I’ve been combing through some games on my wishlist, so I’ve been playing a lot of Project: Winter the past couple of weeks, and I love it. It reminds me a lot of Dead of Winter, without the zombies. And like Dead of Winter, there’s a fun social trust/betrayer element which makes every game unique.
However I’m finding that I am both far too polite to distrust everyone to the extent that I should, and perhaps far too nervous to convincingly hold a lie as the traitor. It’s odd for the sole reason that I have none of these problems when I’m sitting around a tabletop with friends, yet they present when I’m playing over Steam with strangers. You think it would be the other way around.
At any rate, as much as I love the thrill of playing the traitor, I am downright disastrous at it. At least it’s a fun disaster.
Reminds me of the Mafia card game. Good times. Won once by admitting to being a Mafia member when I was accused. The look on the Game Master’s face when I did that was priceless. Even better because I got the person who accused me voted out that round and won with both mafia members alive.
Wait, how did that work?
Reminds me of a game of BSG (boardgame). I was the early Cylon. I was not revealed but I played a bit unpredictably (I had not looked at my allegiance card so I could not prejudice my reaction but the fact I freaked out the other players and they sent me to jail). The, for reasons of a struggle with the ongoing attacks, one of the players ended up both Admiral of the Fleet and President. The mid-game card draw came up and I got the second Cylon card (no immediate help, I guess) but then I had an opportunity… Read more »
multiplayer game where other players can just randomly destroy me with no chance of me avoiding it or them being punished for doing so by the system? ah yes the games i refuse to play gain more ground.
You can dislike game modes like this, but that feels like a rather disingenuous summary of gameplay that looks more like you’re trying to justify your dislike, rather than an honest critique of the setup. “Players can just randomly destroy me” I’m not sure how to address that… what’s random about it? You’re in a game, and you know there’s a traitor. They’re not killing you without reason or conscious decision, it’s their objective. “With no chance of me avoiding it” You play smart. You look for suspicious behavior, you be careful about who you trust. If you can’t avoid… Read more »
ive played games like that in the past. didnt take long for me to learn no matter which side im on im getting toasted first. one reason i dont play battle royal games, i like actually having a chance of victory.
Love how it’s all about you, it didn’t take YOU long to figure out? So smart! To figure out that YOU (specifically and uniquely you) kept getting destroyed? Oh perhaps you were just ass at the game.
And yes I’m being rude but also genuine, there’s games I’m ass at too but I don’t blame the game because it didn’t pander to my style
and im free to decide not to waste my time and/or money on games i wont enjoy.
Quite right, but don’t blame the game for you being bad…
ah yes because my being bad and never getting better because i dont enjoy the game so quit surely doesnt reflect how i dislike the game and so obviously my being bad is the problem. though its funny how all other games i sucked at at first, which isnt basically all, i get better at over time because im not forced into a loop of annoyance and disatisfaction by a system i cant learn to master.
also its LOVELY to have an opinion, express that opinion, then be railed about how im wrong and worthless because my opinion isnt one of love for the game
Dude, nobody cares if you don’t like a game. But you’re talking out of your ass and saying things that make zero sense. I tried playing it for the first time yesterday. 2 first games i got mauled by a bear. The rest I did fine. What kind of game do you even think this is? You just start off swinging axes at eachother’s faces immediately? Because that’s not how the game works, at all. It’s not Fortnite ffs.
That isn’t what Pulse said at all. A personal opinion was given for why this type of game isn’t something they enjoy, and you act like they said nobody’s allowed to enjoy it.
Can’t really blame someone for seeing a strip that portrays the game as a strategically-barren grief-fest and thinking “oh, that looks like a strategically-barren grief-fest, I don’t want to play that”. We get that it’s a comic and these are jokes, but that’s still how the game looks here.
The math is interesting. If I’m not the traitor, 2 in 7 are. If I could execute a fair number of the group, the odds of randomly killing both traitors would be reasonable. Sure, you could blow it, and likely it’s not a viable strategy as he who kills first would be suspicious to the others, but the 2 in 7 (if you are not one) is something to think about.
My issue with “hidden traitor” games is that I just don’t have much fun being any role but traitor. I don’t play Mafia anymore because I don’t like being townsfolk. I like these games purely for the sneaky aspect, not the horror-movie-suspense or logic puzzle solving aspect of being a generic person waiting to get shanked or having to suss out which of my friends I have to remove from the game.
