoid him. If you are the horror, you normally want to go to where the most people are, or where at least one human is. You want to kill. 

When you are human, the behaviour of the other players will give you some clues on whether they are the horror. The horror will try to be subtle. He may pretend he suspects another player is the horror, and that's why he's coming to your room. He may try to make excuses for questionable actions. By default, the horror kills someone sharing the room. For a human to kill the horror it is much harder. You rely on having drawn certain cards. For example there's a card which lets you shoot a person who enters your room. Now that poor fellow might actually be human. There is a card which lets you shoot someone in your room then leave. If the horror uses this card well, he can kill twice. 

As the number of players dwindle, some rooms will be destroyed. It's hard to run away from sharing a room. 

When you are eliminated as a human, you don't participate anymore, but you can still cheer on the remaining humans. This is a player elimination game, but it is short and entertaining that even watching others play is fun. 

I like that this game distils the genre into something so minimalistic while still retaining the psychological play. In fact, I feel you get extra doses of this excitement because every round the identity of the horror may change. You are constantly wondering who the horror is. You question every action of your fellow players. Are they laying a trap? Are they trying to avoid danger or are they trying to trick you? Who can you trust? 

Blood on the Clocktower

Blood on the Clocktower is a social deduction game with the same concept and structure as Werewolf. It is an improved, more complex and more strategic version of Werewolf. In Werewolf you don't really have much basis for discussion or deduction. You rely on observing the facial expressions and reactions of your friends. In Blood on the Clocktower every town resident has a unique ability, and as a team the townsfolk have a lot of information to work with. You have more concrete data as a basis for discussion. 

There are two teams. The bad guys are the demon and his minion, and they try to keep their identities secret. Their goal is to kill most of the townsfolk. If the demon can survive until there are only two players remaining, the demon team wins, even if the minion is killed. The good guys are the townsfolk. Their goal is to kill the demon. In order to do that they need to work out who the demon is. Game rounds alternate between day rounds and night rounds. Night rounds are when the demon gets to secretly kill a town resident. Day rounds are when the townsfolk can vote to lynch a person suspected to be the demon. This game requires a facilitator who does not participate in the game itself. Being facilitator in this game is much more complex than being one in Werewolf. You have much more work to do and more information to manage. In night rounds everyone closes their eyes and the facilitator gives instructions about who should open their eyes and convey or receive information without the rest knowing. 

In a day round, the townsfolk get to discuss who they think the demon is. They can vote to kill the person. This is how you kill the demon. One difference from Werewolf is you don't necessarily have to pick someone to kill if you are not sure. If none of the accused get enough votes, or if they are tied in votes, nobody dies. Another difference from Werewolf is dead people continue to play. After you are killed, you are still allowed to speak, just that you don't have your powers anymore. You are even allowed to vote, but from the moment you are killed until the end of the game, you can only vote once. People who get killed are usually the good guys. Since they get to continue to speak, the demon cannot silence them by killing them. The demon needs to be careful not to expose himself, because all these dead people still have one vote each, and if they band together, they can get him killed. I think this aspect makes the game better than Werewolf. There is no player elimination. Everyone is engaged till the end. 

The best part of the game is the character powers. Every character has a unique power. Only the facilitator and you know which character you are. There is no card indicating who you are. You don't have anything to prove you are who you say you are. Players may declare who they are, but whether the others believe so is a different matter. Certainly the bad guys want to pretend to be good guys. 

Here are some of the townsfolk characters. The fortune teller gets to pick two players every night, and she will know whether the demon is among them. There is a weakness to her power though. One specific town resident will be mistaken as the demon. All of this is handled by the facilitator. The monk protects one player every night. If the demon attempts to kill that player, the protected player is saved. The washerwoman starts the game knowing that between two town residents, one is a particular character. 

These above are the townsfolk. There is another type among the good guys, and they are called the outsiders. They are on the same team as the townsfolk, but their powers are liabilities. Their existence helps the demon. One outsider is the drunkard. He doesn't know he's drunk and he believes he is someone else. He thinks his information is correct, but it may not be. As you can see, the existence of this character can really mess with the townsfolk. All of this needs to be managed by the facilitator. 

The demon's minion can be one of four characters. The poisoner gets to disable and confuse the power of a town resident for 24 hours. The scarlet woman can take the place of the demon if the demon is killed early, allowing the game to continue. 

Although the townsfolk collectively have much information which help them figure out who the demon is, the demon and his minion do get tools and information to help them too. For example the facilitator will let the demon know about three specific characters which are not in play. This is helpful because the demon can pretend to be one of these characters, and there won't be any town resident who can verify that he is lying. 

