Posted in: Board Games, Games | Tagged: Bezier Games, One Night Ultimate Vampire, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, One Night Ultimate Werewolf Daybreak

Measuring 'One Night: Ultimate Werewolf' & The Expansions

Published Fri, 31 Mar 2017 10:45:28 -0500

by Gavin Sheehan

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In July, Bézier Games will be releasing the latest addition to the One Night series with One Night: Ultimate Alien. And while we don't know the full details just yet about the sequel and whether it's an expansion or an entirely different game by itself, the inclusion of an app being a bigger part of the game itself is mighty intriguing. So before we get our copy of the game for review, we thought it might be a good idea to look over the three sets currently out and see how they currently hold up.

Starting with the original, One Night: Ultimate Werewolf. The game really took off after being featured on Geek & Sundry as well as the now defunct Game Grumps series Table Flip, as both were able to show how insane a party can get with eight or more players. The objective of the original is easy but can become complicated very quickly. A take on the old-school Werewolf game, the goal is for the werewolves to survive while the town seeks to kill them. Roles like the Minion, the Tanner, and the Doppelganger can make the town's job a living hell as they scramble to figure out everyone's roles and figure out who the best person is to kill. As far as deductive party games go, this is probably my all-time favorite and it's a shame it isn't more well known in the board game lexicon of today.

One of the recent additions I got from Bézier was the expansion pack Daybreak. This version takes the original and throws in some added twists. First, you have 11 more roles to interchange with the 16 that come in the first game. They include three new wolf cards with different abilities, a witch, a curator, a village idiot (my personal favorite to throw the game into chaos), a bodyguard and more. The game also added shield tokens to protect players and artifacts to mess with people. The Shroud Of Shame is my personal favorite out of this set as you can force a player to turn their back on everyone during the discussion round. This version can be played as a full game, but things tend to get very complicated with such a short stack of cards. It's best played if you change out cards from the original and throw in three or four of them for variety. Or Just simply add them and give the game more unpredictability with many more people.

The final version is slowly becoming my favorite, which is One Night: Ultimate Vampire. The game plays somewhat like the first, but with the twist of more token cards that add different abilities and curses on players as you seek out the vampires to kill. Cupid and the Diseased quickly become the most hated characters as they basically sentence your character to death by association with their tokens. This version also has two phases: dusk and night, each with different characters running around and doing specific traits at different points of the day. The Assassins are a nice feature to help get rid of unwanted people who have a habit of messing things up early on as well. This version can also be adapted into the others, but the best way to get the most out of the gameplay through combos is to do Werewolves vs. Vampires vs. Villagers, with very specific rules to winning on each end.

Of all three of these, the original is your best go-to if you want to get into it and will probably be your favorite to go back to. But there's something to be said for variety and mixing life up, and you can't deny the value of having those additional systems. Get into the game first and be sure you actually like it first, and then go for Daybreak. Vampire is for the advanced players who are looking to do insane challenges and gameplay that requires a lot of lying and cunning to stay alive. I highly recommend getting into it the next time you have a massive party night, especially with drinking involved.

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