Full Moon

The problem this game solves

The werewolf game is probably the most widespread party game in the world, and it has always had a structural flaw: somebody has to narrate. That person knows every role, calls the nights, counts the votes — and does not play. In practice it always falls to the same person, the one who knows the game best, which is exactly the person who would enjoy playing it most.

Full Moon removes the problem. Roles, nights, special actions and vote counting are handled by the site: the narration runs on the shared screen while each player's secret role appears on their own phone. Nobody sits out, nobody has to remember who did what, and — best of all — nobody can accuse the narrator of getting the order of the night wrong.

Game details

What you need to play

• One phone each, genuinely. This is the only game on the site where devices cannot be shared: your role is secret and it lives there. Anyone with a dead battery, unfortunately, watches this one.
• A big screen for the narration. The night, the dawn and the results of the votes scroll there. A laptop or a tablet in the middle of the table will do.
• A circle. Sit so that you can all see each other's faces. That is not a rule of the game, it is the condition for the game to work: half the information is facial expression.
• At least six people. Below that it resolves far too quickly.

Setting up the room

1. Open the board on the big screen On the first launch of the evening the server may take up to a minute to wake up.
2. Everyone joins with the code They open the site on their own phone, type the room code and choose a name. Everyone sees it, so in a werewolf game it pays to pick one people can pronounce while accusing you.
3. Choose how many special roles are in play Keep them few on your first game. Too many roles stretch the nights, and while the nights stretch people pick up their phones.
4. Everyone looks at their role It appears on the phone. Look once, quickly, screen covered. From that moment nobody shows their phone to anybody — not as a joke, not to prove a point.
5. The first night falls The board narrates, the room goes quiet.

How it plays

The night

The board announces that the village is falling asleep. The wolves pick their victim from their own phones, without speaking aloud; whichever special roles are in play take their action, silently and on their own device. Anyone with nothing to do in this phase simply waits — and it is a moment where your heart beats a little faster, because you do not know whether you are the one person who will not wake up.

Dawn

The light returns and the board says what happened: who is gone. From here on you speak out loud, all together, with no turns. It is the longest and the most important phase: you reconstruct who was where, who said what the night before, who hesitated half a second too long.

The vote

At the end of the discussion everyone votes from their phone for the person they want to eliminate. The board counts and announces the result. Whoever is eliminated leaves the game but stays at the table — and that is the cruel part: they have to sit in silence while the others get it wrong.

And again

Night falls once more, and it continues that way until one side wins.

How you win

The wolves win the moment their number matches that of the remaining players: from then on a vote can no longer outnumber them. The village wins once it has eliminated them all.

That win condition explains why the game is tense from the very first night: every villager eliminated by mistake is not just a loss, it is a step towards the threshold. The village cannot afford many mistakes — and equally cannot afford not to vote.

Tips for your first game

• Few special roles. This is tip number one and everybody ignores it. On a first game, the bare minimum: rules are learned by playing, not by listening to seven powers being explained.
• Put a limit on the discussion. Five minutes per day. Without a limit, day two lasts twenty minutes and day three never arrives.
• Eliminated players do not speak. Worth saying out loud beforehand, because it is the first rule to break and when it breaks it ruins the game for everyone.
• Don't accuse at random on day one. At the start there is no information: the first vote is nearly always a lottery dressed up as reasoning. Better to admit it and use the first day to listen.
• Dim the lights. It works. It has no mechanical effect whatsoever and it changes the entire evening.

The mistakes that ruin a game

• Showing your phone. "Look, I swear, I'm a villager" destroys the game in three seconds. Agree beforehand that it never happens, under any circumstances.
• A circle that is too wide. If the people at the other end cannot see faces, half the information disappears and only words remain.
• Too small a group. Six can play, but the game ends in two days. From eight upwards it breathes.
• Taking it personally. Somebody will be accused unfairly and voted out over a facial expression. That is the game. If there is somebody in the group who takes that badly, better to know in advance.

Where a game like this comes from

The mechanism — an informed minority against an unaware majority, secret nights and group votes — originates in 1986 with a game created by Dimitry Davidoff at Moscow State University, later spread around the world in dozens of settings, of which the werewolf one became the most popular. It is a traditional game structure that has been reinterpreted by everybody, in living rooms and in boxes.

Full Moon is our reinterpretation: the name, the text, the interface, the narration and the code are written by us. We do not reproduce the rulebook, artwork, role names or trademark of any commercial edition, and we are neither connected to nor licensed by any publisher. If something in the game looks too close to an existing product to you, tell me and I will change it.

Why the first launch is slow

Full Moon runs on a server that shuts down when nobody is playing. The first person to open a room in the evening wakes it up, which can take up to a minute; the site shows a waiting screen and takes you in by itself as soon as the server answers. Anyone joining later waits nothing. The reason why is explained in the guide on games with nothing to download.

Frequently asked questions

How many people do you actually need?

Six is the technical minimum, eight is the minimum for it to be good. Between eight and fourteen the game is at its best: enough information to reason with, enough noise to get lost in. Above twenty, discussions become hard to manage without a volunteer moderator.

Does the person who opens the room play too?

Yes. Whoever opens the board gets a role like everyone else and knows nothing extra. That is precisely the difference from the version with a human narrator.

What does an eliminated player do?

Sits there and stays quiet. It sounds like a punishment and it is actually one of the best moments: you watch the table get everything wrong while knowing the truth. Since games here are short, the wait is only a few minutes.

Can we play over a video call?

Yes, and it works surprisingly well: on a video call every face is on screen at once, which never happens at a real table, and nobody can peek at their neighbour's phone. The one thing to settle in advance is who speaks when. The setup is in the guide to playing remotely.

Is it scary? Is it suitable for teenagers?

There are no violent images and no explicit content: the night is narrated in words, in the tone of a story. The suggestion of 12 and up is about the social mechanics — you have to be able to lie and to be eliminated unfairly — more than about the setting.

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