Town of Salem

[Gwardinen]

Town of Salem is a browser based variant on the Werewolf or Mafia party games. It also has a Steam version, which I believe gets you some cosmetic items.

 

If you've never played Werewolf or Mafia, the basic concept is that everyone in the game is secretly assigned a role. Some will be members of the town, others will be members of the mafia, others will be neutral actors. The challenge of the game is to figure out who is on your side and who is not before everyone gets killed. The "gameplay" is very simple, it's mostly a game about psychology and observation.

 

Thanks to dibs, I am thoroughly addicted to it right now and looking for Thumbs to go into games with (or even make our own game if there are enough of us!) to add the spice of knowing the people I'm lying to as I plan to murder them in the night.

 

Check it out! I am Gwardinen in the game so send me friend requests there, and/or hit me up on Steam if you want to coordinate a game. I would also certainly be grateful if you listed me as your reference! After all, who doesn't love free hats?

[SuperBiasedMan]

I played a bit of this yonks back. It was pretty fun. I played one game as the jester (who's goal is to be hanged) and completely confused everyone with erratic aggressive behaviour so they resolved to hang me. 8)

I'm up for some more games of it when I can hop on a computer.

[elmuerte]

What's with the "$5 worth of Town Points". Why does it need in-game currency?

[Gwardinen]

Like I said, I think that's for cosmetics. I've played the browser version, not Steam (I think the servers are the same, though) and haven't bought anything myself so I can't speak to that side.

[Smart Jason]

I've played this a few times with friends over Skype and we all found it tremendously overwhelming and confusing. Having said that, I'm a total Mafia addict, back to the days I used to run it on a message board with assigned characters and in-universe fan fiction to go along with each decision, so I'd be totally up for trying to further penetrate this with Thumbs.

[SuperBiasedMan]

For anyone who hasn't played yet, it doesn't lead you in well. I recommend playing a few games and accept that you'll do poorly and not follow. Just take the time to figure out what roles do and what the chat dynamic is.

[Gwardinen]

I've found this page on the wiki to be very helpful as a reference to roles, what they can do and a few good starting tactics for them.

 

That said, SuperBiasedMan is right. You should try to accept in your first few games that 1) you will not play particularly well and 2) even if you did, there are 14 other people acting at slightly cross purposes from you.

 

Of course it's still nowhere near the learning curve that many games played around here have. Don't harbour Dota-level fears. I've been playing for two days and I'm already pretty comfortable in normal, and not entirely uncomfortable in custom.

[dibs]

It took me about 3 games to realize what was going on. it is so good and so so evil.