Part of the facilitator's toolset

I did a 7-player game. I drew the demon, and that made me rather nervous. My minion was Sam. I didn't know which character he was. Right off the bat we got into a rather sticky situation. Xiang Yang was the empath, and he was seated exactly between Sam and I. The power of the empath was he could sense how many evil persons were next to him. He sensed two, which meant it must be both the demon and his minion! Game over?! This sucked big time. Another problem was Han was the washerwoman, and at the start of the game, he knew that between Xiang Yang and I, one was the empath. This meant his information matched what Xiang Yang claimed. I knew for our game the soldier was not in play. I was prepared to say that I was the soldier. The soldier could not be killed by the demon. So I planned to say that I couldn't reveal my character early, because I needed to lure the demon to kill me. He would fail, and I would have given us one more precious round. I didn't dare to deny what Xiang Yang had said, because Han's input matched his. If I went against two of them, I would arouse suspicion. So I said I believed Xiang Yang was the empath, but I said that his information was wrong, and that he must have been poisoned by the poisoner. Thankfully there was such a character in the game, and I could make use of this to wriggle out of this tight spot. At the time I had no idea whether Sam was the poisoner. It turned out that he was. 

In the first night round I promptly killed Xiang Yang. It felt too dangerous to have him seated right between Sam and I. In hindsight, that might not have been wise. The townsfolk might have interpreted that this meant what Xiang Yang had said was true - he was sitting between the demon and the minion. I could have let him live, and then let the poisoner do poisoning every round. Then what Xiang Yang said would become inconsistent, and it would just be considered gibberish. In fact he might end up being suspected. 

Game in progress (photo courtesy of boardgamecafe.net)

Joon Lam was the slayer. Once per game the slayer can attempt to kill the demon. He just has to point, and if that player is the demon, the demon is killed. During our discussion, Joon Lam was convinced that Sam was the demon. Sam did try to defend himself somewhat, at least to try to put on some show. I did not try very hard to dissuade Joon Lam. Sam wouldn't have been hurt anyway. I did not egg Joon Lam on either, so as not to appear too keen. The end result was the slayer wasting his holy water and Sam needing a towel for his wet face (figuratively speaking). 

Eu Vin was the fortune teller. Every night he could point at two persons, and Jeff the facilitator would tell him whether the demon was among them. This was done in the evening when everyone had their eyes closed, so no one knew who he pointed at and what answer he received. In fact, we couldn't even be sure he was indeed the fortune teller and all this happened at all. We had our eyes closed. In one night round Eu Vin pointed at Sam and Joon Lam, and Jeff signalled at him that the demon was among them. Eu Vin was given this answer not by mistake. The fortune teller's power had a weak point. One of the townsfolk would be mistaken as the demon. In our game, that error was Joon Lam. Eu Vin was convinced that Joon Lam was the demon, and asked everyone to vote to get him killed. I, of course, quietly supported the motion. So another innocent person was killed. Well, technically the townsfolk didn't know that yet. They could only be sure that the demon wasn't dead yet since the game continued. It might have been the minion getting killed. The identities of the dead were not yet revealed. 

Crunch time was the day round when we had four players remaining. If the townsfolk didn't manage to kill me, by night there would be only three left, I could kill one more to get to two players left, and I would win. This time Eu Vin was convinced that I was the demon. He proposed that I be sent to the gallows. Joon Lam was already dead. In this game most of the dead are townsfolk, and most of the time they are honest. They can still speak, and since they usually have no more reason to lie, you have to be careful about arguing with them. I stayed away from any such argument. Joon Lam said he was the slayer, and since his attempt to kill Sam had failed, it meant Sam wasn't the demon. I said in a matter-of-fact manner that with only four of us left still alive, the possibilities would be Eu Vin, Zackler and me. I said I thought Eu Vin was the demon, and that I too wanted to nominate him to be hanged. Up to this point, none of the three dead people had voted yet. Their votes could be make or break. Since Eu Vin had nominated me first, the voting to kill me went ahead first. With four players alive, only two votes were needed to get me executed. There were exactly two votes. In this game to vote means to support hanging the person. There is no vote for disagreeing. If you disagree, just don't vote. I had also nominated Eu Vin, so we had to vote for him too. Naturally Sam and I voted. We had two more votes from the townsfolk, making a total of four votes. I escaped the hanging, and Eu Vin was executed. That meant game over for the townsfolk. The demon and his minion won! 

This game gave me a lot of anxiety. I was nervous but I had to act calm and innocent. Looks like I'm a pretty good liar. I managed to convince the townsfolk of my innocence. Blood on the Clocktower is an improved version of Werewolf. It addresses several shortcomings of Werewolf. Werewolf is simple, and if that's what you are looking for, it will still work for you. In Blood on the Clocktower you have much more information to work with. The game is more strategic. You have more basis for discussion and deduction. You are not deciding on who to lynch based on gut feel. There is some logic and reasoning. The townsfolk have more information, which makes things harder for the demon. However the demon also has more tools to balance things out. There is more information, but there is also possible misinformation. The designer has done a lot of work balancing the game. This game must have been a huge undertaking to playtest thoroughly. I am truly impressed. If you like social deduction games, you must give this a go. 

