Werewolf's Castle

Playing a game with 6 people, so have two characters each.. get stuck with the Kitsune Temptress, and spend the rest of the time moving my other one. Friend goes "arn't you going to kill her" "no, she's got me, and i'm fine with that, it's ok if she gets my spunk"

I played this game once with the original designer. It's a light beer and pretzel game, but it really does not catch me. I have nothing against light games, for example, I love "that's life" which has similar roll and move mechanics, but I really cannot get into werewolf castle. As the designer said, this game could be considered being a fusion of Clue and Talisman.

Here are the various things that I don't like about this game:

Unless you are playing with 12 players, you will be controlling more than one werewolf. This has the effect of not getting attached to any character which reduce the impact of any dramatic event that could occur to him. It also multiplies the movement possibilities since each werewolf can move in 2 different directions.

The roll and moving system makes it hard to fall on the target you want. In fact you have very little control on where you want to go. I would suggest to use dice cards for movement and combat. If you use high cards for movement, you will be less efficient in combat for example.

The map design is based on Talisman and I really don't like that design. One of the thing I like in games, and video games, is exploration. I would have liked to discover things while exploring the castle, but in this game there is no exploraiton feeling at all.

In fact you get to fall on 4 types of room: Get item, get encounter, move up and recover. Each room has no unique personality because they each use the same set of ability. I would even say that the players have no objectives, they go where the die tell them to go. I would like players to have short term objectives, like I want to reach this room and then got there. Which would then give reasons for other players to block them. In this game, the room you visits does not really matter, you just want to make sure you don't fall on the encounter because most of them are bad.

Using encounter cards is OK for that kind of game, it's just that they are almost all the same. They have a number and you need to roll higher. If you have a game which use cards as encounter, you want to use them to their maximum potential. Making monsters "a la munchkin", with a value and special ability, could have saved the day.

When people ran away from encounters, if add some obstacles to the board. I would have liked to see more of this. I would have liked to see the board change while the game evolves. Doors could unlock/lock, rooms could get infested, rooms could move, etc.

The investigation system is very simple, but unappealing. The clue gathering is very boring, there is no investigation process to acquire these clues and there is no trill to suspect somebody.

I would have preferred a game where: first, the human player know he is a human and will try to avoid the werewolf which can increase suspicions on him. Since you do not want to have player elimination, you do not want the hunter to kill all the werewolf like in a murderer game. But you might say that the hunter has a plan. If he succeed, all the werewolf dies. But werewolfs must still have something to do, so that players can suspect each other for beign a hunter. So players will have short term goal, or stuff to do, in the castle and they will watch closely each other to know who is the hunter.

This will add tension, a bit like the traitor in shadow over camelot: If I do this, will they suspect me as the traitor or will it pass unnoticed.

Then when you think you know who is the hunter, you do not accuse the player, you run after him and try to kill him. Meanwhile, the hunter tries to setup traps and race for completing his master plan that will kill all werewolfs.

So the thematic idea is interesting, and I have nothing against making simple games, but I would like the game to actually reproduce the feeling that you would get if you were stuck in a castle with a bunch of werewolf (Like being seriously nervous and on the edge). Unfortunately, it fails to achieve this.

Being the traitor in shadow over camelot could be a good feeling to analyze, because the last time I played the traitor I actually got that feeling that would fit well for this game.

Well I MADE this one, so I'm biased, but of my two boardgames this is the one I'm proudest of. Everybody who plays it falls in love

It's a role-reversal of your standard werewolf movie. Instead of a bunch of people trapped in a house and one of them is a werewolf, they are all werewolves and one of them is a werewolf-killer

It's been a little while since I've played, but now that I have the time to look back at it I can write some comments. I think the theme is very original and the art work makes it unique. An exploded house, like someone suggested, would have been better; instead of running around on a track, characters would be moving from room to room. But overall this is a minor detail, the game is a nice twist on clue, easy to pick up and amusig to play. The look and quality of the board and pieces is impressive and well done for a self publish game.

Offspring of Talisman and Clue, but much lighter than both. It has a cute werewolf theme suitable for kids (and their parents), the game's intended audience.

Players representing one or more werewolves, travel around the board, with classic roll-and-move mechanics, collecting items to help themselves or hinder opponents, as well as clues to determine which werewolf is the culprit (like Clue). Unlike Clue, players are deducing only the identity of the culprit -- no other categories like weapon or room -- making the deduction element largely a matter of luck, but then again, no note-keeping is required; only a good memory, which gives younger players an edge.

There is some tactical and strategic depth to this game, especially if players control more than one werewolf: positioning you figures all over the board to increase your odds of reaching the center of the castle, and whether to linger around the edge of the castle to collect items or head straight for the center for a risky yet quick victory.

Although I think the artwork of the board could look more like a castle than a Talisman board, the werewolf playing pieces more than make up for this self-produced game -- hand-cast, hand-painted plastic figures!