The Complete Idiot's Guide to Werewolves (27 page)

The game is played in two alternating phases—night and day. The opening phase of the game should always be night. When it is night, the Game Master will instruct all players to close their eyes. Then he will say, “Werewolves, open your eyes.” At this point, whichever two players hold the Werewolf cards should open their eyes and take notice of each other. Then the Game Master should instruct the Werewolves to pick someone in the group to kill. The Werewolves must then agree (quickly and without speaking, of course) on which Villager they want to kill by pointing that player out or using some other silent signal. It is very important that all players be spaced out well enough so as not to detect movement. The Werewolves should also try not to make too much noise. Once the victim has been chosen, the Game Master will say “Werewolves, close your eyes.”

 

The Game Master now says, “Seer, open your eyes.” Whichever player drew the Seer card should now open her eyes. The Seer will now choose one player to point to in an attempt to uncover which two are the Werewolves. The Game Master will confirm or deny the choice, usually by giving a thumb’s up/down or by nodding/shaking the head. A “yes” answer means the person
is
a Werewolf, and a “no” answer means the person is
not
a Werewolf but a Villager. The Seer must also be careful not to make noise because, if the Werewolves discover who she is, they will want to knock her out of the game as fast as possible. Once the Seer’s choice has been acknowledged, the Game Master will say, “Seer, close your eyes.”

 

The Game Master now says, “All players open your eyes. It is now day.” Once everyone’s eyes are opened, the Game Master will point to the person chosen by the Werewolves and say, “You have been ripped to pieces by werewolves.” This player is now out of the game and should reveal his card to the others and set it down, facing up. Once a player is dead, he
cannot speak.
The player can go do something else if he wants, but he can’t talk to any of the remaining players. Any arguments must be made
before
the votes are cast. Also, only dead players may show their cards to anyone.

 

Now the real fun of the day phase begins. All players must get together (including the unknown Werewolves) and choose someone to lynch. In this phase of the game, anything goes. There are no restrictions on what can or cannot be said. Players can completely deny anything they want, just as long as they don’t show anyone their card. If the Seer knows who a Werewolf is, she must do her best to draw the group’s attention to that player without letting it out that she is the Seer (because there is still another Werewolf, who would then kill the Seer on the next night). The Werewolves can lie, deceive, and misdirect the other players as they please in order to avoid being lynched. Werewolves can even turn on each other to throw off suspicion.

 

All players must now vote on which of them is going to be lynched as a suspected Werewolf, and the majority vote always wins (which means it is usually easier when you have an odd number of villagers because a tie doesn’t count). Once this has been done, the Game Master points to the lynched player and says, “You have been lynched and are now dead.” This player now reveals her card. Needless to say, the Villagers do not want to lynch the Seer.

 

When this has been done, the Game Master says, “All players close your eyes. It is now night,” and the cycle begins again. The game will end in one of two ways. If the Werewolves manage to kill enough Villagers that they outnumber them, then the Werewolves win. If the Villagers succeed in lynching both of the Werewolves, then the Villagers win.

One of the first werewolf-themed video games to hit arcades was Sega’s 1988 hit
Altered Beast.
The game was originally released in Japan under the title
Juoki,
or “The Beast Lord.”
Altered Beast
was later adapted into versions for the Sega home game system, other home game systems, and personal computers (though many of these were unable to offer the same level of game play, with the available computers of the time). In most of these different versions,
Altered Beast
was designed to be a one-player game. The game was part of what has come to be called the “beat-’em-up” genre of scrolling games, in which the character walks from one side of the screen to the other and employs combinations of basic moves in order to defeat enemies.

The game is set in ancient Greece and begins with the goddess Athena being kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld. Zeus searches for a hero to save her and decides to resurrect a fallen warrior. Zeus then grants this warrior the ability to shapeshift into a powerful beast so that he will be able to do battle with the many terrible creatures of the underworld.