Still lots of discussion and debate after the game

Jeff (in green) was a great facilitator 

Demon (me) and poisoner Sam

Prowl: Clans & Cunning

Prowl: Clans & Cunning is a game from Singapore, designed by Russell Wee and published by Playlogue. It is a card game set in a fantastical Japanese Warring States period. There are four factions in the game and you secretly support one of them. During the game you influence the strengths of the factions. At the end of the game, if the faction you support is the strongest, you win. 

During game setup the relative strengths of the four factions are randomly determined. Everyone draws six cards. The cards come in four suits matching the four factions. Each card is a fighter with its own power. During the game you do not draw cards. These six cards are all you have. 

Of these six cards, you start off picking one of them to become the faction you support. You place that card face-down before you, keeping it secret. Now you only have five cards left. Each turn you must play a card to perform an action. You will only have 5 actions in the whole game. There are three types of action. The basic one is playing a card and using its power. There are two parts to the card power, and you can use them in any order. You get to strengthen the faction of the card, i.e. increasing its rank. You also use the power described by the card text. These powers vary greatly, and there is a theme to each of the four factions. 

The second action type is swapping your faction card. Play your card face-down to become your new faction card, and reveal then discard the old faction card. The third action type is accusing an opponent of supporting a specific faction. When you do this, you discard a card face-up without strengthening the faction or using the card power. The opponent being accused must answer truthfully. If you guess right, you may choose to steal the king token (a tiebreaker token), or you may force your opponent to change his faction card next round. 

Throughout the game you will try to manipulate the relative strengths of the factions, hopefully making your faction the strongest. If you are able to guess your opponents' factions, it can help tremendously. It is possible that multiple players support the same faction. If you see that someone seems to be helping your faction win, chances are he's on the same side. However, there can only be one winner. This is when the competition for the king token (the tiebreaker) becomes important. One twist is, in this situation, if your shared faction is the strongest but neither of you have the king token, both of you will lose, and victory goes to the next strongest faction. If you feel confident about that opponent supporting the same faction as you, you can accuse him and force him to change his faction card. But then if he is smart, maybe he will have a card of that same faction on standby for exactly this play. 

To be honest I didn't have high expectations when I listened to the game overview. Even after reading the rules, I wasn't convinced this would be interesting. Nothing in the rules pops out to say "interesting mechanism". It all seems to be something I've seen somewhere else before. Only by sitting down to play the game I discovered how delicious it is. This is a short game, short enough to feel like a microgame. You only have 5 actions, so every action feels important. This is a compact game, as in you have few decisions to make, but there are many considerations behind each decision. There are multiple possibilities to contemplate. Even that first decision during setup is not easy - which faction to support. When you choose a card to be your faction, you are already sacrificing its strength. That's one card fewer you can use for strengthening the faction. The faction being secret is clever. You do have to be careful not to be too blatantly supporting a specific faction, because there are consequences. Or maybe you are bluffing? Or you pretend to be bluffing?

This is a card with a quirky power. You give it to a target player, and he must then discard a card. If you think deeper about this, this can be a powerful play in the second last round, potentially disrupting someone else's perfect plan. Often players will keep a strong card as the last card, so that they can make a solid final push. If you play this Untrained Acolyte on them, you not only spoil their plans, you now also know exactly what card they have in hand for the final turn. 

The cards are large, showcasing the art

I had thought Prowl would be a simple light game, but it turned out to be a compact, clever and thinky microgame. Few actions, but there are mind games and plenty of tactics to explore. 

Cat & Chocolate

 

Cat & Chocolate is a game from Japan first published in 2010. It is an award winner in Japan. This is a party game and it is of the type where you need to be a convincing speaker. This is partly a social deduction game. Players are divided into two teams. You know which team you belong to, but you have no idea who your teammates are. When the game ends, your team identities are revealed, and each team adds up their points to see who wins. What this means is throughout the game you want to do your best to score points, because that will help, regardless of which team you are on. 

Every round, one player will be the storyteller, and the others the judges. As the storyteller, you reveal one situation card from the deck, and you must play one, two or three item cards from your hand which can be used to resolve the situation. You have a hand of only three cards. Your job is to convince everyone that the item or items you play will help you get out that particular difficult situation. After you explain, everyone else votes and this determines whether you score one point. The game keeps going like this, until the game end card turns up. The game end card is inserted roughly in the middle of the deck before the game starts. 

The two factions, and some of the situations

The scenarios are all horror movie type situations. Everything happens in an old mysterious mansion. You have ghosts, monsters, zombies and so on. In most cases you are simply trying to survive an attack. 

