MobTies is a game about alliances, secrecy, and betrayal! As mafia dons, players hire hitmen to make secret hits on their fellow players.
Mob Ties is a party game where players collect items to use in “hits” against their opponents. Players are encouraged to openly communicate, negotiate, and trade cards. All hits are done in secret, so you can never be too sure who your enemies and friends are.
Accomplishments
Designed mechanics to create interesting social situations and dynamics, such as secrecy, distrust, and organic alliances.
Wrote the instruction manual, card text, and reference cards.
Designed the card layouts.
Illustrated all cards.
Produced a complete, physical card game with various components.
About
Team Project (2 people)
Completed in 2023
Physical Card Game
Creating Interesting Social Situations
Mob Ties was designed to facilitate interesting social dynamics, such as alliances, rivalries, and betrayals. This was achieved primarily with two mechanics: the secret hits and the ability to freely communicate between players.
Secrecy
In Mob Ties, to make a hit a player would place a dial and a set of cards in an envelope. Afterwards, every other player had a chance to make a hit. All the envelopes are then shuffled and the hits are read out loud. This keeps the identity of the attacking player hidden from the defending player.
From this core mechanic, several interesting social dynamics emerged. People would speculate who hit them, they would accuse other people, they would shift blame to their enemies. Particularly strategic players used the secretive nature of the hits to pull off interesting and unexpected moves: A player once called a hit on themselves just to create social tension and break up an alliance that was forming. Every game, new and unexpected plays are still made thanks to this central secret hit mechanic.
Communication
The secondary mechanic of Mob Ties is the ability to freely communicate and trade with other players. We purposefully defined the rules of this mechanic loosely: players can talk to others at any point in the game, they can trade with anyone at any point, they can disclose what cards they want to give, and they can hide what cards they want to give.
Because we gave players so much agency, the game naturally started to play out in interesting ways. Games of Mob Ties started to play out like a game of Survivor. Alliances and rivalries naturally formed. The social game became just as important as the core card game.