Betrayal Blog: Acts of Treason

Hi everybody,

So, let’s talk about how I came up with the idea for Acts of Treason. This journey started about 4 years ago. So forgive me if my memory is a little hazy, but I definitely remember the outline. I will not discuss what the Act of Treason is. For this reason, you can visit www.playaot.com to find out more information.

Card for Acts of Treason

I was really into board games back then. Settlers of Catan, 7 Wonders, Dominion, Power Grid, Claustrophobia, etc. Many are popular, and some are lesser known. I’m having the good old days. Then I started playing social deduction games like Mafia, Werewolf, and Battlestar Galactica. I love these games! The social aspect of these games is great, but I always feel like there’s room for more. They make me feel as if the mechanic can’t do any real deductions – the mechanic gets in the way. There is still room for improvement.

These games also have some mechanics that detract from the experience and may require some mitigation. A good example of this is in the mafia, how one person always dies at the beginning without his knowledge. They just die. This one mechanic alone was so detrimental that games like Werewolf One Night and The Resistance started popping up. Of course these games have other aspects that are superior, but I think one of their main goals is to eliminate that one weakness – early player elimination. And that’s fair enough because it’s a pretty big negative impact. Act of Treason has player elimination, but reduces initial player elimination by providing a strong incentive to keep everyone alive – because once the killing starts, the killing doesn’t stop! So all players usually die at the same time, or thereabouts.

I wanted to make a game that expanded the intrigue and social deduction that these games have. A game that REALLY allows players to use their social skills to the fullest, without the game holding them back or clipping their wings. I don’t know where to start mechanically, but I have a good idea for the theme. My first prototype was terrible. *poor*. I can’t explain how bad it really is. But it takes a long time to make, and the mechanism is long and completely unnecessary. It doesn’t actually do what it’s trying to do. But it taught me some very important lessons in game design. When starting a new project:

1. know what makes your game fun and,
2. keep it simple. Start with just the mechanics that go directly to point 1.

Honestly, the game will likely change a lot from your first few prototypes. Don’t spend a long time analyzing every little detail. Get to the core parts that are most fun and functional. It’s best to remove everything that’s not core, and just see how the concept performs. How the ‘fun’ part works. Is this really fun? Why? Why not? If not, how can we change it to make it fun?

For Act of Treason, I did just that – reduced the game to just the core parts. Social deduction. The game essentially has Tribute (all players secretly contribute cards to be examined to determine who wins the round), and the ability to kill who actually won the round. This mechanism is what makes people talk and accuse each other. The fun part of the game. And it works! It was the third prototype and people really liked the game. There are definitely many drawbacks. But people still enjoyed the game. I’ve managed to target the fun part of the game and create mechanics that allow players to take advantage of it.

It was actually pretty quick for me to get to that point. What takes more time is honing how to improve mechanisms, which mechanisms work best, and how to mitigate negative mechanisms. This took a long time, and many times I would try a mechanic only to find that it added too much complexity, or got in the way of social deduction. The third prototype of Act of Treason is in many ways similar to the final prototype, but I have tried many things in between with only a few mechanisms getting stuck every once in a while. Many changes are simply minor revisions that improve the game’s quality of life.

I’m pretty sure that Act of Treason hasn’t changed much from the 3rd revision because from the start I focused on what was fun and got rid of anything I didn’t need – because anything else would just get in the way of the fun! And that’s how every game should be. Even now the game still has a format like that. It’s just that the mechanism is further simplified to prioritize fun – social deduction.

Does this approach work for all games? I think this will work for most, if not all – and I think this is a good mindset to have. You need to understand what makes your game fun. And then work on the two core pressure points

1. What aspects make the game fun and how to improve them.
2. What aspects reduce the enjoyment of the game and how can we reduce or eliminate them.

Is it that easy? No – this is a simplification. However, I cannot stress enough how important it is to eliminate negative features in a game and understand what makes your game fun. This is important and arguably the most important thing that turns a good game into a fantastic game. I’ll try to cover this in a video on my channel OverIceProductions someday because it’s important. I think there are still a lot of games out there that don’t do this enough – especially point 2 – eliminating the negative aspects. That’s what provides balance and polish.

Phew, that’s a lot! I don’t know what we’ll cover next week – it’ll probably be shorter – something interesting. Maybe after that we’ll do something similar to this post and discuss some specific design examples in Act of Treason.

Active Games,
Tyson

Creator of the Act of Treason // www.playaot.com
OverIceDesign on YouTube // bit.ly/OverIceDesign

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Music this week:
Caravan Palace // Lone Digger –