PARTY GAME SPOTLIGHT: BLOOD ON THE CLOCKTOWER

We check in everyone’s favourite demonic whodunnit

Blood On The Clocktower has been hovering in the background of gaming for a long while now. A staple at conventions, favourably reviewed as early as 2019, it’s only just become available for pre-order this year. We thought it was now time to check in with Steve Medway, the creator of the game, to discuss how the game came to be.

“It fits firmly into the social deduction genre, but I didn’t design it as a social deduction game,” says Medway, “I just designed it as the game I wanted to play. More like a puzzle game, more like an escape room, or a liveable mystery novel.”

Blood On The Clocktower is a game about trying to discover who is evil and who is innocent, in the same way we do in Werewolf or Mafia games. One player takes the role of the Storyteller, a kind of GM equivalent who is going to run the game for everyone else. Other players are then either villagers with a certain kind of role to play (which comes with their own benefits and drawbacks), and a demon with a minion or two for backup. Those on the side of evil are killing by night and taking human form by the day, and it’s up to those on the side of good to find the evil and root it out of their community.

Outsiders are good villager roles with strange, and maybe inhibiting powers, whereas the minions have powers that might make information false or otherwise cause problems.

While other games of the genre might be rooted in calculation and cunning, Blood On The Clocktower is designed to be more of a collaborative social experience.

“I just didn’t want the dominant emotion to be paranoia, anxiety and suspicion,” says Medway.

THING THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

The cycle of the game is one where players gain information at night, while everyone in the group has their eyes closed. This information is limited by each player’s roles and then discussed in the following morning. For example, the fortune teller might claim to have chosen two characters during the night and been informed that neither of them is the demon, whereas the investigator may have learnt that there is a poisoner in the game (which makes the information the poisoned person gets false) and that means the fortune teller’s information may well be false – and that those characters that have been vouched for should instead be killed. Players discuss which of their friends they’d like to kill, voting at the end. Similarly, the drunk is an interesting trait for a character, as it means that their power doesn’t work, and they will be lied to by the storyteller.

“As the game progresses, you have a shifting world view of what is true and what isn’t as characters come out of the game,” says Medway “and generally if you tell the truth, the story progresses fairly straightforwardly, but if you’re evil and lying craftily and the good players will execute the wrong people – telling a false story as to what happened last night, and the night before.”

Naturally, as with any social game, there’s an element of bringing out the truth of people’s real life character.

“In games like this you tend to trust the person you’ve always trusted,” says Medway, “if a leading personality gets a powerful good character, the evil team certainly has reason to sweat. The interesting thing is that because evil works in the shadows, you can make that player to work against their own interests – by making their information sound false, or poisoning them.”

“New players especially find it hilarious when it turns out they’re the drunk,” says Medway, “they’ve just spent 45 minutes or so with their head in their hands, exasperated, working out what’s going on, because they’re certain that they know who the demon is.”

Medway also talks about how timid players are also, because of the roles, able to quickly pick up exactly what they need to do to win. In one example, the designer says a player came to him and asked not to be put on the evil team – and through the luck of the draw the player ended up being the demon for the game, and eventually winning.

Closing your eyes isn’t something we usually do in groups. But when we do close our eyes in games, something slightly magic happens – in the sense that everyone is committing in a way they wouldn’t necessarily in any other kind of game. Here, it’s a necessity of the secrecy of the night-time actions.

During the night phase, the storyteller will tap players on the shoulder to open their eyes. They’ll then be invited to perform their action, like pointing silently at another player to die if they’re the demon, or to learn information about those around the circle.

The grimoire of the game is a hollowed book with a felt backing inside, which the tokens stick to. The storyteller uses this to mark who is alive, dead, poisoned, evil and so on. This device is crucial for positioning and keeping track of everything that’s going on the game.

THE HELPFUL UNDEAD

Don’t worry about dying too much, as you’ll still be able to play along. Everyone is quite happy to talk to the dead, and for your sake you might want them to listen. Some characters even benefit from dying, gaining some true information when they do so, that they can dish back out to the group.

The Raven Keeper, for example, gets to discover the truth about one character when they die. This means that when their character is killed by the imp, they’ll suddenly be able to provide information about one of the characters to the rest of the group from beyond the grave.

“When you die you have lost your power, but you’ve not lost your ability to work as a team,” says Medway,

“and the interesting thing about the dead is that, as the game progresses, because the dead still have a vote, they tend to end up outvoting the living. A lot of smart players, on the final day, where there’s only three players left with one demon, will be talking to the dead players – as they decide the outcome. Just because you’re dead, doesn’t mean it’s game over.”

In some cases, the demon can pass on their demonhood to a minion when they die, making it advantageous to expire. Players might trust dead people more initially – as you can imagine dead people don’t quite have as much skin in the game – but often, the opposite is true and especially so when there’s a dead demon wandering amongst the spirits.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Blood On the Clocktower is available for preorder right now, with expansions on the way. Trouble Brewing is a beginner scenario, whereas Sects & Violets and Bad Moon Rising are designed for intermediate play.

“I’d like to release at least one advanced version of Clocktower as I think the more hardcore players are really going to enjoy it, there’s a lot of avant-garde stuff going on in the advanced edition,” says the designer.

Plus, Medway is working on a Mafia-style card game of social deception and getting out with the most loot. On top of that, there’s a kids version of Blood On The Clocktower in the works (sadly not called Jam on the Clocktower) with a pirate ‘walk the plank’ theme.