Monthly Archives: March 2024

GOTW #6 Reflection: Voices in My Head

In week 6 we played the game Voices in My Head. This is a strategy-based hidden roles game. In this game, you either play as the prosecutor or one of the voices in Guy (the defendant)’s head. The prosecutor is trying to convince the jury that Guy has robbed a bank, whereas the voices in Guy’s head have their own objectives. Some voices want to get a guilty verdict too, while others want Guy to get an innocent verdict. The only issue is – no one knows which is which. There are two acts, each with four rounds. Each round, the prosecutor would reveal a new piece of evidence. Each piece of evidence has two regions of the brain that can influence the card. The players must push their tokens into the different regions, attempting to have the highest score in the region so that they can be the ones to decide how to resolve the card. The game ends after the two acts are completed, and the verdict is determined based on the number of guilty and innocent tiles on the jury.

               I played this game with the same group I played Fiasco with, which was super fun. It seemed we were all a lot more comfortable playing this game, and everyone got a chance to have their own fun. I played the role of prosecutor, which was the role I had hoped to get. I really liked being able to see the evidence and to choose which pieces to throw at the other players. I often found myself picking the funniest options rather than the most optimal choices. It was different from how I find myself usually playing, but I honestly think I had more fun that way. We all had some good laughs and enjoyed the silliness of each new piece of evidence. I did end up losing, but I wasn’t even mad about it. This is definitely a game I would love to play again.

The hardest part about this game for me was trying to figure out what the other players’ goals were. Figuring out the mechanics and how the game was played was more important during the first half. Even when I got it down, my focus was mostly on having fun with the game rather than winning. I didn’t figure out people’s objectives until near the end. I feel like I would have played much differently if it wasn’t my first time playing this game. So, I feel like the hardest part of this game was born from my inexperience. Usually, I play games a bit more strategically, but this time I played it fairly loosely. I just wanted to have a good time, and I did – despite the fact that I lost.

Voices in My Head shows leadership through the role of the prosecutor as well as through who controls the different regions of Guy’s brain. To take control of the situation, and lead the game in a particular direction, players had to place their tokens in specific regions of the brain. Whoever had the most tokens in a region would be able to respond to the prompt given by the prosecutor. I believe this was a form of leadership, as it often took being persuasive and often aggressive in certain ways to take charge of the outcome. I believe the prosecutor also played a leadership role, as they had to guide the other players through each scenario. They act as game master in a way. They put forward the scenarios which the other players had to face. In particular, I also found myself being the one who was asked questions regarding rulings.

I believe my friends Katie and Xavier would like this game. I’ve been playing board games with them more often, and this seems like the goofy game they would enjoy. I think this game really should be played with a light heart and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. I think these two would fit that bill perfectly.

While I feel like I have shared my opinion on this game throughout this post, I think I could elaborate further on what I liked and didn’t like. I liked the goofiness of the cards, the art, and the game mechanics. I also liked how all the different roles interacted, and how a lot of the actions taken during my session were often a mystery until the final reveal at the end. I didn’t have much I disliked. Perhaps it was just a bit difficult to understand at the beginning. However, I feel like that could be a gripe for any game with complex rules. I liked the group I played with, and I had a good time. What more could you ask for?

Two Rooms and a Boom

This week we played “Two Rooms and a Boom”, this was my first time playing this game and I enjoyed it. This game is focused on challenging your communication skills, strategic thinking, and reading others’ minds. This game is focused primarily on two teams, the Red and Blue teams each team has a president and a bomber. As the Red team tries to get the president and the bomber in the same room, the Blue team must prevent this.
The hardest part about this game was reading people’s minds and strategic thinking throughout every round. Switching rooms throughout each round made it very hard as information was shared in each room in a secretive manner. The limited time clock also made this game very difficult as you have to be quick with your actions and what clues to find in each round.
“Two Rooms and a Boom” showcases a variety of leadership skills such as persuasion, influence, and making important decisions under pressure. Leaders in the game have to make crucial decisions each round on who to send into the other room to gather important information. Leaders are different each round which makes the focus of leadership very important in this game, adapting each round is very important. Overall, this game was very fun to play and I think my friend Jack would love this game as he is very interested in competitive games and environments.

