The start of this assignment has been an interesting journey of designing under constraints. When myself and my team consisting of Hanyu Chen and Ruobing Xie met up to discuss our initial approach we quickly settled on attempting to adapt the core concepts of hidden role games to a video conferencing format, utilising the tools of the platform to create an new entry into the genre.
We began by doing individual research into the genre producing documents with information and key concepts identified in the genre, we also decided that it might be useful to specialise into one VC tool so Ruobing compiled the traits of the most commonly used softwares so that we could better decide on a direction.
Some key concepts identified primarily by Hanyu were:
- Non-reciprocal information
- Group based missions and objectives
- Limited identification information on the “hidden role” team
- Periods and phases for information exchange and analysis
- A voting round where players are selected to leave the game to out the “hidden role”
Two proposals were then created with different directions within the genre
Proposal 1
This proposed game is one that utilises a game master and pen and paper for each player to keep track of the game states. The players are trapped in a biochemical lab where one of their co-workers has been infected. They win by fixing four machines, at which point the lab is cleansed and the virus cured. The infected player wins by infecting all other players, and infected players change teams.
The game utilises the sense of space of Among Us’ hidden role concept while allowing players to role play in a game setting, and splits players by using multiple sub chats representing the rooms of the game. During rounds players can only talk to others in the same room keeping the information players can communicate limited to who they meet in different rooms each round.
Proposal 2
The second proposal was a game that attempts to emulate the trust and deceit based gameplay of Monster Seeking Monster, a hidden role game in Jackbox Party Pack 4. Each round, players may private message each other for an allotted period of time in order to match up with another player. At the end of the time, all players announce who they have chosen to match with simultaneously and positive matches are tallied up to give the players points. A number of players play imposters, whose task is to deceive players into matching with them while creating some positive matches with other players to keep their identity hidden.
The game format makes all players suspect each other and therefore doubt mismatches as either player could be the imposter or there could have been a misunderstanding between players. The imposter can use this to their advantage by creating positive matches while denying or excusing negative ones and using the chaos created to divert suspicion to other players.
Analysis of Concepts
While I believe both concepts are strong, I think they are both lacking in similar ways. Firstly both require an outside element to assign roles, with the first concept requiring the that element to track the state of the game and provide information to players. Both games also use elements restricting them to Discord which limits the game further to players who are familiar with the platform and setup times are similarly increased.
The second concept while adapted from a proven format, lacks the visual flare of the format, where player messages are revealed each round to entertain other players and reveal deceit. This does however allow the hidden role player to be more deceitful and may make the game more chaotic which can create entertainment for players.
Both concepts also do not make best use of the Video aspect of the format as they are primarily voice or typing based meaning that they feel more forced onto the medium than designed directly for it.
The Dark Horse
Late into the weeks development a third proposal was introduced outside the hidden role format that seemed more promising. The concept involves a player coming up with an object or word, and acting it out. They then specify the next player who must continue to act out to give clues to the object to the best of their understanding of it. This continues until the penultimate player who must write down a sentence to describe all of the actions that they saw in a chain describing them as a story. The final player then acts out this story as described by the penultimate player. After this all players can reveal what the object was, what they were acting out and what the described sentence was.
The game does not have a clear objective which it may not require, but a simple one if needed is for all players to guess the first object and attempt to guess the sentence. The closest player to the correct answer wins.
I enjoy the concept for it’s simplicity that can give rise to funny or strange situations and the confusion of players being relieved at the end of each round will be a fun moment for all of those involved to have a laugh at their misinterpretation.
All in all I believe we have a strong lead concept to develop from and I look forward to developing it with Hanyu and Ruobing. Below is our Trello Page the day before the new concept was introduced.
