Werewolves Within

Alanah Pearce: It’s certainly not a unique concept, but this type of game being introduced to VR does give people the opportunity to experience a ‘party game’ in the usual solace of VR - as an Australian currently living in California, I love the idea of getting to play this with friends back home.

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It’s obviously best played with each of the up-to-8 players in different spaces - we tested it out in the same room, which meant that some of the features weren’t as effective - like ‘whisper’, which lets 2 players who are sitting next to each other in the VR space engage in a private conversation if they lean towards one another. It’s not quite as effective when you can hear the people in the room around you.

There are actually a handful of VR-specific features, like allowing players to stand up to silence everyone else. If there’s yelling or crosstalk and one player really wants to be heard, everyone else’s microphones will be muted, should they stand. Werewolves Within also adds its own charm, with a handful of different environments and with fairly uniquely animated characters - they’re all exaggerated, fantasy-archetype characters that very probably don’t look anything like the friend’s you’ll play with, but still manage to match their probable expressions. There’s actually an inbuilt technology that matches a players’ tone of voice to the animations their in-game avatar will use, as well as a handful of actions you can choose yourself by pressing certain buttons on the d-pad.

Marty Sliva: I couldn’t agree more with you. Honestly, one of my big fears from VR for the past few years has been the creeping feeling that this new technology would really hurt social gaming. I envisioned this Wall-E-esque future where we’re removed from our friends and family in favor of a terrifyingly-immersive world.

Well, I’m happy to say that Werewolves Within proves that just because you strap a cool hat on your head, it doesn’t mean you have to forget about your buddies. Just the mere act of sitting around a digital campfire, bantering with pals before a round started was probably the most I’ve laughed in VR. Seeing an old man with an eye patch, but hearing Alanah’s voice come out of him was pretty much the best.

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As far as character roles went, most of us had a special ability that we could use to sniff out who our fellow players were, without showing our hand. These ranged from being able to hear which direction one of the werewolves is in, to the wolf being able to identify the role of one of the neighboring players.

But aside from these character traits built into the game itself, I loved how my friendships and preconceptions impacted how I played the game. Being a nice, sweet Canadian boy, Mitch couldn’t possibly be a werewolf...right? And let’s be honest -- Max probably has a werewolf tattoo on one of his long arms, so there’s a good chance we should kill him at the end of a round. And like Alanah said, being able to stand up and command the attention of the group for 10 seconds led to some absolutely hilarious moments.

So as you can see from our video preview above, Werewolf Within is definitely designed in a way that compliments the hardware. And just in general it’s a damn fun game - especially if you’re competitive, and playing against a bunch of friends you know how to read. We played Werewolf Within on Oculus, but it’s also coming to Vive and PlayStation VR, and we’ll have so much more on it leading up to its release.

Alanah Pearce is IGN's Toys & Culture Editor, but she's a cosplayer, too! You can check out her stuff on Facebook or Instagram

Marty Sliva is a Senior Editor at IGN. He once ate a whole blueberry. Follow him on Twitter @McBiggitty.