Inhuman Conditions

Designed by Tommy Maranges and Cory O’Brien, Illustrated by Mackenzie Schubert

Platform: You can play online, you can download and print out the game materials, or you can purchase a physical version of the game.

Target Audience: ages 12+

Important Formal Elements of the game: Depending on whether the suspect was a robot or a human, the players could both win or both lose (if the suspect was a human), or exactly one player could win (if the suspect was a robot). It was fun, as the interviewer, not knowing whether you were working with your partner or against them, while the suspect knew whether the players’ objectives were aligned.

Type of fun: Challenge (obstacles) and Fantasy. The interviewer must decide whether the suspect is a robot or a human, and the suspect must convince the interviewer that they are a human. If the suspect is a robot, there are certain constraints or requirements for how they must answer the interviewer’s questions, and the more smoothly the robot integrates these constraints the harder it is for the interviewer to identify them as a robot. I really enjoyed the investigative nature of the game. The main issue for me was that being a human suspect doesn’t present much of a challenge and hence is less fun. (Also, perhaps this is just unlucky, but when we were playing my partner never got the chance to be a robot.)

Moments of particular success or epic fails: As the suspect, it was really fun and funny to embrace the chosen “background” (character role, such as cannibal or dean of a clown college).

Things to make the game better: My mom and I were somewhat confused about the purpose of different parts of the game during the first few rounds we played…although reading the rules certainly helped. The rules document is pretty long though, and it’s especially hard to glance through in online format. I think a 3–5 minute video explanation of the game, with examples of how the interview process could go, would have been very helpful. In addition, the online version of the game was quite visually boring (no images or color). It would be more fun and immersive if the game looked more like its physical version.