When we played, the key question asked by Alex was how were we going to know who was on which team. There is nothing in the rules or game components which will help the players determine who is on which team. It is all up to the players themselves. You can tell others which team you are on. You can lie about it too. This part of the game has unreliable fun, and by that I mean whether it is fun depends a lot on the players. It can be fun, and it might also be boring. In my opinion the designer should do a bit more work to make the fun more reliable. 

If through discussion you manage to figure out who is friend and who is foe, the storytelling part of the game may become pointless. You should always vote yes for your teammates, and no for your opponents. I feel the intention of the designer is you should not figure out your teams during the game. It is only meant for the end-game revelation. 

The game is disappointing to me, especially since this was an award winner. However this was back in 2010, and at that time there probably weren't that many modern games designed in Japan in the first place. Japanese game design certainly has come a long way since then. Cat & Chocolate is that type of party game which depends on the creativity and expressiveness of the players. The kind with performances and judges. Not really my cup of tea. Also the design feels a little dated, now that I have seen many better Japanese games. 

Farter Knows Best (屁者先知)

Officially the name of this game is Pizhe Xianzhi, which is just gibberish if you don’t know Chinese. So I’m going to give it my own name - Farter Knows Best. When I came across this game in Taiwan, my first thought was that the Thai farting game made it to Taiwan. That game is Betakkuma’s Fart and Furious. However, upon closer inspection, I realised this was not a retheme, but a completely different game designed in Taiwan. Both the games are about farting in a lift (elevator). Is this an Asian thing or what? I should design a Malaysian farting game to complete the Asian farting game trilogy.

The other Asian farting game which is from Thailand

Farter Knows Best and Fart & Furious play very differently, despite the same setting. Farter Knows Best is a social deduction game and a team game. You need at least five players. Maximum is ten. At the start of the game everyone will be given a secret identity card. This tells you which team you are on. 

These are the various identities in the game. Most of the time you play with just the first row. Most players will be regular passengers, and they are all on the same team. The other team is the farters. The farters have the green balloons. In the photo above you notice that the English translation of the farter is "liar". That's because in Taiwan "farting" is a slang for "lying" or talking rubbish. Depending on the number of players, sometimes the farters don't know who their teammates are. In most cases the farters will know their teammates and they can collaborate. 

The game is played over at most 8 rounds. Your objective is to eliminate the other team, by either voting them out, or having them pass out from smelling too much fart. Everyone starts with a health bar and you take damage whenever you smell fart. There are always more passengers than farters, so the farters need to hide their identities or risk getting lynched. 

The 8 rounds in the game represent the 8 floors the lift will stop at. At four of the floors, nothing will happen. At the other four, someone will fart. The most important concept in this game is that the farter team knows on which floors someone will fart.

These above are the fart and no-fart cards. Among the fart cards, some are regular farts, and some are power farts. There will always be at least one power fart card in play. It's up to you what kind of mix you want to use. Power farts may deal more damage, or they may have lingering effects. 

Every round, before the fart card (I'll call those no-fart cards as fart cards too) is revealed, everyone gets to decide whether to play an action card for the round. This is played face-down. Once everyone has decided, the fart card is revealed. You then resolve the round in turn order. If there is no fart, generally nothing happens. If there is a fart, generally everyone will take damage. Most action cards only take effect when there is a fart. These can protect you, or they can deal damage to others. 

If there has been a fart, you most do a vote to eliminate a player. You can discuss, but voting is done in a simultaneous manner. During discussion, only those who have played an action card may speak. Anyone who hasn't played one must keep quiet. When a player is voted out, the identity is not revealed. Players who are eliminated can check their cards, and they will tell the surviving players whether the game has ended, i.e. all on one team eliminated. 

Drawing cards is hard. You only start with a hand of 4 cards, which is not enough to last you 8 rounds. You need to think carefully when to play an action card. The deep breath card lets you draw 2 cards, but only if no one farts. If someone does, you take double damage. So this is a high risk card. Some other action cards may also help you draw cards, if they are played at the right time. 

Since the farter team knows when there is fart, they hold very powerful information. They know exactly when they should or should not play a certain card. Anyone who happens to play the right cards at the right time, especially when doing this several rounds in a row, will become a prime suspect. 

If you like games similar to Werewolf, this is certainly one to check out. You get all the accusations and reasoning flying around, and here you have more basis for meaningful deduction. Why is she attacking me instead of him? They must both be in the farter team! And he seems to know when exactly to play this card. He must be on the farter team. The identity of the eliminated player not being revealed adds to the challenge of the game, and I think that's a good thing. My friends and I played several games in one sitting, and often the identities of the farters were still being debated when the game ended. 

If you have a large group of casual players, this game works well. Although the game is in Chinese, we are able to play with friends who don't know Chinese because there are only a handful of cards to remember.

