Join us for a playtesting session of a new, student-created social deduction game – Ghost Ship.  The student team are hoping to take part in this year’s Tranzfuser competition, and are seeking feedback to help refine their paper prototype while starting work on their digital version. 

“Ghost Ship is a five to ten player game set aboard a treasure-laden pirate ship, where ghosts try to steal treasures before the ruthless pirates sail their ship back to port.  At the start of the game, each player is assigned a rank from stowaway to captain. The ghosts then possess a pirate’s body, where they will try to remain undiscovered for as long as possible.  Each rank has specific jobs they can perform, like ‘Release the kraken!’, with an opposite job that can be played giving the chance to cause havoc aboard the ship.   

 Each round, the captain calls out one command, which the pirates can choose to either obey or disobey.  If all the played jobs match, the ship sails on towards port. If the jobs do not match, a valuable piece of treasure is stolen from the ship by the ghosts and returned to the sea. 

 At the end of each round, players are asked to vote on who, if anyone, should be made to walk the plank.  When a player receives enough votes, they are thrown overboard. If the jettisoned player was a ghost, the crew have successfully cleansed their ship of that ghost.  But life is never straightforward - if the player was a pirate, the soul of that pirate will come back to haunt another pirate. The act of throwing a pirate overboard creates new opportunities as all other pirates receive promotions, and a mysterious new stowaway is found aboard the ship…”