Totally Human Review - Social Deduction Works At Low Player Counts!
Transcript
Hello my friends. Today we're going to be getting a spaceship and hopefully we're getting in with another human because if we happen to get in there with an alien, well, it's going to have a snack and we are not going to live. Today we're taking a look at Totally Human. This is a social deduction game from 3 to eight players, 328 players. This is from Bitewing Games. Let me show you how it's played. I'll see you on the other side.
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So, what's most likely to be outlawed? Sturdy ladder, unlucky smartwatch, pink e-reader, wood microwave, or slow lantern. And players are going to put what they think next to here. Now, if you're human, you can pick any answer. If you're an alien, you must have there's three rounds. One of the rounds you must select answer one. One of the rounds you must select answer four. And one of the rounds you must select answer three. Which means the first round you could select one, three, or four. Lucky for us, we were red, so we did select four. And it kind of fits in with the rest of the people. Now, we know that in the next two rounds, I have to select a three and a one in either order, but your choices get down. So, in the last round, the third round, you have to basically pick the number you haven't used yet. And so, here after it's after everyone selects and such, then everyone's basically talking about why you selected what you select, and you're trying to figure out who's suspicious. And so, the next one comes out. Worst place to take a nap. Wy Hilltop, Sandy Garden, Scratchfield, Glistening Meadow, or Crinkled Forest?
Well, they picked Sandy Garden. Makes sense. It's not very comfortable. Uh, Glistening Meadow, that's probably too bright. If it's glistening, it's going to be hard to take a nap. And remember, I had to select now either one or three. And I thought this was going to be easier to defend than three. None of those are great. But then when they asked me why did I pick that, I said, well, you know, the hilltops are number one, they're closer to the sun, so they're very bright. They're also very windy. And the weather also changes so much up there. Thunderstorms, lightning's more dangerous. Like, I don't want to be on the hilltop. And the last one comes out. Most unsettling. A frozen mother, transparent girlfriend, burning brother, melted ancestor, and miniature uncle. Well, if you remember, the only number that I had not selected yet that I have to select because I'm an alien, uh, is number three, which was Burning Brother, which actually I lucked into that. You know, if I had number five and it was miniature uncle, I was going to have a lot of explaining to do.
Uh, so that is pretty much how it was. Everyone's talking about now. That's how the game plays differently depending on the rules. Then in the lower player cons game, there'll be one ship per person. You start on a ship. And what you're trying to do is if you're human, you're trying to be on the largest the ship with the most humans without even letting one alien in. If you're an alien, you just want to be on a ship with a human and you'll win because you'll eat them all and the humans won't the humans on that ship won't win. So there can be multiple people from different sides winning. Now there's a fun little thing. Everyone has sort of a button. Uh and when you want to launch or they want to open the door and let someone in because this guy might go, "Hey, I want to come with you." And you might go, "I don't trust you." Nope. Or you might say, "Sure, come with me." And you know you're an alien. So you you go, "Yeah, sure. I'll hit my button. Come on in." So you go like this and then if these two both now if this guy's like, "Hey, I want to come with you." Both of them have to agree and hit the button.
If not, they don't get let on. These two might go, "You know what? We're safe. Let's get away. We think we're going to be on the the the the you know, the rocket ship with the most humans with no aliens." So you both hit the button and you sail away. Uh and then these two people are like, "Well, what are we going to do now? Do we go together or not?" So you try to figure it out. Now, in the end, these two didn't trust each other. So, and they didn't trust one of these, so they wanted to stay alone. And then people reveal you reveal whether you're an alien or whether you're a human. If you're an alien, you win if you're on a ship with at least one other human. If you're humans, you you win only if you're on the ship with the most humans. So if these two were human, this guy was human and I was the alien. Alien would win by eating him. And these two would win because they were both on the same one. Sometimes though, even in a four-player game, and it's possible that there might be no aliens, and you might have split up like this, and you're all humans. Well, you all lose because uh there's no ship with the majority of humans on it. So, that's pretty much how the game works and it plays well at all player counts.
