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

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!