One thing I am amazed by is the character cards which come with the game. When I played with my friends, I intentionally left out the character cards. Normally you'd play with them, and they give you all sorts of special abilities. Since my group was all non-gamers, I decided to leave these out. I find the game works just fine without them. Once you know the game well, there is a ton of characters you can play with. Just look at that whole deck of cards in this photo above. So much artwork done! 

Secret Moon

The Game

Secret Moon from Seiji Kanai is the sequel of Love Letter, one of my favourite games. It is also a card game and a microgame, but it is a very different game from its predecessor. The story is a continuation. In Love Letter players are trying to deliver letters to the princess. In Secret Moon, some of the letters from a wanderer has reached the princess, and they are going have a penpal meetup, in the garden under the moonlight. Very romantic. The minister thinks this is totally inappropriate and wants to stop the princess. He is bringing his guards to search the garden and bring the princess back to the palace. So this game has two competing factions. The princess faction wants to have the princess meet the wanderer, and the minister faction tries to prevent that. 

These are the characters in the game. The player count supported is unusual - 5 to 8 players. The recommended player counts are 6 and 7. In the princess faction you have the princess herself, the wanderer and the priestess. The priestess appears to be in the minister faction but she actually wants to help the princess. The minister faction includes the minister himself and four guards. Regardless of the number of players, all characters are to be in play, just that some of them will be randomly placed face-down at the centre of the table and these become non-player characters. 

 

The numbered cards are the player order cards. In each of the three rounds, they are shuffled and dealt out to every player. That means turn order is random every round. The player order cards list the actions you may perform, so they also serve as reference cards. 

The markers at the top right can be used to remind you who has seen which card, and who have been confirmed to be in which faction. When we played, we found them a little tedious, so we soon gave up on using them. 

The two factions win in different ways. The princess faction can win by capturing the minister, and the minister faction can win by capturing the princess. In addition, the princess faction also wins by simply lasting until the end of the game. That means the time pressure is on the minister faction. The minister faction can also win by revealing the character cards of both the princess and the wanderer. 

Every round, each player may only perform one action. One important rule in this game is you are not allowed to discuss or openly share information. This is very different from typical secret identity games. Normally such games encourage discussion and communication. You are encouraged to lie and misdirect. The designer Seiji Kanai considers himself a shy person, so he wanted to design a secret identity game that works for shy players. 

There are many types of actions available to you. The simplest one is to simply look at the character card of another player. You will know the character of that player, but you cannot tell anyone directly who it is. So this may not be as powerful an action as it seems. It is not exactly an efficient way to distribute information. Another action is to question another player - who are you? Depending on how that player responds, everyone else at the table will gain some information. If the princess or the wanderer gets questioned, they must remain silent. So you will know they are definitely in the princess faction. If the minister gets questioned, he must angrily reply "you idiot, it's me!" (because his identity is exposed now). If the priestess or a guard is questioned, they say "it's just me". It's not easy to find out who the priestess is. 

You can accuse another player by declaring his character. If you are right, he must reveal his character card. Otherwise, you must reveal yours. Another action you can take is to capture a character. You can only do this to revealed characters. So to capture the minister or the princess, you need at least two actions, accusing to reveal the card and then the actual capturing. 

Guards are vulnerable fodder. Once they are revealed, they are automatically captured, i.e. they are out of the game. So they are usually sacrificial pieces. However being out of the game doesn't mean you lose. As long as your faction wins, you are a winner too. 

There are two other actions. You can protect another player from attacks for the rest of the round. However you cannot protect in the third round. You can also sacrifice yourself to prevent one player from taking an action. 

This is a tiny game, but it does have a fair bit of rules. This is not exactly a simple game. 

The Play

I did a 5-player game, and there are some additional rules. During game setup, the priestess and the guards are shuffled and one is randomly removed from the game. You won't know who is missing from the game. 

The card on the left is a player order card, and you get dealt a new one every round. The card on the right is a character card. You are assigned a character at the start of the game. 

When I started playing, I was rather clueless what I was supposed to do. Three rounds went by quickly, because everyone only had one action per round. I soon realised that every action was precious. You really have to think carefully how to make every action count. There are 6 types of actions. When you are still new to the game, this is a little overwhelming. It takes a little while for things to click. 

There is challenge in identifying your teammates, due to the restrictions on communications. You have to think one or two steps deeper why a player has chosen a particular action, and why target this particular other player. These small pieces of information can mean something. There is a warm feeling when you cultivate mutual understanding despite the lack of direct conversation. Most secret identity games achieve understanding through a lot of talking. They are extrovert games. Secret Moon is an introvert game. You are not allowed to openly exchange information. When you succeed in working out the same ideas through subtle hinting and quiet actions, it's like falling in love - the kind where you can sense that the other person also quietly likes you, without neither loudly proclaiming their interest. When you play, you can chat about other things. The table doesn't have to be like a graveyard. It's just game information that you can't openly discuss. It can only be conveyed through the game mechanisms. 

