Werewolves Within

If you enjoy being social and look forward to board game nights spent with friends and family, this might be just the VR game for you. Werewolves Within strives to -- and largely succeeds in -- creating a virtual reality that mimics the atmosphere of an evening spent playing a game with a small group of people around a table. Its clever VR interface -- which allows players to turn their heads to look at other players or lean to whisper to each other -- combines with more familiar video game mechanics, such as talking via microphones and pressing a button to make a hand gestures. It effectively tricks your brain into thinking that you're really sitting with a group of friends trying to deceive each other about who you're supposed to be. If you don't have enough friends with their own personal VR rigs and copies of the game to fill out a session, you can join a group of strangers.

As for the actual game, it's fun, if a little convoluted. Each of the dozen or so roles has unique abilities, such as sniffing out adjacent characters' identities or immediately knowing that a couple of roles cannot be in the group (and knowing that if someone says they're one of these roles, they're lying). Add in role-dependent win conditions, and it'll likely take most players a number of games in a variety of roles before they're confident they understand how everything works, how to properly strategize, and how to deceive based on the role they've been given. It should go without saying that if you're not comfortable in a social environment, a game like this -- which demands communication and that players be comfortable with bold-faced lying -- probably won't be much fun. Players who fit Werewolves Within's little niche, though, ought to be right at home.