Ultimate Werewolf

In the first week of class, we played Ultimate Werewolf. I have never played this board game so it was a very difficult experience at first. The majority of my classmates knew how to play the game and seemed very experienced. There were a lot of ups and downs to this game but I finally got the hang of it.
The hardest part about this game was how much people and characters had a role in the game. There were a lot of scenarios where there were so many different scenarios to choose from so we had to just arbitrarily choose people to “kill”. My first time playing the game I didn’t know what roles were more important to others so I was very confused about why there were so many different characters.
This game ties into leadership in a way where the Werewolves can control most of the game if played correctly. The werewolves are always seeking to take people out of the game so having that authority and leadership is a key part for them.
I think my little cousins would love this game as it is a game that many people can play together and team up against each other to make it a better experience. Our gameplay as a class was very quick as we didn’t have much time to take our time. Overall, I am not the biggest fan of this game as I prefer different style of board games but it was still a fun experience.

GOTW Reflection: Two Rooms and a Boom

Two Rooms and a Boom was a very fun party game! I really enjoyed how many different roles there were and how much the game changed for each player based on their role. For example, when I was the bomber, I took much more of a backseat on the strategizing as I was an important role, and I let my team make all the decisions for me.

I don’t always enjoy being in a leadership role, though I have been in multiple facets of my life and I will step in if I need to, but I enjoy the teamwork element much more. In this game, as we discussed in class, even though there is a literal ‘leader’ role, we decided that the leader doesn’t actually have all of the power, and it’s very much a team game, making team decisions and coming to team consensus. It was more about making sure that your team was in power, not a specific leader as a dictator. I think the hardest part of the game, for me, was remembering who was which team/role between the rounds. After 2 or 3 everything started to blur together, and trying to remember who’s on my team this round, even if they weren’t last round. The worst part was when they were on your team last round but this round they are an enemy.

I thought it was weird how there is almost no incentive NOT to share your color/card with the gray roles. Unless you have a personal vendetta against that person, of course. I was then informed that there are some gray roles that we weren’t playing with, where you definitely DON’T want to share your role with them, because they could kill you or otherwise screw with your team. I found that the ambassador roles played a huge role in communication between rooms within a team, specifically to share between rooms which team is in power in each room, which absolutely influences your team decisions. Also, they are very helpful in connecting the Doctor-President and Engineer-Bomber. I can see how they would be helpful with all of the other role cards we didn’t play with as well.

I enjoyed playing with 12 or 13 people as we did in class, I feel like if you added much more the game would change and involve less teamwork. Which could be fun to play an almost entirely different game, but I think I would prefer to keep the numbers around what we had. I definitely enjoyed connecting with and learning more about some of my classmates that I hadn’t interacted with before!

GOTW: Two Rooms and a Boom

I had heard of Two Rooms and a Boom before we played it, although I’m not sure where, so I was looking forward to the game despite never playing it before. I think the first couple of rounds were confusing because I wasn’t sure what exactly to do, but once I got the hang of it I enjoyed the game. I also thought it was more fun once different roles were added to the game. Specifically, I got to be the ambassador during the last round and I found that to be a lot of fun, and fulfilling as the previous round I was “kept hostage” in one of the rooms and not allowed to go to the other.

Obviously, the main leadership concept in this game was the leaders themselves. In the early rounds, I think this leader did have more of a traditional leadership role because they mostly had to make the decision alone; however, when the leaders were able to find more people on their team they scarcely made decisions by themselves; this teamwork is a component of leadership as well, so I think this also represents leadership well.

I think being the Ambassador was also a good representation of being a leader. During the game, I was on the blue team and quickly discovered who the President and the Bomb were. This allowed me to share with the president who to watch out for, which was helpful. However, my main task was trying to get the Doctor and the President in the same room. This was really difficult because I had to find a way to communicate with both parties, while not knowing their exact plans. This led to the president and doctor being switched in the same round and the game ended in a tie. This shows that even if you have plans with certain people, you don’t always know what the other is going to do and it may lead to unexpected results.

I think the hardest part of the game was the time limit. Thinking back on it now I know what should’ve been done to win the last game, but in the moment there isn’t enough time to think your decisions through. For example, in the 1 minute round, I had to run down the hallway with 20 seconds left and hope I made it on time to inform people of what was happening and make a decision based on that. Another difficult aspect was who the leader was. During the game I mentioned previously, there was a situation where I had to stay in the room for the blue team to remain leader, because as soon as I left the room the red team took charge. This led to me being forced to stay in the room and not being able to communicate with the Doctor in the other room.