The rulebook comes with strategy tips for every character! I avoided reading it because I wanted to discover the strategies myself. That's a big part of the fun. The fact that there is a strategy guide section in the rulebook means that this is not a simplistic game, despite being short and having very few components. You need to put some thought into it. If a player boldly asks "who are you?", does that mean he's definitely not a guard? Because guards would be afraid of accidentally exposing the minister. Would this player then be on the princess team? Or maybe he's the minister? But if he's the minister wouldn't such a bold move be too risky? It would hint at his identity. Behind every small decision in the game, there can be such deeper considerations. 

There certainly is some luck in the game. The turn order every round is random, and sometimes when you get to the third round, you know turn order will determine who wins. Turn order affects how players make decisions. If you are late in the round, you likely won't be using the protect action, since there are not many actions left to protect your teammate or yourself from. The luck element is acceptable, since this is a short game. Luck injects some unpredictability and excitement. 

The markers are pretty, but we ended up not using them. 

This round the minister is third in turn order. 

The impatient, the tickled, the thoughtful and the laughing. 

The Thoughts

Secret Moon is a game designed for shy players, the quite people, the introverts. It is not exactly a simple game. It's short, and you only have at most three actions the whole game, but underneath this microgame you see some tricky decision-making. It feels more like a medium-weight strategy game. It takes a little time to learn and appreciate. If you want to get casual games to enjoy it, you need to teach the game with care. If you play Secret Moon like a mindless and random game, you probably won't enjoy it. It is a thoughtful game. 

I like this kind of compact game. Short yet rich. It's a good filler for seasoned gamers. 

All Manor of Evil

Plays: 5Px1.

The Game

All Manor of Evil is a H. P. Lovecraft themed game. The setting is an old, mysterious and ill-omened mansion. It's not a good place, but it has lots of treasures, and that's why you are here. Players are treasure hunters, i.e. thieves, here to steal treasures. Whoever leaves with the most valuable loot wins the game. There is a twist though. Being in this manor drives people crazy. Whoever accumulates the most insanity points by game end immediately goes nuts and loses. Only the sane people, or I should say not-completely-crazy people, get to compare score to see who wins. There is one more twist. There is another way the game can end. Players' actions may awaken one of the three elder gods. If that happens, you get something bad, e.g. someone, or someones die. Only after that you check for who goes crazy, and if there are still people left, you compare treasures.

The game board is small, and is used only to place the treasure cards. What you see on the game board are the rooms in the manor. Each room has one treasure, and everyone can see what the treasure is. The number in the purple circle is the insanity points, and the number in the gold circle is the victory points. When you steal a treasure, you put it in a stack before you. Nobody is allowed to examine the stack, even yourself. Only the top card is visible to everyone. Some treasure cards have text. These are effects which are resolved when the treasure is being stolen.

The core game mechanism is simultaneous action selection. Everyone has this same set of four action cards. Each action card has a number, a special power, and the names of two rooms. The two rooms mean you get to steal a treasure from one of them when your turn comes. Every round everybody secretly picks one card to play, and once everyone is ready, all the selected cards are revealed simultaneously. Players who happen to pick the same action card all get one insanity token. Then you execute actions in order of the action card number. If two players have picked the same action card, priority depends on who the start player is for the round. This start player changes every round.

You may not use the same action card back-to-back. From Round 2 onwards, you only have 3 cards to pick from. This means it is slightly easier to guess what cards your opponents will play. For each of them, you know there is one card they cannot pick. The card special powers are: adding an insanity token to a room, discarding 3 insanity tokens, stealing the top card from the deck if it is a treasure, and swapping your top treasure card with a treasure in one of the rooms.

Before the game starts, you draw two character cards then pick one. I picked the witch, which meant I must make the game end by summoning an older god. Otherwise I would automatically lose.

There are always three elder gods per game - a blue type, a green type and a yellow type. They are randomly drawn before the game starts. They are two sided, with different behaviours, and some actions cause them to flip. In our game, the blue elder god if summoned would trigger another random elder god. The green elder god would kill everyone who doesn't have a rite (a type of treasure). The yellow elder god would kill the person with the most lapis lazuli.

The purple tokens on the three elder gods are the summon tokens. An elder god is summoned when there are six tokens. However this is checked only at the end of a round. During a round, it is possible for one player to place a sixth token, only later to have it removed by another player, leaving five. In such a case, the elder god is not yet summoned. It is possible that two elder gods both have six tokens. If this happens, the world ends and everybody loses.

