/pic7708512.jpg)
Step back into a dark period in our past, when frenzy and paranoia dominated peoples’ perception of ‘the other’, driving communities across Europe to take the most extreme measures against their fellow man… or woman, as history would have it.
Burn the Witch is a game of social deduction where players are divided into two factions (zealots and sympathizers), which are pitted against each other in a bid for survival. Players represent houses, comprised of two to four villagers, one or more of whom may be a witch. The zealots win by uncovering the identity of all witches in play—a discovery made only through fire. The sympathizers win by keeping the witches’ identities hidden. With witches forming a small minority, the sympathizers’ only chance for success depends on their ability to employ cunning and misdirection as they seek to outwit the other players by turning the zealots’ xenophobia and pyromania back onto themselves.
The game typically goes for 45-75 minutes and concludes when either every witch in the village has been uncovered or enough innocents have been wrongly condemned that the witch hunt is called off, and the sympathizers win.
—description from the designer
Burn The Witch
- Interesting social deduction gameplay
- Plays up to 15 players
- Multiple roles
- Secret voting
- Clever game design
- House size reduction for more than 8 players
- Households can lose members which gives them less voting power
- Identifying witches and innocents
- Werewolf
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Player Elimination — If we decided that we are burning, then everyone who has someone with freckles is going to have to put that card forward and we are going to decide which person we are taking out.
- Role assignment — identity deck and it will be made up of three different types of identities and the number of which corresponds to player count. So you will have anywhere between two and four witches... a certain number of extra devoted people... your regular old villager.
- Secret Identity — You don't know who's on what team. Unless you are the witches, you do know which team you are on.
- Social Deduction — It uses some of the basics of a game like Werewolf, but really turns it up in a much more interesting way.
- Trial by Fire — if we were to take out someone who is devoted, then this is where we go to trial by fire. And that means that immediately we have 2 minutes to decide on one other member in the household, any household that we are taking out, right?
- Voting — you get votes based on the number in your household. So what's going to happen is the person who is the accuser... They are going to pick a trait... then you have this ballot box. One side is that you are going to save... and one side is that you are going to take them out of the game. You'll only take out one.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- So, this is a really interesting social deduction game.
- This is a very clever game.
- So go check out Burn the Witch from Peak Games.