Well that’s either a fault in the game itself not making all of the roles fun and entertaining, which could be fixed by trying different games, or it’s just your personality for which there is no easy cure 😉
If you need a game where you can guarantee that you’re the “sneaky sneak vs a bunch of other people” every time (and your group doesn’t mind you hogging that role), then might I suggest Specter Ops, by Plaid Hat Games?
Dead by Daylight might be another candidate.
Town of Salem is a simple online one that I love to play with friends I know
Indeed. The problem with asymmetric games is that you have to enjoy two completely different types of games. And even if you do enjoy both, maybe one day you’re really looking to play one side of it but it never happens.
That’s why I can never get into these. I’d rather just play games that do one thing really well, so if I want something different, I can switch to a different game and get it. No need to keep matchmaking all day hoping I finally get the role I want.
Another good candidate is a game called space station 13.
I played Sparky in Dead of Winter once. He had a sniper rifle and found some gas so he could drive around. He was also the traitor and could have wiped out the other survivors, but as Man’s Best Friend he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. It’s hard to do evil when you’re a Good Boy.
That reminds me of the one time i played it as well, I got sparky and sent him to the police station and had him camp there because I got a pistol and a sniper and another item that was really good, idr what it was. It was great i was just killing all the zombies and shooting into other zones as a dog, its a great thing to imagine in my head!
Makes me think of the good ol’ custom games in Warcraft 3, way back in the day. Had lots of fun with them!
I always loved messing around with the good guys even when I was the good guy, saying something like “What do I spend lumber on?”, knowing full well only the murderer even has access to lumber haha.
I was a 14-15 year old ding dong who liked messing around haha, give me a break.
Forget giving you a break, that shit sounds like it’d be a blast today
Discretion is everything…
You gotta try Paranoia it’s along those lines. Trust the computer. Someone (everyone) is a traitor. It’s an old but fun game.
I remember playing a quick session of that at a ‘con. I was… better prepared than average. Friend computer interrogated me about agreeing with it about a new Cold Fun formula. “But it’s a more perfect perfection than the previous perfection.” And when it came to my secret instructions… it was one of those “Kill the one who responds to the following code phrase with…” and I read it, and the guy next to me let slip what his was… and it sounded not-quite like what mine said, like a game of telephone. So when the lights went out, and… Read more »
Oh gods, or the other game where the author was ripping off lord of the rings having us take a USB back to the lab that made it. It created dead zones the computer couldn’t see. I got the group to have a discussion about the morality of using vs destroying it… total treason. And we erased the recording the propaganda officer made of that chat. Aaaand the second we were out of the dead zone, I quietly narc’d on their treasonous conversation and pointed to the erasure as proof the propaganda officer was a traitor. Didn’t actually mention the… Read more »
Ahh I love that game!
The best thing I can recommend to being a traitor is to pay attention to what you do when you are not the traitor. Like, how often do you talk as an innocent? Don’t talk more or less than that. If you never talk in the first couple minutes as a survivor, don’t talk more than that as a traitor.
Tim, part of me wonder if it was the players who already know you as a traitor after playing as one so much that it became obvious when all except you are survivors rather than you sucking.
I love these games. The master act of pulling off being just not suspicious while trying to alienate and pick of lone players is quite enjoyable. And yet the bitter sweetness at being so close to winning as a survivor to find out the guy who stuck with me the entire game was the traitor at the last moment dooming us all the blizzard is undeniable. If you like this one, try Among us. its much like project winter but there is no voice comms, and all communications happens via text.
Sounds like Mafia/Werewolf. I am great at those kinds of games. Online it tends to be Quiet=Suspicious…
oh yeah mood this is how i am in among us jdkmknmhkn,
Same as in Among us
Tim has been jettisoned.
Replace “Survivor” with “Crewmate”, and “Traitor” with “Imposter”, and that’s pretty much half my experience with Among Us.
Some rooms I ended up in, I suspect every other player was communicating outside the game (as if they were all sitting in the same meatspace room). If I was a Crewmate, the Imposter killed me first and the rest covered for him/her. If I was the Imposter, they unanimously voted me out 5 seconds in with zero in-game explanation; I didn’t even have time to TRY and fake a task!