I talked to David Stefano at the 24 Hour Game Marathon for Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Tell me about your game.

Blood on the clock tower is a social deduction game. It shares a lot of DNA with Werewolf. The game has been in development for about 4 years. We are going to kickstart it in January.

Let me stop you what is Werewolf?

Social deduction is a style of game in which every person has information or a secret role. Your job is to glean the correct amount of information to help your team win or to help your player survive until the end of the game. There are a lot of examples like Werewolf, Secret Hitler.

The biggest stylistic differences is in Werewolf there is an individual winner. With Blood on the Clock Tower your team wins. There is a good team and an evil team. Also, there is no player elimination, which means that even if you get killed, you are still able to participate in the game. It keeps everyone involved until the very end. Hopefully, nobody will end up really bored. Every person has some type of role and information that has an impact on the game. The minimum number of players is 5 plus the story teller. I have run 20 player games before.

Let’s say you have 6 people of average or above average intelligence. How long should the game take?

Each game can last between 45 minutes and 2 hours. If you have a 5-player game, it can last about 30 to 40 minutes, a 10-player game can last about an hour, and a 20-person game can last about 2 hours or more. It depends on how much they talk.

I don’t see a lot of parts to the game. Is the game different each time it is played?

Yes. There are 20 different roles and no set script. The storyteller can determine which roles go into the game.

How much will the game cost?

It is not finalized, but we are hoping to offer it for about $100.

Anything else you want to tell me?

You are not going to necessarily get accurate information from all the roles.

So, people just lie in the game?

They could be lying, or the storyteller can give them false information. For example, there is a character called the drunk. You think you are a towns folk, but the storyteller tells you inaccurate information because you are a drunk. Your job is to glean whether you are drunk or not. At some point in the game you will utter the phrase, “I’m not evil but I might be drunk.”

Is this a local product?

I am from Columbus originally. Most of the design team is in Sydney Australia. Hopefully most of the production will be done in the US.

How can we find you?

We are on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: Blood on the Clock Tower. There are copies of the game in Seattle, Columbus, San Francisco, New York, Boston, various places in Europe, and in Sydney.  We have been at every convention over the past summer. We have people in Essen.

What is Essen?

It is a giant major gaming convention in Germany. We were at Origins here in Columbus. We were at Gen Con in Indianapolis. We are trying to build up by word of mouth. Everyone who has played this game raves about it.

Sidebar: I watched the game played. It was fun to watch and looked like it was fun to play. He didn’t exaggerate about the drunk. There was also a character (I can’t remember which one) whose function was to try to save the major players from being eliminated. So, that character was lying. Seems like if you loved the Perry Mason show from back in the day and you can lie with a straight face that you would be great at and enjoy this game.