Town Of Salem, by Blank Media Games

While I was at Preteen camp, I heard about this game from some of the teen staff, and being the person who finds it enjoyable to waste time from time to time playing games [1], I figured it was a worthwhile experiment to try playing a game, seeing as we had added some of the roles from this game to our regular mafia card games, and seeing that Town of Salem, which takes its frisson from the whole lynch mob mentality of the people playing the game, who have a variety of roles, has some intriguing historical heft to it.  The end result is a card game, one with very simple rules, but also one that offers a great deal of replay value given the shifting roles and one’s own shifting roles, which leads to shifting objectives.

A rough summary of the gameplay is as follows:  you are one of fifteen people in a small town.  There are a variety of roles, and several different kinds of winning conditions among them.  Most of the people in the village are townspeople, who have various roles and responsibilities, some of them a bit creepy, like trying to conduct séances with the dead, and others political, like being the mayor, or involved in spying and investigating and jailing/executing.  Others are members of the mafia, others are random characters like witches, werewolves, vampires, arsonists, jesters, and executioners, all of them with their own agendas and their own victory conditions.  The resulting multi-polar situation allows for a great deal of gameplay, where deception is practiced but can be countered at times, and where mistakes made can be very detrimental to one’s cause.  Just as there are many different ways to win, there are many ways to perish–one can be shot by the mafa, as this is a New England town, executed by a jailor, stabbed by a serial killer, executed in a lynch mob, mauled by a werewolf, doused in gasoline and set aflame by an arsonist, or shot down by a vigilante or gunned down by a bodyguard or veteran in a firefight.

The end result is a game where one might expect that staying alive was the goal.  But this is not always the case.  For example, the jester’s role is to annoy the townspeople enough to be executed, while others can win even when they die if their party wins, like the townspeople.  Still, it can be tough to win a game, and in playing my first 50 games I found my own record to be a little bit under .500, largely due to being stuck playing the mafia often.  Be that as it may, despite the fact that the roles are not as random as one might hope, largely on account of the restrictions in balance that is generally the case in standard games, there is a lot of replay value here to be found in the roleplaying and in the shifting goals that one has from game to game and the different gameplay based on different players.  For those who are able to play enough games there is an ELO-based ranking system for more experienced and competitive players to add to the bragging rights.  All in all, it is a game that is both simple and enjoyable.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/game-review-punderdome/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/07/12/games-in-the-key-of-life/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/game-review-the-aetherlight-chronicles-of-the-resistance/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/01/12/book-review-philosophy-through-video-games/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/makai-toushi-sa-ga-reflection-on-a-retro-video-game/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/game-review-crusader-kingdoms-ii/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/book-review-video-game-storytelling/