The Werewolf Game: And you’re it.

Your phone buzzes during dinner one evening in the caf. The game has determined that the virtual moon is full. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t sprouted the diagnostic facial hair—you just got your werewolf on.

You resume your dinner and your phone buzzes again. The alert lets you know that there is a townsperson—your legitimate prey—within “scent radius.” Across the dining room you see the townsperson, a classmate, sitting there eating pizza with her friends. You get up, and amble over. You need to get within “attack radius” of your victim.

You pull out your phone, as if you’ve just received a text. You punch a few keys—and your classmate puts down her slice, pulls out her phone and learns that the population of the town has gone down by one—her. But Rob Dickerson, the creator of the game, says that it’s not in your self-interest to howl or otherwise celebrate your kill; exposure can be deadly for the werewolf.

“In the morning all the townspeople get a report that this townsperson was killed at such-and-such a location. During the daytime all the townspeople vote on who they think the werewolf is,” Dickerson said. “And the townspeople assemble to get rid of that person because they think they’re a werewolf. So the game continues until the number of werewolves exceeds the number of townspeople or all the werewolves have been eliminated.”