Werewolf Fan Meeting Vol.01: the demo that became a feature

On 29 August 2026 we took Photo Werewolf to Werewolf Fan Meeting Vol.01 in Akihabara, a fan event hosted by Werewolf House.

We ran a booth on the second-floor social area, gave a 34-slide talk on the stage, and then played two games live with people from the audience.

The awkward parts of that demo turned into screen mode, which shipped a week after the event. Here is how that happened.

“Could you talk about a photo you have never seen as if it were your own memory?”

That was the title of the talk. Ask anyone to describe Photo Werewolf in one sentence and you end up back at that question.

A speaker on stage with the Photo Werewolf title slide projected behind him — On stage at Werewolf Fan Meeting Vol.01, working through 34 slides

Everyone in the room loves werewolf games, so roles and setups needed no explanation. That made it more important to open with what makes Photo Werewolf different from the game they already know.

The speaker in front of a slide reading 'a werewolf game played with your camera roll', with the backs of the audience in view — Explaining the rules. There are only two roles — villager and werewolf — and one discussion, one vote

Here is the part that carries the whole game.

Everyone submits one photo for the same theme. So far, ordinary. But the players who become werewolves have their photo quietly swapped with someone else’s. They then have to talk about a photo they have never seen as if it were their own. Villagers simply describe the photo they chose.

The number of werewolves changes every round too: zero, or somewhere between two and (players − 1). Never exactly one. A round with zero werewolves is a peaceful village, and no photos get swapped at all.

Two games, live on stage

The back half of the talk was a demo. People from the audience came up, joined by some of the event staff, and we played together. Joining means scanning a QR code and typing a name, so we went from volunteers to game start in a couple of minutes.

The first game was ordinary Photo Werewolf; for the second we added Photo Werewolf Mission Mode, the physical expansion. Both themes were decided on the spot — “a photo you took recently” for the first game, “something delicious” for the second.

Players talking across the stage, with a photo of a Japanese 'supercar' bicycle enlarged on the screen behind them — The first game, on the theme 'a photo you took recently'. Somebody submitted a photo of a Japanese 'supercar' bicycle

The second game brought out food. We set the theme and everyone opened their camera roll again.

Six people holding phones face each other on stage while the theme-entry screen is projected behind them — Choosing the theme for the second game

Rice bowls, hot pot and sushi came up on the screen one after another.

A photo of a beef rice bowl, tofu and miso soup enlarged on the projection screen, with two players standing on either side — Discussion in the second game. Each photo gets opened in turn and its owner explains why they picked it

In Mission Mode, each player is dealt one mission card after the theme is set, and has to complete it quietly while everyone hunts for the wolves.

Players lean over a table on stage to look at the mission cards laid out on it — Revealing the missions at the end of the second game, one card at a time

That reveal was where the demo got loudest. The room reacts once to who the werewolves were, and then a second time to “wait, that comment was your mission?” The winning side then has to name every teammate’s mission to claim a perfect win, so the round is not over until that is done.

Six people on stage laughing and applauding, with the game result screen projected behind them — Just after the missions were revealed, at 11:07

We switched the projector five times per game

Now to the part that matters.

The hardest question when planning the demo was what to put on the screen. Photo Werewolf is played on phones, so projecting the host’s screen would have shown the room everyone’s roles and the photo picker.

So I built a table mapping each phase to a source, and ran the demo off it.

Phase	On the projector
Waiting room	Game screen
Choosing a theme	Game screen
Picking photos	Slides (never the phone)
Role reveal	Slides (absolutely not the game)
Discussion	Game screen
Voting	Slides (nobody’s vote on show)
Result	Game screen → slides

That is five switches per game. Ten across the two games. Holding a microphone, running the game, and never getting a switch wrong — part of my attention was on that the entire time.

And the switching was not the only problem.

A browser window on the projector, with the menu bar, tabs and bookmarks bar across the top and a single photo in the middle — What the room actually saw. It is a phone layout, so the photos sit in a narrow column in the middle

Looking back at the photo, it is pretty rough.

It is a phone layout on a wide screen. The photos only fill a thin strip down the middle, with gray margins on both sides
You cannot show everyone’s photos at once. Each one has to be tapped open individually, which puts the pace of the discussion on the host’s fingers
The whole browser is up there. Menu bar, three tabs I had left open, and the folder names in my bookmarks bar, all visible to the room

The third one is squarely my own fault. But the first two came down to something simpler: there was no screen built for being projected.

So we built screen mode

It was the first thing I worked on after getting home. Screen mode shipped on 4 September.

Screen mode during discussion, with four photos laid out under the theme and a ring timer in the top right — The discussion view today. Every photo and the time remaining, all at once

What we did is not complicated: we built one screen whose only job is to be projected. Open the URL in a browser on a PC, go full screen, and leave it there.

You still run the game from your own phone. Screen mode is display-only and cannot be used to control anything, so nobody watching can touch the game. What I wanted to do on that stage finally works the way it should.

At the booth downstairs

Besides the stage, we had a booth on the second-floor social area.

The Photo Werewolf booth on the social floor, with a printed drape along the table and a roll-up banner behind it, and boxes of Mission Mode on the table — The booth, open from 10:00 to 18:00

We ran demos there, sold Photo Werewolf Mission Mode at an event-only price, and had a coupon for half off the first month of a paid plan posted on the table.

Boxes of Photo Werewolf Mission Mode and a printed rules leaflet on a table, next to a board showing an example round on the theme 'travel memories' — Mission Mode boxes and an example round. The panel shows the photos and lines from a real game on the theme 'travel memories'

Thank you

Thank you to Werewolf House, to everyone on the event staff, and above all to the people who came up on stage with us.

Parts of the demo did not go well, honestly. But every rough edge showed itself in front of a full room, so there was nothing to work out the following week. A problem we hit on stage became a shipped feature within a week.

Photo Werewolf runs in your browser, and screen mode is available on every plan. Try plugging it into a big screen the next time people are in the same room.

Photo Werewolf Play Photo Werewolf free in your browser A new kind of online Werewolf where you bluff with photos on your phone. Grab some friends. Play a round for free