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And there may or may not be a bad guy like in New Salem. I love that. And it also reminds me a little bit about of apples to apples where you're putting together two different cards to combine it and then you're sort of defending it. And so this is like good cop bad cop meets New Salem meets apples to apples. And I like all three of those games. So there you go. Uh I love that you're combining nouns and adjectives. Those it works really well. And you know it it's just like these wacky things that come up. And there's obviously a ridiculous amount of combinations. All those cards that I showed you were double-sided as well. And so you're you're probably never going to get the same combination twice for sure. Uh and I like that some cards are not used with other cards. So, some of them like, "Hey, this doesn't have the red dot on it. Don't use it, you know, or the, you know, the the orange square." I like that because I make sure that like they make sense, but at the same time, it's sort of modular in that way. And that was a smart way to kind of make the cards work and not feel like really weird. Uh, so that worked really well. I'm glad that they did that. That could have been an easy mishap that would have probably ruined the game. So, I'm glad that they figured that out. Uh, I love the alien decisions and explanations because it's like, okay, you know, you're an alien at the beginning. You've got to figure out which which when to use which of the three numbers. And it gets harder each round because you have less and less decision. So, it's like, uh, last round you don't have a decision. You're just saying what it is, and you're thinking of a good explanation. Um, and so you're doing that. It's fun to kind of decide, oo, I could go with either one of these.
Do I go with or do I go with the best one? Yeah, I guess, right? like which one do do I think other people are going to go for? Which one's the easiest for me to defend? You're thinking those things through. U I like that you're at the end you are negotiating for ships like hey I don't want you to come in. This is the best part of the game where you're like oh that's so sus suspicious. All the characters and what you voted for or what you went for is visible. So like wait you said this over there. Yeah because of this but I said this this over here. A lot of hearsay. A lot of hey you and me are together. Let's get on a ship. Oh this guy wants to come on. What do you think? Uh one of you wants to. one even doesn't. And then you're trying to figure out, well, if we think we're both humans, we want to get one more human. So, we're the biggest human ship. You're like, "Oh, you know what? Those two, one of those are probably bad, so we'll be okay with just two cuz that one's probably an alien. It's going to eat them." Those conversations is really what makes this game it it's it's a ton of fun. Uh, it's even great with lower player counts, which most social deduction games are not. There's only a very small handful. No, New Salem being one of them because there's a roughly about a 33 or a one-/ird chance that that that you're going to be, you know, that that you're going to be that an alien, right? And so, it's possible that there won't be one.
Even in a four-player game, we had it where there was no alien and you have this paranoia because you're still suspicious. And we ended up both be there were two humans on one ship, two humans on another ship, and we all lost because we were all humans and we weren't on the ship with all of them. We had to trust each other and we didn't. and it was just a blast. So, you have that that paranoia that there might there should be someone here statistically, but there's a chance that there won't be. And that's that's what really makes this game work at three and four players where most games of this type do not work at this player count. The game is quick. It says 20 minutes. It's probably less than that. It's probably 10, 15 at most. And this is one of those games where you don't just play once. You'll play it two or three times at least in a row. And that's a sign of a good game as well. So, anything negative to say about the game? Well, the game can feel unlucky sort of in the last draw for the aliens. You might get a draw and you're like, "Oh." Cuz sometimes the cards come up and there's like an obvious best choice, right? And there might be the majority of the people on this thing and you're all by yourself on this answer that makes no sense. And it's going to be pretty easy because they know that the alien has no choice in the last round and you might get sused out easy. And that can happen.
It does happen in this game. Uh but the game's 10 or 15 minutes. It's a fun experience. You do it again, right? It's not that big a deal because the game's not very long. Um, this definitely is not for those that don't like to be put on the spot because again, even if you aren't an alien, people are going to want to hear why you picked what you did and you're going to have to decide it. And some people just have stage fright of even if they're around people they like and they know they don't want to be put on the spot where everyone's looking at them while they're making up something or talking about something. If you have stage fright, this is definitely not the game for you. Other than that, I think this is a fantastic special game. You know, I like party games and I play a lot of party games and not often do I say, "Hey, this is special." And even though this is sort of a cross between a couple of different games, it still feels like a unique, its own thing. And it really does stand out from the pack. And for all those reasons, I'm going to keep keep this in my gaming library because I can play it with gamers, I can play with non- gamers. Uh, and so it's get my highest sax one serene. Here we go.