LogFAQs > #935178443

20. Dracula's Feast (2017)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Party game, social deduction, hidden roles
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 10-20 minutes
Experience: 30+ games over 12+ sessions (2017-2020)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 10/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player is dealt a role of a monster: Dracula, Alucard, Werewolf, Zombie, and the like. The goal is to deduce everyone else's role and, on your turn, to make an Accusation: by revealing your role and handing a second copy of the role card to each other player. On your turn, instead of accusing, you can also take one of two information-gathering actions: querying (asking a specific player whether they are a specific role, to which they must answer honestly) and dancing (asking a specific player whether they would like to dance - if they accept, then you look at one another's cards.) Each role also has a special ability to throw confusion into the game.

Design - I love the positive feelings Dracula's Feast provides. Microturns, deduction, quick snappy decisions. The artwork on the role cards is great, as are the "whisper" cards that you use for queries. The way the roles interact can change games from whisper-filled to dance-happy, and depending on which happens more often, a single game can go longer or shorter.

If you've played Clue, the direct questioning of people should feel relatively familiar - but here, you've got mix-ins like the Trickster, who always responds "yes" to a query, Alucard, who always responds "yes" to being asked if he's Dracula. It's not uncommon for an entire circle to be asking "Are you Dracula?" Meanwhile, it's also not uncommon for many players to be asking (or being offered) dances. Dancing is high-risk, high-reward; giving away your own role can be dangerous, but getting 100% assurance on your dance partner's role is a huge leg up against others. Including three must-accept-dance-invitation characters is also a great move from the designers; if you sit back and refuse dances and just try to play the asking game while everyone else is dancing, you're likely going to fall way behind.

In some games of Dracula's Feast, the last player will literally only get one turn before the game ends. That's just the way it falls sometimes, and because the game plays so quickly, I don't find it to suffer because of it. In fact, it encourages players to take risks - as in all deduction games, Dracula's Feast gives you lots of opportunities to feel really clever or really stupid. You can only win by accusing, and you can only accuse by revealing your role. Your guess will inform others, and your exposed role will of course also do the same, so your reveal makes it more likely that other players will also attempt to solve the game. This does create something of a weird tension where you often want to be the second person to reveal yourself.

If there's a flaw with the game, it's that not all the roles are equally fun to play, and that they can be a bit confusing. The Werewolf, Zombie, and Van Helsing in particular feel overpowered, while Beelzebub and Dr. Jekyll feel clunky to play. I usually wind up excluding many of these roles in any given game.

Experience - Dracula's Feast is my baby. To date, it's the only game I have backed on Kickstarter. It comes in a small box with the proportions of a coffin, and I brought it everywhere I could expect 5+ players for months afterward. It's a game I feel stupidly proud to own because I got on the boat early, even though it hasn't exactly become a crossover hit in the mainstream market. The game had lain fallow for several months over the second half of 2019, but I managed to get it to the table again last month, and it was just as good as I remembered.

The game came with Advanced Roles, which I've used considerably less (since they require additional cheat-sheets for each player), and a Cthulu Expansion, which I've never even opened. I've also got the second edition, Dracula's Feast: New Blood, which has changed up the rules, but which I have yet to play.

Future - It's almost entirely dependent on the group. My main gaming group is the least receptive to social deduction games, unfortunately, and they only found the game so-so. But with any group that enjoys it, I obviously have a ton of content to blaze through. Can't wait to get it to the table again.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness