Blood On the Clocktower Trouble Brewing - Review

ODBG 0020 - Review for Blood on the clocktower trouble brewing

What is blood on the clocktower trouble brewing?

A social deduction game where you are on the good or evil team and you attempt to help your team to victory. Trouble Brewing is the introductory version, which is ideal for new players to learn how a social deduction game works.

The only trouble is if you're good you don't know who the other good players are and you need to work it out. If you are bad you need to kill all the good players.

What is good about Blood on the clocktower Trouble Brewing?

Great game for a large number of players - with a player count of 7 to 15 a standard BOTC Trouble Brewing game is fantastic for large groups of people to all play a game together. This can go up to 20 but that adds to the complexity.

Replayable murder mystery - It's like playing a live action murder mystery where the killer is still killing and must be stopped before it is too late (at least for the good team). However, there's a twist… the evil team are trying to kill The entire town of Ravenswood Bluff and if they succeed they win.

Fantastic speculation - if you want a game that allows you to be a fantastic detective to work out who's done it or where you can be a fantastic criminal and get away with it through lies this game is for you.

Great way to make new friends - Something I've noticed after watching games as storyteller and playing many of them is that this game is great for making friends as regular players start building friendships through the love of the game and in the “nighttime phase” have all manner of crazy and wonderful conversations. I always feel that the games with this are more enjoyable.

Bad points about blood on the Clocktower trouble brewing.

High learning curve - for new players Blood on the clocktower is a very intense game because the only way to know how it works is to experience and play it. The reason for this is the shear number of possibilities. Blood on the clocktower is a game which has lots of characters that all work in a framework together meaning that different characters in a game effect how it plays out. You need to be relatively switched on to play it. So if its your first 10 games I'd recommend not drinking.

You need a good storyteller - you need someone who knows the game well enough to be story teller so that the interactions go smoothly and players have a more enjoyable experience. Picking it off the shelf at a game cafe to give it a quick try is not an option. You need to organise play with a group of like minded individuals.

If you love how Blood on the Clocktower works you'll want to play more complex games sooner - trouble brewing script is very straightforward mechanically and once you've mastered it and if you love it you'll want to play bigger more complex scripts sooner. It's like having a starter deck for a trading card game without adding anything to it.

1 or 2 novices can ruin it easily - when playing Trouble Brewing sometimes new players who get bored from lack of understanding or lack of enjoyment of the game sometimes ruin it for others by doing game breaking things like showing their token to other players or outing other players roles. It can make it a less enjoyable experience. For those who are unsure I'd recommend being a traveler but it's not the same as getting the full experience of the game.

Experienced players can dominate - if more experienced players are in a BOTC Trouble Brewing game, because they know it so well, they can take over by outlining what's going on in the game. It can come off as talking down to other players and can take away from the experience and enjoyment of the rest.

Summary of Blood on the Clocktower Trouble Brewing.

Fantastic social deduction game which I would argue can be enjoyed and played by many ages from about 12 plus. Mainly Adults play this game because that's the main audience. If you enjoy a mystery and like working things out then this is the game for you. However… I recommend playing 3 or more games before forming an opinion as it takes a while to understand the game, and the only real way is by playing it.

Thanks for reading

Sam

As always if you're feeling like a Demon it might just be one of those days in Ravenswood Bluff. However if you like what you read you may want to support our mission by subscribing to our newsletter below. It really helps grow the website and gives you occasional updates of latest reviews, quick teaches and my board game making journey.

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