The Play

The basic premise of the game is collecting treasures while avoiding insanity. You want to go for high valued treasures, because that's more efficient, but you may also go quantity over quality, which is probably viable too. You don't exactly need to minimise your insanity, you just need to make sure you are not the craziest. We have seen a similar mechanism before in Sobek. I'm sure there are other examples. As I played the game, I realised that this basic premise is just that - a basic premise. There is more to it. In fact it feels like a tiebreaker. There are many ways to die in this game. If you are able to get the richest guy killed, it doesn't matter how rich he is. If you manage to kill or drive insane everyone else, you don't even need to care how many treasures you collect. The secret player characters are important. So are the three elder gods. They set the stage for competition and they determine how you need to play to get your opponents eliminated. In our game, Kareem's character removed his insanity points if he could summon the yellow or green elder god. So he could go nuts during the game as long as he could summon one of these elder gods. Another character doubled your points. That had a big impact.

Our game evolved into an election game, with some supporting the blue elder god and some supporting the green elder god. This happened mainly because Kareem was obviously trying to summon the green elder god. Dennis supported him. The rest of us were alarmed and decided to all vote for blue elder god. I secretly needed to summon any elder god in order not to lose, so blue worked for me. It felt impossible for a game to last till the second clock card, which was near the bottom of the deck. Perhaps our game was an anomaly, since multiple people had incentives to summon an elder god.

We had to fight for valuable treasures, or treasures with nifty powers. Who the start player was was an important consideration when we picked action cards. We often tried to force people to take more insanity tokens by placing the tokens onto attractive treasures. It was important to see which action cards the opponents wouldn't be allowed to pick for the round, and plan accordingly. We had 5 players, and that meant at least two players would clash, because action cards number 1 to 4.

It was difficult to try to remember who had collected how many insanity points (on the cards) and victory points. I couldn't even quite remember how many I had. I was not allowed to check my stack.

Our game ended with Dennis happily summoning a second elder god, causing armageddon. He knew he couldn't win, so he decided to have everyone die. Mission accomplished!

The Thoughts

All Manor of Evil is a game with much hidden information. Your identity is initially secret. As everyone collects treasures, the information is hidden and it is difficult to keep track. The action selection mechanism means there is much double guessing. The three elder gods is public information. They set the stage. During play you try to work out the identities of your opponents, or at least try to deduce what they are trying to achieve. The elder gods and the identities are important factors that get people killed before the final reckoning.

I find the game complexity in an awkward situation. I feel this should be a light game, but it plays like a medium weight game, because there is a lot of text to read, and powers to remember and consider - the elder gods, the characters, the action cards, the treasures. This makes me a little impatient. Maybe it's because I'm not specifically a Lovecraft fan, and the setting doesn't specifically draw me in.

Secret Hitler

Plays: 8Px3.

The Game

Secret Hitler is a Kickstarter game. It's a secret identity team game. Most would call it a social deduction game. There seems to be more and more such games nowadays. Werewolf and BANG were among the earlier ones. Then there were The Message: Emissary Crisis and Saboteur. More recently we had Don't Mess With Cthulhu and Templar Intrigue. The popular ones which I have not played are Coup and The Resistance.

Secret Hitler is loosely based on Germany before World War II. The game supports 6 to 10 players. I played with 8, so I'm going to explain the game based on 8 players. On the surface, everyone is a liberal. However in secret, three of the players are fascists. One of those three is Hitler himself. During the course of the game new laws will be enacted. Some laws are fascist laws and some are liberal laws. The liberals win if 5 liberal laws are enacted. The fascists win if 6 fascist laws are enacted. Both sides have an instant win condition. If the fascists manage to get Hitler elected as chancellor, they win immediately. If the liberals manage to kill Hitler, they win.

At the start of the game everyone gets an envelope like this. It contains two cards, a party membership card and an identity card. For the liberals, there is only one type of identity card, but for the fascists, you might be a regular fascist party member or you might be Hitler.

Before the first round starts, everyone closes his eyes. The two fascist party members open their eyes to identify each other. Then Hitler raises his thumb (eyes still closed) so that his supporters know who he is. Hitler knows he has two supporters, but not who they are. The liberals know nothing at all.

Every round one player becomes the president. You take turns to play president, in clockwise order. The president must propose another player to become chancellor, and then everyone casts a yes/no vote. If the candidate fails the election, the round ends early. Otherwise, the president and the newly elected chancellor proceed to enact a new law. The president draws three law cards, then discard one facedown. The remaining two are passed to the chancellor, who then discards one facedown, and enacts the last one. Most cards in the deck are fascist laws. If the law being enacted is fascist, the president might bemoan that all three cards he had drawn were fascist, so he had no choice. The chancellor might say the same. However, the president might say to the chancellor, hey I gave you a good and a bad law, why did you pass the bad one? The chancellor might retort, what? You gave me two bad laws, and now you are trying to frame me? If such a thing happens, one of these two is probably a fascist. Even if the two legislators are in alignment, you can't be sure both are liberals. They might both be fascists and they might have have discarded liberal laws without anyone else knowing. Or the chancellor might be fascist, and he is passing the liberal law so that he doesn't arouse the suspicion of the president.

These two boards indicate how many fascist (red) and liberal (blue) laws have been enacted.

