Vampires vs. Villagers — seven roles, and a village that has to argue its way out
Mafia, run for a language classroom. Everyone draws a secret role — Vampire, Villager, Doctor, Detective, Hunter, Jester or Cupid — and reads it by pressing and holding, so nothing stays on screen for a neighbour to see. Night falls, the vampires choose, the doctor saves, the detective investigates. Then the village wakes up, finds out who died and how, and has to talk its way to a decision. The app keeps the log; the moderator just runs the room.
Every sentence has a consequence, which is the rare part
Classroom debate usually has nothing riding on it, and students can hear that. Here an accusation can get someone executed and a weak defence can get you executed. Accused villagers have to justify themselves, suspicious neighbours have to accuse convincingly, and vampires have to lie fluently under questioning. Students stop performing English for the teacher and start using it against each other, which is the moment every speaking lesson is quietly aiming for.
The language the game forces out
Deduction modals appear without being taught: she must be lying, he can't be the doctor, they might have saved him. So do past-tense narratives — every defence is an account of what you did last night. And so do conditionals, because the strongest argument in this game is always counterfactual: if I were the vampire, I would never have voted for him. Three structures that resist drilling, all produced under pressure by people who want to win.
Five ways to die, and each one starts a different conversation
The app distinguishes between being bitten, being voted out, being shot by the Hunter, dying of a broken heart as one of Cupid's lovers, and the Jester's win condition. Read the cause of death aloud every morning rather than just naming the victim. Each one hands the village a different puzzle to argue about, and the broken-heart death in particular produces a burst of speculation because it reveals that two players were secretly linked.
Rules that turn shouting into argument
Left alone, this game becomes noise and the three loudest students decide everything. Three constraints fix it. Every accusation must come with a stated reason. Every defence gets thirty uninterrupted seconds. Every vote needs a one-sentence justification before it counts. The constraints slow the game down and roughly triple the amount of English produced, because nobody can win by volume any more.
Watch who survives
Social deduction consistently rewards the quiet observer, and that is worth engineering for. The student who says least in your lessons is often the one still alive in round five, because they have been listening while everyone else was performing. Give that student the floor at the end to explain how they read the room. Watching a shy learner outwit the whole class in English can change how they see the language for the rest of the year.
Group size, level and the moderator's job
B1 and up, eight to twenty players, forty minutes upwards. The moderator should not play — running the night phase, reading the log and enforcing the speaking rules is a full-time job, and a teacher who is also a vampire cannot do it. With a weak group, switch the interface to Turkish for the first round so the roles are understood, then play in English from round two onward.
Goes well with
Further reading
Group Dynamics in Large Classes — making thirty students talk
Gamification in Language Learning — why scoring changes behaviour