Game Review Saturdays - An Honest Review of Town of Salem

I bought this game, and the subsequent Coven expansion, a while back but like Minecraft it remains among my favorite games of all time.

As with any game where you'll likely primarily be playing with strangers and randos sometimes it's bad but the good far outweighs it. There's nothing like the thrill of winning because of good strategy or teamwork with this game.

At its core, Town of Salem is about deception. You're given a role from a fairly extensive pool that is either good, bad, or neutral, though most see neutral roles as bad because they tend to side with the bad guys where it counts. Every role has a goal - good guys want to work together to take down all the baddies, and typically bad guys want to eliminate everyone not in their faction regardless of their alignment. Neutral roles are things like the Jester who just wants to get hanged, or the Executioner whose goal is to get a particular randomly assigned player lynched at all costs.

The exciting part is there's pros and cons to revealing your role. Obviously if you're a bad guy you need to fake being a good role in case you get accused because once the good roles find out chances are you're done for. But even if you're a good guy revealing yourself as such can often lead to the bad guys targeting you first, especially if they think there aren't any town defensive positions and know your defense is susceptible to their attacks.

Obviously the art style is a bit simplistic, and the game like any has some issues that need addressing but really the team behind it has done a wonderful job to the point where the Steam reviews are overall very positive and that's saying something.

You can purchase the game on Steam for about $5, and get the Coven expansion that comes with new roles and game modes for another $5 give or take some. The expansion is well worth it as well, honestly, and I highly recommend this game for some casual play if the description I mentioned above sounds like a game you'd enjoy.

All images are from the official linked Steam store page for this game, I do not own or claim to own them. This is an independent game review and I have been in no way paid or sponsored by the game or the company that made it.