This is a new type of article, and technically a cross-post with my little design diary thing on the Break My Game discord server. I know I’ve been behind on my posts lately, and this one is already late, so this is the best I can do. I’ve been very busy lately!

I recently got to start watching Loki, and remembered a game I had seen that used it as a basis for a hidden role game, with the mechanic that you as a person are represented by a small set of cards, which is a cool idea, but the game ended up going in a completely different direction, and then I got a cool idea: a draft!

So here’s the idea: you draft cards, but one is evil, and if you take it (and if you have it in your first pack, you must take it), then you are evil, and have to draft cards that make you look evil.

From there, I got the idea of forming an alibi. Your deck is full of things you did the night of the crime, so some things are more suspicious than others. Telling someone you went for a walk is suspicious, telling someone you were at a party is less suspicious.

But I started fraying. What direction do I take it? Do the cards need to lead into each other? Are you forced to play cards, rewarded by playing cards, or do you never play cards, just look at other peoples like weird Spyfall?

So I tried to narrow in on what the focus of the game was. What was interesting? The draft was interesting, so that’s staying in. What about the hidden role part? What makes that interesting? Well, you want to find out who it is, and the sooner the better. So how do I make the mechanics fit with that?

So I made a little graph. It wasn’t super helpful, but helpful enough to lead me to realizing that if non-criminal players want to find the criminal as soon as possible, and the game ends once the criminal is found (because why keep playing at that point), then the innocents are trying to end the game as soon as possible, which means the game continuing should be negative for them, and if the game needs to move forward, then it should have turns.

So there we go: it needs turns, it needs playing cards to be bad, and it needs the draft to be relevant. But how?

Well, I think I need points. You could just make it like spyfall where you’re just learning things, but then why draft one card over another? This lets me look at cards this way, this lets me look at it another? That’s possible, but I wasn’t a fan. I want cards to do something so you know when one is good or bad by looking at it. The other important thing about points is it lets you combo. Maybe card B is worth double if I draft card A. Now, drafting is more important, but also it’s more obvious which player is evil, because they are taking worse cards that don’t combo. That’s cool!

Let me expand on that point a bit. The idea is that the evil player is taking, essentially, random cards. That means that they won’t be getting bonus points or combos unless they luck into them or strategize some way. That’s a really cool way of outing them! Is someone playing poorly comboing cards because they had a bad draft, or because they’re evil? That’s fun! But after one playtest it became clear that it was really, really boring. The criminal isn’t making any decision while drafting, and the cards they play aren’t doing anything. So I decided to give them their own scoring thing. In fact, I realized individual scoring makes a lot of sense. Unlike most hidden role games, players aren’t all on the same team, they each are trying to improve their own score.

But wait, didn’t I say playing cards should be bad? Glad you remembered! Since playing a card needs to be bad, players need to be punished for playing them, which means points are bad. Playing combos will lessen their value, or let you ignore them.

So now, innocents get points by playing cards, but they don’t want them. What does the criminal do? Well, I still liked the idea of not-comboing being a giveaway, so how about they head the opposite direction? The criminal wants to get more points, and the innocents want to get fewer. I am still working on how exactly to calculate it, with one side is aiming low and one aiming high.

Theming now rears its ugly head. Why would you not want to play cards if you’re trying to provide an alibi? Well, same reason you don’t normally tell someone what you’re doing: because you don’t want to. Privacy is important!

This also had a lot to do with the game being about trying to find a criminal by providing information. I didn’t want to make a game that encourages talking to cops. Don’t talk to cops. The only thing you should tell them is that you want a lawyer present.

That’s right, my game is now “political,” a first for me, since I normally only make games about apolitical topics such as war, journalism, crime, and economy.

But yes, I am having trouble theming the scoring. If you’re innocent, you want not a lot of this. If you’re a criminal, you want a lot of this. So what is it? Well, currently I’m trying “privacy.” If you’re innocent, you don’t want to tell people what you’ve been doing if you don’t have to. Just like real life! If you’re a criminal, you want people to know what you’ve been doing in order to form an alibi. I guess. Listen, it’s not easy.

But yes, I’m working on this game, and will hopefully bring it to Protospiel Milkwaukee!