Diary of a Game Designer - Creating Titan Star: Uprising

"You should make a game where the good team is the informed minority."

That off-hand comment from my friend Kieran had my brain spinning.

I was explaining the basic principles of how social deductions games work:

"There's an informed minority of evil players who know who each other are. They're trying to eliminate an uninformed majority of good players before they catch on to who the evil players are."

That's when the seed was planted - a social deduction game where the good team is the informed minority.

Such a simple idea, but I couldn't shake it.

I found myself running through potential settings that night, imagining scenarios where a small group of plucky underdogs fight against a grand, evil empire.

That's how Titan Star: Uprising started - not as some grand design manifesto, but as a curious itch I couldn't help but scratch. A space opera murder mystery where I could experiment with everything I've been thinking about since running hundreds of Monster Hunt and Hollywood Masquerade games.

Flipping The Script: A Social Deduction Game Where It's Good To Be Bad

In the early days of Monster Hunt I had included a couple of roles that allowed good players to switch to the evil side.

I thought it would be a fun and interesting social experiment. What would it take for these people to turn on their allies and give in to the pull of the dark side?

The answer was not a lot... People loved the idea of being evil and jumped at the chance to switch sides regardless of the game state. This often unbalanced games and led to evil teams getting too big, too quickly. So I scrapped the roles and made changes, but never forgot the allure and fun of being evil.

Titan Star: Uprising embraces the idea that it's good to be bad. In the safe environment of the game, players can revel in being a little tyrannical.

Thematic Roleplay: Embracing Your Inner Tyrant

I'll never forget a play testing game where one of the players, Brayden, included this in his nomination of a fellow player.

"I'd like to be clear that I don't think Joe is a rebel, but he's been inefficient in running our mining operations recently, so I think we should kick him out of the air lock regardless."

The circle erupted in a kind of horrified laughter. Here was someone fully embracing the totalitarian role - making decisions based on productivity metrics rather than actual guilt. Joe wasn't suspected of being a traitor; he was just bad at his day job. In the world of The Order, that was reason enough for execution.

This moment crystallised exactly what I wanted Titan Star to achieve: giving players permission to be deliciously, safely evil.

It was also fun to see the clueless goodies become the clueless baddies for a change. Wily rebels staying undetected as hapless tyrants ejected each other into deep space created an entertaining dynamic that made elimination feel universally fun.

But Titan Star's premise is only one of the reasons it's my favourite of the social deduction games I've created.

Promotion Mechanics: Balancing Creation and Destruction

My love for this game really comes from the way it balances both creation and destruction in real time through the mechanic of "promotion". Titan Star: Uprising is Folklore's only social deduction game that includes a role that begins the game with no ability. It's also a role given to multiple players.

That role is called the Conscript.

The Conscript is a blank canvas for Titan Star's story to be built on. Not only that, it manages to completely subvert your average player's expectations of getting a role with no ability. Oftentimes, in a game like Werewolf or Mafia, finding out your role is "just a townie" feels like a let down. At worst, players can switch off entirely until the next round when they can get an "interesting role".

In Titan Star: Uprising being a Conscript might just be the best role in the game.

Unlike traditional murder mystery games where players rely solely on voting and discussion, Titan Star: Uprising introduces dynamic role evolution.

Sure, you might start the game as a lowly Conscript, waiting for veterans and rebels to make moves while you sit powerless. But then, a round or two into the game, a player from High Command approaches: "You're in line for a promotion, think you can handle it." Suddenly you're promoted to Security Patrol, and have one of the strongest information gathering roles in the game. The player who was ignored five minutes ago now holds the fate of the game in their hands.

That transformation - from pawn to power player - creates a whole new dynamic for players to tangle with. A game inside the game, trying to pick out the real Conscripts and race against time to up skill the evil team and snuff out the rebellion before it's too late.

Titan Star: Uprising Sets The Table For High Stakes Interactions

The final question I asked myself during the creation of Titan Star was what kind of social interactions did I want the mechanics to encourage?

In running Hollywood Masquerade, I've found the mechanics had a tendency to push players toward withholding information over actively telling lies. It makes sense - lying requires a higher cognitive load than keeping quiet, but from a gameplay perspective, keeping quiet can occasionally feel like getting stuck in the mud.

As a response, I wanted to create a game that emboldened players to bluff and would lend itself, more often than not, to dramatic double claims over tight lipped gameplay.

The False Flag: A Deep Cover Double Agent

The solution was to create characters whose abilities feel thematically well suited to a game about spy craft and give players a solid basis for lying about their roles.

Take The False Flag for instance, a rebel fighter that begins the game by choosing a role from the other side and gains their abilities for the rest of the game. The False Flag is a deep cover, double agent. They still have a reasonably high chance of being caught in a double claim, but they also have mechanical evidence to support their side of any public debate that might ensue.

Not only does this make it more likely the False Flag won't sit in silence and hope they aren't seen, it challenges the real version of the role to influence the group... or else.

The Test Subject: An Amnesiac Trying Desperately To Blend In

The final character I want to tell you about is a diabolical creation called The Test Subject. The Test Subject is a doozy, because it's actually more of a condition than a role - one that affects a player on both The Order and The Resistance. The text of the Test Subject reads as follows:

"You don't know your role/ team, You must claim you do. You know the 2nd Test Subject."

In other words, when you wake up for the first time as a Test Subject, you're shown a player on the opposite team and that's it.

Both Test Subjects actually have another role, and the storyteller continues to wake them during missions as they normally would for that role. But what's really going to bake your noodle is that before they can decide how they're going to help their team win, they have figure out which team they're on. The Resistance or The Order? Not only that, but they're asked to use an ability, without knowing what that ability does.

Add the pressure of having a rival who knows you're against them and you quickly realise being a test subject puts players through the ringer. It also opens up the prospect of the "innocent double claim". Part of the Test Subject's text reads that they "must claim" they know their role. That means that if they're pressed by another player, a Test Subject needs to claim a particular role or at least hint at one to avoid being eliminated from the game.

Like Jason Bourne of Arnie in Total Recall, these amnesiacs are a danger to the establishment so if you tell anyone you're a test subject, you're eliminated from play too.

Some Test Subjects will figure out who they really are within a turn or two, others might be forced to unknowingly claim someone else's role and then defend themselves from being accused of lying about who they are. Ultimately, It's up to the storyteller to judge if you're doing enough to cover up your amnesia.

The Experience: Immersion Through Chaos

The fundamental feeling I'm left with after a game of Titan Star is that we've escaped this reality and gone somewhere new. The game's themes offer the immersion and escapism that players are after, while the balance between creation and destruction adds fresh dynamics to an already engaging experience.

With chaos around every corner, there are genuinely interesting problems to solve. When I think about what I want from a social deduction game - lies, a good puzzle, compelling social interactions, and tension that lasts until the final buzzer - I'm proud to stand by Titan Star and say that it delivers on all fronts.

The early players have already agreed - and now it's your turn to experience the resistance.

Ready to join the uprising? If Titan Star sounds like your kind of chaos, we'd love to bring this space opera to your next gathering. Book your Titan Star: Uprising experience today