 

The warrior leaves on his quest and encounters legions of monsters that he must defeat in order to continue on. When certain monsters are defeated (usually the ones that are flashing), orbs are released. As the warrior collects these orbs, he begins to transform. Once three orbs have been absorbed, the warrior assumes his full “altered beast” form, making him stronger, faster, and (for whatever reason) allowing him to throw fireballs. After he defeats the boss at the end of every stage, however, the warrior returns to his human form.

The game
Werewolves of London
was created by Viz Design, with versions to fit home computers of the time like the now-obsolete Commodore 64. The 8-bit game (which is a laughably low graphic quality in modern times) was originally scheduled for production and subsequent release by Ariolasoft in 1985, but the company went bankrupt before beginning production on the game. Two years later, the game was finally picked up for production by Mastertronic and released.

Werewolves of London
is, as one might expect, set in London. The goal of the game is for the player, as a werewolf, to kill eight particular people. The targets were each members of an aristocratic family that cursed the player character with lycanthropy. However, the resulting transformations occur nightly instead of just during the full moon.

 

Werewolves of London
offered players an interesting mix of action, role-playing, and strategy game elements. The game was even designed to adapt to the individual player’s reactions to certain situations. One could not simply go on a rampage and hope to win the game, for example. One element of the game was to avoid being found out by Scotland Yard, and more unnecessary murders would lead to increased police activity.

 

If the player, while in werewolf form, is touched by a police officer holding handcuffs, then the character is held in prison until the following day (when, in a situation only possible in the gaming world, the character is inexplicably freed from the cell and returned to human form). However, there is also a window of opportunity for the player to escape from the jail if a crowbar and torch can be found. These items allow the player to break out of the cell and escape via the prison’s underground sewers.

Another interesting element of the game is that health is awarded for every person the player eats (whether it is one of the eight target characters or just some random
NPC
). When the character gets shot, the health meter begins a slow but steady decline, represented by an icon that is supposed to be a bag full of blood (but it’s hard to tell that’s what it is supposed to be, especially if you don’t already know). Finding and using certain items in the game, such as bandages, can slow this down (but not stop it). Once the player’s “blood bag” is empty, the character dies and the game is over … then it’s back to square one.

Werewolf: The Last Warrior
was developed and released by the Data East Corporation in 1990. Originally released in Japan under the title
Choujinrou Senki Warwolf,
this game was designed for use with the Nintendo Entertainment System, which was the most popular home gaming system of the time.

 

In the game, the player assumes control of a character simply named, somewhat amusingly, “Werewolf.” This Werewolf guy has his hands full with saving a postapocalyptic wasteland from the clutches of his evil nemesis, a most atypical mad scientist named Dr. Faryan. Apparently, Dr. Faryan has nothing better to do with his time than to create monstrous, man-eating mutants in order to make the situation even worse (after all, the game is supposed to take place in a
post
apocalyptic world). Using his mutant-monster minions, the game explains that Dr. Faryan has managed to imprison every person on the planet (except you, of course).

 

To make the situation even more hilarious, the player’s character starts out the game as nothing but a normal dude just walking around the wastelands without a shirt on (and, due to the old graphics, he looks a lot like a hunchback). But have no fear because, once the player leads the character into contact with a big “W” (which, for reasons that are left fairly unexplained, is just sitting out in the middle of nowhere), he transforms into a werewolf. Even after a random homeless guy explains to the player what has happened, it still doesn’t really make sense how touching a big letter gives the character lycanthropy. Regardless, Werewolf now heads off to save the imprisoned inhabitants of the world and spends pretty much every second of the game kicking the snot out of some serious mutant-monster-minion booty.

 

Perhaps the most hilarious bad guy character rears his ugly head now and again throughout the game. He is a big bald guy, also with no shirt on (apparently, shirts were mostly optional after the apocalypse), whom the game dubs the “Giant Head.” This is funny because his head isn’t any more giantlike than it should be for his size. In fact, it’s pretty proportional. This character, many players have commented, is perhaps the easiest one to kill in the whole game. Every time the Giant Head is defeated, the player’s werewolf powers are given another boost … which also occurs for unexplained reasons.