Similarities:
- Both rely on Social deduction, in other words, players figure out who is lying and who is telling the truth through discussion, bluffing, and plain logic.
- In both games, players are given a special role that has different abilities.
- Both games implement some sort of day/night cycle where players must close their eyes and something happens during the night and during the day the players discuss what happened.
- Both games have a storyteller or game leader who makes sure that the game runs smoothly and is also that mediator role between the Good and Evil teams.
- Both games rely heavily on effective communication
- both games implement a player elimination mechanic
Differences
- While both games have players with special roles and different abilities, Blood on the Clocktower does not have repeat roles where Werewolf has multiple townsfolk that have the same abilities
- in BOTC ,players are allowed to privately chat with each other, while in werewolf the day time discussion was public to the whole group
- In BOTC, when players are eliminated they still participate in the game as a ghost who can still communicate with others while in werewolf once you are killed off you are out of the game.
- in BOTC, some players may not know their roles or abilities to an extent, but in werewolf once you get your ability and role you normally stick with that oultine of a role rather than figuring out that your role changed throughout a day.
Personal Reflection
- The number one thing that I like the most about these games is the idea that you can play anyway that you like, for example I like to lie about my role to people and I feel comfortable lying about it or if someone asks me to tell them my role I will say that I am on the evil team whether I really am or not, I like messing with peoples minds about roles.
- another thing that I enjoy about these games is the different roles and how you can add or get rid of certain roles to fit the liking of your play style
- I also like that in these games it takes some time learning the different roles and how to effectively play with each role, giving that goal of ultimately winning as each role
- Something that I like specifically in the BOTC is that idea of privately chatting during the daytime, I like the idea of picking someone and really get personal with them to see if you can understand their role without them really telling you what their role is directly. Basically building trust with someone in private rather than in front of the whole group.
- I like the idea of creating a story out of it, while I would never be the storyteller because I am not creative like that, I enjoy going along with someone’s story and acting like I am in it while also playing a competitive game with other people
I think that werewolf is great to start off with, but after multiple games its nice to switch to BOTC because of the wild range of randomness that can be involved. Thus, I would say that BOTC is my favorite of the two even though werewolf can be simple to play, if you were to genuinely put in time to create a great script for BOTC, it would make your time much more enjoyable especially since you are playing the whole time rather than getting killed early and have to watch the rest of the game.