Traitor!
Traitor is a card game about betrayal and deceiving, that is meant to be played in bigger groups of people at parties and gatherings. Inspired by „Werewolf“ and „Trouble in Terrorist Town“ there are two teams in the game. One is working towards a common goal and the other team, the Traitors, have to secretly stop them. The goal of the normal players is to have everyone lose their cards by laying them on the table. Teamplay is very important here, but it is also important to find out who the Traitors are. Those get points for every card that is still on the hands of players or not laid down correctly when the timer runs out. Additionally they are allowed and advised to cheat in any way possible. The game awards creative ideas and teamwork and is best played in a group for multiple rounds in a row.
Genre: Card game
Year: 2019
Players: 3-8
My task: Full scope
Goal: Recreate the social deduction mechanics of Werewolf
Design process
I started by analyzing Werewolf, Trouble in Terrorist Town (TTT) and Among Us and made a feature list of what to include in Traitor! and what to avoid. My favorite features are the simplicity of Werewolf, the variety of ways a Traitor can interact with the innocents in TTT and the tasks in Among Us that give both teams something to do during the game. What I wanted to avoid is: having nothing to do while waiting for the werewolves and having every player play their own game ignoring the others.
To avoid these problems I decided to have a main game in which all players participate and have to work as a team, while the Traitor manipulates them from within the group. I needed to invent a game in which all players play at the same time working towards a goal and in which the Traitor has enough opportunities to manipulate the game. I was reminded of Rummikub which I played as a kid. There is a pool in the middle of the table which all players interact with. It is big enough for someone to manipulate unnoticed and the not being able to see the others cards also helps the Traitor.
As the game was meant as a party game, the rounds had to be quick and the necessary materials minimal. Therefore, I translated the rules of Rummikub to card games, coming out with a game similar to Skat. Another big influence on the game was a discussion with fellow game developers about how to tackle cheaters in games. Coming to the conclusion that one should rather prevent players from wanting to cheat than to focus on anti-cheat measurements, I had the idea of making cheating part of the game rules. By expecting players to cheat and giving them the responsibility, further rule-breaking got unattractive.
Testing sessions were held in the next months after the base rules were playable and lead to a time limit and a voting system. In the end I was very surprised by the different ways people can up up with to cheat which encourages me in the belief that the experiment of using rule-breaking as a game mechanic was a good idea.