Wolf Among Fools is a solo social-deduction game. It takes the classic Werewolf pitch, but all roles are AIs walking around at night fulfilling their different objectives, and the player is tasked with identifying them by placing traps and trackers around, to ultimately catch the werewolf before all villagers are eaten or killed.
Check the game page, download, and play Wolf Among Fools here:
The jam theme was "The calm before the storm". We love social deduction games, and we knew we wanted to capture the feel of investigation and suspicion during the day, as well as the dreadful murders and manipulations during the night, BUT - within a solo experience.
The main challenge was to create a game that is replayable and evokes a sense of uncertainty, without feeling random or unsolvable.
We quickly realized we needed different roles that would result in similar outcomes, but by various means. So the player would initially be left with several hypotheses that he could work toward resolving by putting them to the test.
For example, the hunter and the werewolf would both harm villagers, one by going out hunting at night, the other by shooting everyone walking outside their door. And then we added the possibility for the player to harm villagers themselves by placing beartraps around :)
So the next morning, you have some wounded villagers, some blood showing you where the wounding happened, and you're left to connect the dots...
We created and connected all the interacting systems as soon as possible, allowing us to test and get a feel for how the game played. This allowed us to deepen the systems connections and fix what didn't work.
The werewolf hunting behavior seemed too random at first, so we added a rule: The werewolf is attracted to the smell of blood, and hunts for wounded villagers first. This means if they attack a villager during a night, injuring them, they will probably go for them as well the next night, so the player knows what to expect.
It also organically creates interactions, like the possibility for the player to harm a villager on purpose to use them as bait for the wolf on the following night!