Blood on the Clocktower

Coworker runs this at their place monthly, eight to twelve of us crammed into a living room, and I go because it’s the closest thing to reading a room full of strangers that I get outside of triage. That’s not nothing to me. You learn who’s lying by the same tells you learn who’s actually fine versus who’s about to crash, comma, small stuff, eye contact held a beat too long.

Being dead here doesn’t mean you’re out. You keep a ghost vote, one, saved for whenever it matters most, and it keeps you leaning in instead of scrolling your phone in the corner. Not everyone buys that though, one player got killed early and called the single vote for the rest of the game not fun at all, and I get it, losing your voice night one stings no matter how the design intends it. My debrief instinct says that’s the real fault line in this game, not the werewolf comparisons everybody makes in the first paragraph of every review ever written about it.

Storytelling the game is its own job, and a good one keeps the table honest without turning into a glorified computer reading a script. A bad one and the whole thing sags. More than one review wished for a real companion app to help run narration and setup instead of hand-tracking a grimoire, because being the narrator isn’t always as fun as playing, and somebody’s got to lug that box around like it’s the actual grimoire it’s named after.

The token quality and that felt-lined interior get talked about a lot, deservedly, but what keeps me coming back is smaller than that. It’s the two minutes before the storyteller wakes everyone, my downtime clock ticking down in the dark, wondering which of the people around me is about to lie straight to my face. Best game I’ve played all year for reading people, worst game for anyone who needs to win to have fun.