GOTW: Voices in my Head

I enjoyed Voices in my Head a lot, but this may be because it wasn’t the most complex game for me. During the game, I was able to immediately take control of the planning section, and it wasn’t taken away from me, so I was able to pick up a strategy card every round. Because of this, I knew what every influence token on the board was, and therefore knew which way the jurors were leaning. I also got fairly lucky when controlling different parts of Guy’s brain in that I almost always got to do something with the innocent/guilty tokens or the influence tokens at the end of the round.

However, I think the hardest part of this game was not knowing exactly what everyone wanted to do, even when I knew how the game was playing out. This showed specifically in the very last round of our game where a guilty token was placed on one of the jurors and instead of completely winning the game I tied with another person. I think this ties into leadership really well because even if you know everything that is going on, one person could do something that goes against your goals and completely change what is happening. Likewise, during the game, I had the selfish role and therefore was completely alone in wanting the jury to vote more innocent than guilty. This is what leadership can feel like, everyone else may want to achieve a certain goal or do something completely different than what they are meant to be doing, and you are left alone to try to achieve your goal.

In the end, I really enjoyed this game, possibly because I enjoy social deduction games, but I’m not sure if I would’ve enjoyed it as much if I didn’t know what way each juror was voting the whole time. I think that element of not knowing is a bit scary and the idea that someone else could be doing things to the game that would make you lose, without you knowing, could make you feel helpless. I think this game would be more fun with more people playing, because it would allow for all sides, those wanting a guilty decision and those wanting an innocent decision, to have more people working together to achieve their goal.

GOTW Reflection #3: Fiasco Week 2

Week four, our class continued playing the gm-less roleplay game Fiasco. For game mechanics, please refer to my previous post. This week, my group finished the first act, weaseled our way through the tilt, soared through act 2, and ended with a blast of an aftermath. The tilt is the turning point of the story, where everything starts to go awry. It is probably here that I should note that one of our players was unfortunately unable to make it to this session. Our team collectively decided that their character had been murdered by Edwardo, who proceeded to gain amnesia about his crimes and build a snowman to replace him. During the tilt, secrets were spilt, and Penny the penguin was saved from the iceberg. During act 2, the three remaining characters (Pierro, George, and Edwardo), tried to figure out what happened to the other player’s character. At the same time, it was revealed that George had stolen Pierro’s “Top Pilot” trophy on the day Pierro graduated from flight school. Not only that, but it was revealed that George had a long lost twin! Slowly making our way through Act 2, we try to put together the pieces to what happened to the absent player’s character. Making our way through several more scenes, we each collect more black and white dice that would end up deciding our fate. Going into the aftermath, I had largely accumulated white dice, having only received one black dice throughout the duration of the game. In the aftermath you roll your small pile of dice to determine what outcome your character faces. I ended up scoring pretty high on my white dice with an 11. Sounds pretty good. However, that score really only left Pierro with a neutral ending. This ended up being fairly good compared to the absent player and Edwardo however. The snowman spontaneously burst into flames, while Edwardo tragically died in a helicopter crash after successfully smuggling the penguins off Ross island. Pierro revealed himself to actually be George’s long lost brother, out to get revenge after George stole his idol’s (the real Pierro) trophy. In the end, the two brothers reconcile and live happily ever after.

I believe I struggled less during this week’s game session. I think this is because we already had gotten comfortable with the game in the last session and had a firmer understanding of the mechanics. I’d say the hardest part was wrapping it up in a way everyone found enjoyable. It was hard to predict how the other two players wanted things to pan out, and with one player absent there were some loose ends. For that reason I felt a little bad for Edwardo’s character, who was more firmly connected to the missing player’s character. As I said last week, I would play this game with my friends Roai and Korben. It just seems like a game they would enjoy. Plus, I feel like the flow would be better with people I know and have roleplayed with before.

When it came to leadership, I mostly saw it in how we wrapped up the scenes. We each started taking a firmer role in how we wanted each scene for our character to go. However, there was also an openness to negotiate which was very nice. At the end though, I feel like we all individually got to lead and determine the outcome for our characters, which was nice. I like this game. I would play it again.