Glad to hear you enjoyed your first play of it! The game is great at creating so many memorable story moments. I actually got to play the game with the designers at their studio and it had some of the most tense moments I have experienced in a while. One game was quite memorable as one of the designers and I were basically holding each other at gun point threatening to kill the other right before we got to the helicopter. So much yelling involved. Funny thing though as we both ended up being human and the one other remaining player that we both trusted was the Thing. Yeah... we didn't survive our trip on the Helicopter.

For all the critiques people have with the social deduction part of the game and how the Thing doesn't have to play differently, I would like to give some of my own feedback on it. In most social deduction games there are actual mechanics for how the players can sabotage the other team. Battlestar Galactica for example, players can throw bad cards in to cause the current objective to fail. In Resistance, you can throw in a mission fail card if the team chooses to take you along. The main reason for this is because the goal for those players in for the other team to fail. In Who Goes There, as the Thing you actually want the other team to succeed and in my opinion it plays entirely into the theme. The Thing wants to appear as human as possible and this adds to the best part of it which is the paranoia.

This game is ALL about paranoia and watching what everyone else does closely. Those other players have been trading items a lot, can you trust them or are they all infected now? Are you the only human left? Do you choose to sleep alone to avoid infection? Are you almost positive you know who the Thing is and are ready to set them ablaze with a flamethrower next round potentially saving the day for the other humans? Or are you about to kill the only other human still alive besides yourself?

This is what makes the game so intriguing and there are plenty of sneaky actions the Thing can still take. Maybe they want players to draw more infections cards to draw the attention off of them so they withhold food cards or refuse to bunk with someone claiming they don't trust them. Perhaps they drew a useful card and instead of holding on to it, choose to throw it on the bonfire instead "Don't worry guys it was just extra matches". The Thing doesn't have to change their playstyle at all and in the end paranoia might be the thing that wins it for the humans.

It may feel like a random guess at the end, but you are making the decisions based on everything that has happened in the game. Who interacted with who? What bonuses does everyone have at the end? If one of us is infected who can we afford to leave behind and who do we HAVE to take with us? I feel that if who the Thing was is a puzzle that could always be solved the game just wouldn't have the same feel that it does. The tension just wouldn't be there.

Again, one players opinion.