The story of the idea

Is the moment familiar, when you have still two last words in Codenames and the game depends on if you can find a good word or not? Some can find it stressful, but I really enjoy this challenge. Long after the game I’m still thinking about what the winning word could have been there. The challenge is very similar in MadOrMed, but there is a difference: here you need to find a word referring mainly to the common word (let’s say 90%), and only slightly to your secret word (10%).

I have played a lot of Mafia games, even before the ‘Werewolf era’. I playes a lot of different variants, but my favourite one was when mafia members needed to identify each other by a secret word, which they had to hide into their conversation. That made their night actions effective. This variantchanged the whole game: you could blame anyone who used any strange word, and it made the game much more communicative, and it gave every player a valid reason to vote someone off. There were much less random vote. There were no more situation when a player was killed because ‘he is usually a mafia member’. We played that game with dictionaries, and it made it quite slow. Since I have been thinking about how this mechanism could be used more effectively. And decades later I found codenames, and the motivation started to work in me again, with new power. I started to work out the idea one year ago, but I none if the ideas worked well. Usually the problem was it was too difficult for the bad guys to remain hidden. In last October I found a mechanism which finally worked. Invited my friends to try it. And it worked very well. After that night I couldn’t sleep for 48 hours. My brain couldn’t focus anything else. 7 months have passed, and it’s still case. I wake up with this game and I go to sleep with this game, and I dream with this game. My brother asked me if I were even close to being so enthusiastic about something. No, I said, not even close. This game idea is drilled in to my brain very deeple. In the picture you can see me thinking about game mechanics. Thats my usual state nowadays :). I really hope this game will bring enjoyment to others life too.