But is it really?
I present to you, my probably really bad take on how you should approach designing theme games. Am I an authority in this? Absolutely not. Do I know what I’m talking about? Absolutely not (or maybe just a little). Do with this what you want, honestly.
So, you have a theme. Now what?
Before writing even a single word, you should decide on what the core mechanics of the game are going to be.
A common mistake/misconception here is that these mechanics should resemble the source material as closely as possible: this is absolutely NOT the case and can ruin your game
. In generic anime #1256 a random person might die to ghosts every night, but killing off a random player every night in your mafia game is usually a bad idea. Instead, try to use mechanics that help capture the feeling of the theme while still being good, healthy mafia mechanics. For example, if you really wish to run your generic anime #1256 game, you can add a serial killer (eww, don’t do this) or, I don’t know, give certain players a role that allows them to vig someone if they work together. Avoid randomness in your game as much as possible.
Another thing to take into account when designing mechanics is a very simple design philosophy:
less is more
, complexity in simplicity, simplicity in complexity, whatever you want to call it. The less complex your mechanics are, the less pages of your game are going to be filled with posts trying to understand your 10k words essay on what the mechanics actually are. The combination of simple, elegant mechanics that are easy to understand yet really set the theme is what in my opinion makes a game good already.An example of what I think is good design that furthers the theme is the paint mafia mechanic in cheetory6’s Paint Mafia games: Town players start out as Blue, Mafia players start out as Red, and mafia may paint a player Purple every night. Every day, two voting phases exist: the first to reveal a player’s colour, the second to lynch as normal. It’s elegant, it’s simple, and it’s still very much in the theme of the game.
After mechanics comes roles. They have two major parts: flavour, and the actual role.
Obviously, the roles in the end have to be balanced, and make a nice and elegant setup. The same principle as for the mechanics applies: try to not make incredibly complex roles, the majority of players do not enjoy trying to figure out the riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma that you gave them and asked them to confirm. Additionally, try to have roles that interact with your mechanics; it makes the game look and feel much more coherent. For example, if generic anime #1256 mafia has a mechanic based on people getting magical fairies when they lynch people, you can design roles that steal fairies, track them down, kill them and whatever other cruel things you might enjoy doing.
In terms of flavour, there is one incredibly important rule:
make sure that, by claiming flavour, the game is not breakable
. If you run your generic anime #1256 mafia game and all the bad guys are scum (and you do not provide good fakeclaims) your game is breakable and you should feel bad. What I personally really value and what I think adds a whole new dimension of immersion is giving each player not just a role, but a character to play. In the last two theme games that I ran, every player had a name and their own, little backstory. It gives the player the idea that they’re not just a player in a mafia game, but a person in a story that’s being told as they play. However, be careful with that: if you tell your story through flavour in your game and you mention the names of the characters, make sure players cannot deduce any information from that. You get bonus points from me if you can thematically link the roles you have to the backstory of your characters, but please do not focus on trying to do this – you will probably go insane doing this. We have finally arrived at the big boy part of this giant rant: the actual flavour. Our current game design has some simple yet very interesting mechanics, characters with backstories and roles that might interact with those mechanics. Now we write our story.
I cannot stress this enough, and am quite guilty of it myself, but
more flavour does NOT equal better flavour
. Sure, you can write a novel worth of flavour like Gistou or Project ARCH, but games like Civilization Mafia and Elemental Trinity were at the very least just as flavourful, with fewer words. There is one massive upside to doing only a small amount of flavour: people actually read it.In mafia games, the world building is by far the most important aspect of flavour writing
– I should probably call this “the setting” instead, as you can use more abstract flavour than an actual world. An example of a more abstract game could be my Never Left Without Saying Goodbye, where I used rhymes and shamelessly stole gorgeous art from the game Deemo to set a heartfelt, delicate mood (or that’s what I’d like to think, anyway). Why is this the most important part and not the actual story, anyway? Simple:
the story in a mafia game can change
. Naturally, you have a basic idea of what you are going to tell, but there is always variation: your game might end on day four, or on day six. The good guys can win, the bad guys can win, third party can win (eww). In short, the amount of time you have to convey your story and the outcome of the story might not be as you originally planned. Sure, you can drop a wall of text at the end of the game with everything you still wanted to tell, that’s fine – but you can (and I highly advise this!), in advance, decide on the most important plot points you wish to put in your game, and the amount of those can’t be larger than the amount of days the game lasts at the bare minimum. Between that, you can add in “filler” that writers so lovingly call “world building” instead. Always make sure you can tell what you want to tell, and have room for more.In my last game which I am again shamelessly mentioning, I had players coming from a certain company. Every day, I wanted to highlight how they were involved in the story, and every night I wanted to show the main story-line (the classic “killing people until you found the bad guy”). In between, my fillers were letters from a certain character to another and other fluff that helped give an idea of what the world and the characters were like.
One last aspect is one I’m absolutely terrible at: lay-out.
Making your game look nice helps a lot in conveying your idea and helps visualize the setting
. A great example of this is almost every Varsoon game ever and this year’s paperback winner, Undertale Mafia. Despite forums being a text-based medium, visuals add so much depth to a game. Seeing pictures of the locations, of the characters, having your votecounts look thematic, putting quotes everywhere and so much more. Go crazy!That was a lot of rambling and I probably could (and should) have structured it better. I have one last, very important thing to talk about:
be yourself
. You can try to follow whatever bullshit I’ve written down here and make a game that’s passable, but just think of what games have been memorable. Think of what mods have been memorable. There’s always one thing that comes back: they have a unique style, and use it creatively. Off the top of my head I can tell you that Varsoon makes mechanical masterpieces, that FakeGod masters simplicity and that Krazy is immensely creative at making UPicks. You can see one of their games, and almost immediately tell that it actually is one of their games. So, please, whatever you want to mod, make it your own
. It’ll help you out a lot.There you have it, my endless and unsolicited rambling, feel free to ask questions and tell me why I’m completely wrong and I’ll be here trying not to cry. Thank you.
Please do not discuss the irony in this being a wallpost
Edit x2: fixed some spelling errors! for the love of god please don't be like me and proofread your shit before posting!
