Crow Jam is our monthly game jam podcast, which you can listen to here. Below is an overview of Double Negative, our Hallowe’en inspired hidden doppelganger game.
THE ELEVATOR PITCH
Double Negative is a horror themed, 2 – 4 player hidden role game where the betrayal might never happen. Players take on the role of young urban explorer videographers searching for content in a disused industrial complex, who are about to discover something insidious within their group when one of them is replaced by a doppelganger!
Important elements:
- Hidden turns and ‘darkness’ bring a constant sense of uncertainty and paranoia.
- ‘Darkness’ mechanic means players can only see the map when they are ‘stopped’; ‘Rule of moonlight’ (proximity vision) means another player may watch your turn if you begin close to them.
THE LOOK
Both the packaging and components of Double Negative will be monochrome/grayscale, with a grainy, low-resolution photography/videography style to the illustration. The exception is the player pieces which are bright, simple but characterful screen-printed meeples (à la ROOT) representing 4 hipster friends.
The components include:
- Player meeples
- Player Objective cards
- Item cards showing an Item (e.g. batteries, film reel, thermos flask) and an element symbol
- Two six-sided dice
- 9 double-sided tiles which will make up the map. Each tile has a 3 x 3 grid printed on both sides. The upper side of each tile is otherwise dark. The underside of a tile shows a segment of the area map and includes one or more locations, each contained within one of the grid squares (e.g. ‘the chemical sheds’, ‘the transformer’, ‘the car park’, etc.).
Play takes place on the map, which is created at the beginning of the game by randomly arranging the map tiles in a 3×3 grid with the dark sides uppermost.
THE AIM
At the beginning of the game, all players are Explorers. The Explorers’ goal is to film a great video by collectively completing a certain number of Player Objective cards. When this happens, the Explorers win the game. To complete Objectives, players will be aiming to collect matching Item cards and discard them at the correct Location indicated on their Objective card.
At some point during play, one player may “double cross” the Explorers when their hand of cards compels them to become a Doppelganger. The Doppelganger’s goal is to sabotage the Explorers through deception and underhanded tactics, allowing the game to end before the objective goal can be met.
TURNS
A player’s turn consists of (a) drawing, (b) movement, and (c) discarding. Players may communicate, but may not talk about what cards they have in their hands.
- Player draws up to two cards from the item deck.
- Player rolls the dice and moves that many adjacent grid squares.
As the game takes place in ‘darkness’, the movement section of a turn is automatically hidden, UNLESS your movement begins on a tile which is shared by another player. In this case, only that player may watch your movement.
A moving player may only flip a tile to view the map underneath if that tile is where their movement either begins or ends. - Player discards any number of cards. If this step causes the player to complete a Player Objective card, they can reveal the card to the other players and temporarily flip a map tile to show the Location where the action took place.
SUMMARY
Players work together as above, while at some point the “double crossing” may be triggered (when a player has a certain number of Item cards with matching element symbols).
The Doppelganger will then attempt to end the game. They may do so either by stalling the group until the Item deck is exhausted, or by aiming for a threshold of matching Element symbols in the discard pile.
The Explorers will win the game if they complete the target number of Objectives before the doppelganger can end the game.
WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THIS GAME?
Double Negative is a tense co-operative game with a possible hidden role element. The fact that the betrayal is not guaranteed (40% – 70% probability of having a Doppelganger in any one game) heightens the uncertainty and need for good tactics.
- Darkness mechanic and ‘rule of moonlight’ incentivise player communication and observation.
- Strong theming.
Big Crow Games 