I came up with ideas for the games to do in the dark during that one hour Earth Hour time. It was not easy as the games were initially going to be carried out in the dark. I came up with a game that I'm quite satisfied with and I called it "murder in the dark". But my idea got banned down because.. Err, I actually kinda forgot why hahah xD I think it's because the murder thingy scares people and my seniors wanted it to be a relaxing night more than an extreme one.

Well since I didn't have the chance to actually play the game I thought from scratch, I might just share it here so that maybe someone at somewhere can play sometime in the future. (Do tell me whether it's fun or not after playing it!)

The things that I had in mind while coming up the idea of the game was, how do I attract people to play this game? What games are thrilling to play in the dark?

Okay let's see what I remember.

While planning this game, I thought of having a lot of people playing this. So the ideas that I propose may be more suited if played in a crowd of people with around 40 or even 100. Depending on how well the committee can take control of the game.

You'll obviously need to switch off the lights during that one hour period. The problems start pouring in.

How can you play in the dark? It's pitch black and I can't even see my own fingers.

Now, as the venue for our event took place in a large classroom, there were still lights shining in from the hallway through the err, what do you call it, the small window thingy on the doors? We also used the projector to display the countdown clock and that's another source of light.

But if you were to play in a small room or a huge space with ALL of the lights closed with no lights shining from anywhere, I suggest you buy glow sticks for all the players. You can get them easily online or even at MR DIY at a very cheap price. You should be able to at least see a person's face with the use of glow stick.

I know it would be more fun and mysterious if you can't see someone's face at all but put your safety as your number 1 priority.

If you want to play this game with your friends or family members only, I don't think glow sticks are needed. The main reason is that you know and recognize them almost too well, you can tell out who's who (character of the game) immediately if you can see even from a faint light source.

Just make sure you don't trip and fall and hurt yourself though. Preferably play it in an empty room.

Now I'm gonna start with the game flow.

Murder in the Dark

You'll need to give each player a poker card. (Or any other ways to show the characters of the players in the game.) You may ask the player to pick a poker card (face down) randomly to be fair. The characters of the players are determined by this thingy:
King - Mafia
Queen- Detectives
Jack - Doctor
Other numbered cards - Citizens
Make sure that the numbers of the characters are even. As you might have multiple mafias or police or doctor with a bigger crowd, keep track of the number so they the characters with "positions" don't exceed the number of citizens.

You'll also need to give each player a name tag thingy. Like the ones they wear around their collar. It's for the mafia and doctors to stick stickers on it. I think you only need these for large crowds. You can improvise on this idea, it can be something else. I can't think of anything better than the name tag. TT

Now I'll explain each character's role.

Mafia

Your job is to kill people of course. But you must abide to these certain rules. Upon entering the venue where the game starts, you are given 3 small stickers. (Number varies. The bigger the crowd, go for a bigger number. Consider the number of mafias you want to have too before considering the number of stickers.)

The stickers are for you to "kill" someone lol. As everyone will be randomly walking around the venue, you can pick your "victim" randomly.

Rules for killing:
1) Approach your victim slowly, try not to scare your victim so they don't shout to prevent your identity as a mafia will from being exposed lol.

2)Gently tap their shoulders. (Twice?) After tapping, remove one sticker and stick it onto the victim's name tag.

3)Done, person killed. Move onto your next victim until you ran out of stickers. (The person you killed might be the police or doctor too, depends on your luck.)

You should've figured out the purpose of the stickers and name tag by now. If you don't limit the numbers of people the mafia is going to kill, this game will go haywire. Limit the number by giving them stickers. The name tag, well, it's for you to stick and spot the stickers easily. And also prevent people from accusations of sexual harassment or some religious beliefs thingy.

Note that all players with same positions won't know each other during the game. So there's a possibility of a mafia killing another mafia. After using up all the stickers, your job is done. Now wonder around and try not to get killed by another mafia.

Also, note that the colour of the stickers given for the mafia, detectives and the doctors are all of different colours.

You are dead when you are voted as the murder suspect by majority of the people after the time is up. You will be more suspicious if you have more than one stickers from the detectives. Ofc majority would vote for you.

One more rule lol. When you are accused of being the murderer (when the detectives put sticker on you), you can't kill the detective on the spot. (It would be unfair wouldn't it?)

Do not kill anyone who's standing at the booth.

You can go on and kill whoever you like. But beware of the Joker. We'll come to that later.

Detectives

You sorta have to follow your guts or instincts or feeling lol. It's actually depending on your luck too.

Your job: to accuse someone.

Similar to the mafia, the detectives are given stickers. (Number varies blah blah) The detectives sorta have to walk around and randomly accuse someone by sticking the sticker on their name tags if they had no idea who to accuse.

And that's pretty much your job lol.

Doctor

You are important in this game. Personally think that this position is more important than mafia lol.
How to save people's lives?

1)Walk around to see any dead people. You can know the person is dead if the person is standing still.

2)Approach the person. Tap the person's shoulder if you need the person's attention. (To face you)

3)Tap the person's shoulder 3 times. (Indication of "Are you dead?")

4)If the person is dead, he has to tap your shoulders back for 3 times.

5) Stick the sticker on his name tag to save him.

Again, some improvements can be done to the tapping thing. The reason why I thought of tapping instead of talking or even whispering is because the victim can recognize the person's voice or at least distinguish the gender of the doctor. Not that it matters much but what if the victim is the muderer himself?

If you are kind enough, you can save everyone who's dead, provided you have enough stickers to do so. But unknowingly, you might save a mafia. The next second after you save him, he might kill you there and there.

