Card Game Review: One Night Ultimate Werewolf - A Social Game of Deduction

One Night Ultimate Werewolf is a social deduction game that can be played by 4-10 players. It is a socialization game wherein all the people in the group must be able to reason well with the others or bluff their way out of it to avoid being caught. The game is a party hit for any group who wants to enjoy blaming, finger pointing, and lying... be very careful though, you might be surprised how well your "trusted" friends can lie straight to your face.

The game comes with a mobile application that you can download for free at the playstore. This app is very useful throughout the game because it provides you the voice of the digital game moderator who carefully explains to the players the actions of the cards. It will begin the game by telling all the players to CLOSE YOUR EYES as it starts to give directions to the players one by one. You can also set the timer of the app to determine how long you must solve 1 round of the game and you can also choose the number of participants by clicking on their characters in the app to include or exclude them in the game.

The game has 2 phases:

1. The Night Phase / Night Action Phase
- At the beginning of the game, all the players will close their eyes. The app moderator will call out each role and that is the only time the player can open his eyes and perform the action of the card without being seen by the rest of the group.

2. The Waking Phase
- After everyone has done their night actions, the app moderator will instruct everyone to open their eyes and a timer will start. All the players must start guessing who is who by discussing among the group who the werewolves are.

The contents of the game are a set of cards with matching tokens. These cards come with a different role and night action by which the player must perform while the others got their eyes closed. Here are the descriptions of the character cards:

Werewolf - Werewolves will be teaming-up with other werewolves during the entire course of the game. Their role is to stay hidden and avoid being caught at all times! They must bluff/lie their way during the course of the game by pretending to be a human for their team to win the game.

Minion - The minion is the protector of the wolves BUT the werewolves do not know who he is. The minion knows who his masters are and will protect them in secret during the entire game. He can even pretend to be a wolf so that people would point at him to avoid his masters getting caught. He is LOYAL to a fault.

Seer- The all-seeing eye among the humans. The seer can choose to look at the card of another player in secret to know their role or she can look at the 2 cards at the middle pile to determine who is lying when the social deduction starts. Be careful when you lie because the seer might have already known who the werewolves are.

Robber - A robber is a card changer, his action can make him exchange his card with another player to get a new role in the middle of the game, he does this in secret so the other players won't know what his new role is. Be careful who to rob, you might rob a wolf and get to be the new werewolf in the game!

Trouble Maker - The trouble maker makes the game complicated. His action is that he will be exchanging cards between 2 players without them knowing that their cards have been switched! a change in cards is also a change in roles BUT unlike the robber, the players whose cards have been switched won't know what their new roles are unless the troublemaker tells them when the social deduction starts.

Drunk - the drunk's action is very simple, he will exchange his card to 1 of the cards in the middle (there are 3 face-down cards in the middle of the table) and NOT LOOK AT IT. He won't know what his new role is because, he is too drunk to give a care.

Insomniac - The insomniac won't do any card exchanging BUT he can look at his card during the "close-eye phase" during his turn to check whether his card's role have been changed or not.

Hunter - the hunter is a killer, if the hunter gets to be accused and is voted out he can do 1 action, he can pin-point another player who gets to be forced evicted with him. The hunter will never be evicted alone. When you have a good hunter he can luckily pin-point a wolf and gets to automatically win the game BUT if the hunter points to a human, well.. it's plus points for the wolves. A hunter must always be sharp!

Mason - a mason is a group of humans that work together as a team, just like werewolves they will know who the other masons are and will use this to make an effective deductive team.

Tanner - a tanner is a walking suicide bomb. He doesn't care about humans or wolves but he wants to be pointed out so he can win the game. Once you evict a tanner both the humans and the wolves lose the game.

Doppelganger - a doppelganger is a copier. You can look at another player's card and copy that role immediately and you can do that new card's action as well. Be careful who to copy though, you might end up copying a wolf!

Villager - this is the most boring card in the game cause this card doesn't have any action. What you can do is observe and deduct with the others during the last part of the game.

This game also comes with an expansion that you can buy separately, this expansion lets you add new roles to the game and thus create a bigger set-up with more complicated scenarios that players can fully enjoy.

The first time we played this game was a few years ago, we were immediately hooked-up and everytime there was a gathering at home we always played this many times to the point that we began arguing and shouting with one another. Hahaha... we were fighting a lot and lying a lot but at the end of the game everybody was laughing and was  having fun. This game is not for crybabies, this game will test your friendship over a card game and believe me you will be surprised when you see your friends lie to your face just to avoid getting caught!

We give this game an 8/10

Happy Playing Everyone!