One Night Ultimate Werewolf creators return with sneaky bidding game Werebeasts

The studio behind One Night Ultimate Werewolf is back with a new game in the Werewolf series that puts a different twist on its social deduction drama.

Werebeasts is a game about bidding for a variety of were-things, from werekittens to werenanas. Yes, that’s a lycanthropic banana.

Players take it in turns to reveal a card from the deck, with their opponents putting in their offers using tins of ‘Werechow’ or their other cards to buy the card.

So far, so simple. Where the sneaky deduction and deception comes in is in the scoring. You see, every player has a goal card to either side of them, each of which is shared with their respective neighbours around the table. These cards denote which matching cards each player is trying to collect in order to score points.

Only they have to be careful, as if they give away which beastie they favour by buying up too many of a certain kind, someone can take a guess at uncovering their hidden motive. If the guesser is right, the accused is eliminated and gives their cards or Werechow to the guesser, while the opposite happens if it’s an incorrect accusation.

That’s about it! As with the other Werewolf games, the whole game only takes about 15 minutes to play, so the eliminations don’t exclude players for too long.

Werebeasts is currently up on Kickstarter, and has already sailed past its $5,000 target. It’s now sat at more than $22,000 with more than three weeks left on the clock. The game itself is due for a release next January.

The standard box is $25 (£19) – though you’ll be looking to almost double that to $45 (£35) once postage to the UK is included. There’s also a deluxe box with wooden Werechow counters and card sleeves that throws in the recent Werewords for $50 (£38), with $30 (£23) shipping to the UK.

Finally, there’s a huge bundle of every Werewolf game – including its One Night Ultimate spin-offs Daybreak, Vampire and Alien – and a bunch of other expansions and goodies for $150 (£115). The UK postage pushes the total cost up to $225 (£172), which seems like quite the investment if you’re not already a big fan of the series – although this is one (expensive) way of catching up.