When a new fascist law is enacted, special actions need to be performed, or new rules come into play. These are indicated on the board. When the second fascist law is enacted, the president gets to see the party membership card of another player. When the fourth and fifth fascist law is enacted, the president gets to kill another player. This is how the liberals can kill Hitler. Naturally, this only works if they manage to find out who Hitler is, and also if the president that round happens to be a liberal. After three fascist laws are enacted, if Hitler gets elected to be chancellor, the fascists immediately win. From mid game onwards, you need to be much more careful when voting.

The procedure in the game revolves around electing a chancellor and then passing laws, but throughout all these actions, what is most important for the liberals in to find out who is who. For the fascists, it is best to stay in hiding for as long as possible, and use deceit to mislead and to sow mistrust among the liberals.

The Play

We played three games one after another. I experienced being both liberal and fascist, and the feeling is very different. There are more liberals, but the fascist has one important advantage - the party members know who is who. It is crucial they make good use of this information, and even more crucial that they make use of the ignorance of the liberals. The fascists need to sow doubt and stay hidden. Hitler doesn't know who his supporters are, and needs to be alert of clues. There are ways for his supporters to communicate with him. E.g. when Hitler is president and he has picked a fascist member to be chancellor, he can pass one fascist law and one liberal law to the chancellor to test him. The fascist member knows Hitler's identity, and will safely pass the fascist law while bemoaning that both the laws given to him are fascist laws. Upon hearing this, Hitler will know the chancellor is his fellow fascist.

The liberals need to find out who the fascists are. It is not easy to pass 5 liberal laws, since the number of liberal laws in the deck is low. They need to be careful not to allow fellow liberals to be killed when the fourth and fifth fascist laws are passed, and they need to make sure Hitler doesn't get elected to be chancellor. When the president and the chancellor say different things, it is usually a good sign. It normally means one of them cannot be trusted. If you want to play safe, trust neither. The fascists will do their best to appear liberal, even to the extent of passing liberal laws. The liberals need to discuss openly and be critical of every little clue and suspicious action. There will be paranoia, as the fascists try to complicate matters by throwing accusations and suggesting reasonings on why so-and-so should not be trusted.

The president's job of proposing a candidate for the position of chancellor is a heavy responsibility.

The most impressive game components in the game are the hefty wooden signs for president and chancellor. You can kill a cat with them.

Kareem was the unluckiest player in our game. No one ever believed what he said. When he was a liberal and spoke out against a fascist, providing sound reasoning, everyone thought he himself was the suspicious one. When he was a fascist and tried to frame a liberal, everyone trusted the liberal instead. It was all because he already had a reputation as a strong player, so everyone was wary of him, even though what role got assigned was completely out of his control. It was hilarious (but maybe not to him) how many times he was frustrated.

During the setup phase of one of our games, when everyone except for the fascist party members had their eyes closed and the moderator announced that Hitler was to make a thumbs-up sign, one player responded "OK". The rest of us burst into laughter. Did Hitler just inadvertently reveal himself? We almost restarted that game. Eventually, the person who OK'ed was not the real Hitler. He was probably just trying to sow confusion even at the setup phase of the game. Jeez... these gamers... so calculative and cunning!

Secret Hitler is a noisy game, with speculations and accusations flying everywhere. The fascists are a minority, but they have important information which gives them an edge. The liberals need to work together and pay attention to every detail to root out the fascists. They rely on open discussion and they need to be careful in judging who can be trusted.

The Thoughts

Secret Hitler is a fine social deduction game. I had expected that having played quite a few of these, any new game would feel similar. I was pleasantly surprised that I found something new to like in this game. If you don't like this genre, Secret Hitler won't change your mind. If you like this genre, I encourage you to give it a go. Throughout the game you can observe and collect little tit bits to help you deduce who is who. However logic alone is often not sufficient. Often you need to make judgement calls on who to trust. You need to rely on your instincts. This is how psychology comes into play. This is where the human interaction is.

If you ask me what's different about Secret Hitler compared to other social deduction games, I would say it's the chancellor election and the law passing. These are its ways of presenting information for you to work on. Some social deduction games give you little to work on, e.g. Templar Intrigue, Werewolf. Some give you more, e.g. BANG, Saboteur. How they differ is the control of information - who knows what, who doesn't, and how the the information is gradually revealed to more players. The game progresses to a climax as more and more information becomes known.

In Secret Hitler, the two sudden death victory conditions - executing Hitler and Hitler becoming chancellor - make the game exciting. Regardless of the number of laws passed, the game can take an unexpected turn at the last minute. I find the game slightly more complex than other similar games, in particular the special actions and additional rules that come into play when a specific number of fascist laws are enacted. That will take a while for new players to digest and incorporate into their strategic planning. When teaching the game, one needs to regularly remind the new players to take into account these actions and rules.