"Normal Citizens"

Don't worry if you've got no positions, I thought of something for ya.

Of course you'd like to save yourself and prevent yourself from being killed right?

Introducing, the Joker. By having the joker card, it means that YOU WON'T EVER DIE.

Regardless of how many times the mafia kill you, you won't die.

How to obtain this precious card?
1) Approach any of the tables where there are committees sitting there.

2) Tap the table 3 times. Just loud enough for the committee to hear. You will also be asked to show your name tag to see whether there are stickers indicating you have tried that particular station or not.

3) The committee may use their phones to show you the things you need to solve in order to obtain the card. (solve it in the phone itself or ask you to find something in the room)

4) You only have one chance for each station.

5) You'll obtain the card if you win. If not, the committees will stick yet another sticker indicating you have already tried the game once and won't be able to play for the second time.

The biggest advantage of having a joker is that not only you get to stay alive, you can observe and help the detectives to spot the murderer too. Of course you won't have a sticker to accuse the murderer though.

** If the number of people playing this is very little, I suggest not to introduce the Joker as the game will never end.

I stumbled upon something interesting and thought I can use the idea as a mission for the citizen players to play. It might be relatively easy for uni students but for me it was quite hard to solve so err, have a look and decide or not whether to use this idea. Hahha xp

(Adapted from http://awesomeinsideawesomehere.blogspot.com/2014/04/my-experience-jpa-scholarship-interview.html )

1. Use all number ‘1’ to ‘9’ to fill in each blank square and get the answer of 15 by adding all three numbers vertically, horizontally and obliquely.

(Credits to the author of the link I've mentioned prior to this for the drawings and the ideas.)

Ohh, you can also add a motto for this game.



The fatal flaw of this plan is this ending part. I can't seem to come up with a solution how to actually end this. There are a several ways how you can actually end the game. For example, after a certain time limit, committees are to gather everyone and asked them to vote for the most possible murderer. The dead could not talk anything though, If I do have any idea, I will update this blogpost.

The winners of the game are either the mafias, or everyone else except the mafias.


*Tricks to this game*

This game can be extremely mind challenging and extremely boring. It's all up to how the players play the game.

While planning this game, I sorta thought of a few tricks for each character to actually win the game.
Prepare to be amazed by my intelligence. *flips hair*

For the mafia

Instead of randomly killing people like someone who's having pms, THINK. Who do you want to kill?

Who's your "enemy" in this game? Obviously, the detectives and doctors right? So how do you kill them? You don't even know who's who to begin with.

Easy.

Your eyesight must be good in the dark though.

Randomly walk around until you manage to see someone approaching a person who's standing still (the person standing still can only be the dead person) means that someone is most probably the doctor. It can also be a detective accusing the dead (remember mafias can be killed too) but ofc the higher chances would be the doctors.

Now what do you do?

If that someone you suspected is a doctor and he "revived" the dead, the dead is supposed to be moving around now. The doctor will also move to save someone else.

Now, FOLLOW THE DOCTOR.

If you so happen to have stickers with you. Checkmate.

For the detective

A reverse situation from the mafia. Eye for someone approaching another person, and after a while, one moves while the other stand still. You'll know the player is killed by the mafia.

Follow the mafia and stick a sticker onto the mafia's nametag.

For the doctor

I actually can't think of any tips for the doctor. Maybe for now. But I will update if I can think of one. I mean being the most important person in this game you can't have it both ways right? Hahhah.

For the normal citizens

This is where reverse psychology kicks in.

If you are just a normal citizen without the Joker card, well, all I can say is just get killed lol. You'd rather sacrifice one sticker for the murderer rather than the murderer spending the sticker on someone as important as doctor.

Even if you are a Joker, try to get yourself killed too. The murderer would be wasting his stickers on you, and that's a good thing.

How do you do it?

If a murderer is about to kill you, you somehow will have the feeling where a person is following you right? (Well, unless you really are that clueless.)

The same applies to the mafia. The mafia might think that the police or another mafia is attempting to accuse him or kill him if someone is following him. So the natural thing for the mafia to do is to turn around and kill you before you can kill/ accuse him. Now he'll fall directly into your trap.

Don't ask me how I thought of ALLLLLLLLLL these stuffs. The idea just came to me lol. I sound like a real killer lol.

Overall rules to be clear

1) Make sure to tell every player regardless of what position they hold, when they are being tapped on the shoulder, stand still.
2) Stand still if you're dead.
3) Do not talk.
4) Don't pretend to be dead. What good can come form it?
5) Try not to stick the stickers till they overlap. (To the extent where you totally can't see what's beneath).

You can even setup the venue to be a maze. You'll require a huge space for this and things get more complicated in a maze. Considering the time limit, it might be impossible to finish the game in an hour's time but who knows? Try out the game before planning it.


Of course there are a few flaws in the game that I came up with. I really don't know what might happen because I didn't try out this game before. (Yea, even though I came up with it) But here are what I thought the  other problems you might face if you play this game:
1) Players might engage into a fight
2) It might be hard to take control over the game. (depending on your players and because it's dark)
3) Time is one of the major problem. You can't estimate exactly how long will the whole game be.
4) The mafia may end up killing each other unknowingly.
Blah blah.

Lol finally done typing about the game thingy TT took me 4 whole hours just to recollect my memories TT I've thought for around 3 weeks for the game before proposing the idea to my seniors. Maybe I can use this for the next event instead hahah xD

Any suggestions? Drop a comment and let me know! <3

xoxo