I still haven't given ToS a review, so I'll change that now. (Previously I gave ToS2 a review, and I was getting into that more recently, but it's been experiencing denial of service attacks and hasn't worked for about a month now.)
Town of Salem is a social deduction game, and each match will have about 15 players who are randomly given roles to play during the match. The majority of players will be Townspeople, who are trying to survive the night and determine who is and isn't trustworthy. About 3 other players will be members of the Mafia, an evil faction that is trying to undermine and kill off important Townspeople, all while trying to hide their true role and pretending to be something else.
There's also a Serial Killer, a third faction consisting of a single player, who is going around and trying to murder everybody else while hiding their role. Finally there is a fourth faction, the Coven, comprised of witches and other such beings that are trying to survive and kill the townspeople. The Coven is part of a DLC for this game, and unfortunately people usually don't play that game mode. (Why this game about Salem, Massachusetts has a mafia faction by default, but not witches, I don't know. The second game corrects this, but for some reason gets rid of the mafia.)
Most roles in ToS have special abilities they can perform. Some roles can be performed just about anytime, but most of them can only be used at night. The game takes place over multiple "days" in Salem, with a play cycle where everyone meets and chats in the town square in the daytime, goes back to their houses and performs their actions at nighttime, and meet again in the morning to see who was killed or find out if anything suspicious went on the previous night, and then vote on who to hang.
One or two players are usually hung each day, with their true role only revealed afterwards. Players can opt to decide the player at the gallows is innocent instead of guilty before the hanging commences, and if your town lacks sufficient information they might decide to hold off hanging anyone for the current day.
Chatting and communicating with other players is key for this game. You might be able to get by for a little while being silent, but eventually suspicions will turn to you.
More importantly, you need to learn to use your log book to record your activities or things you've noticed each night and day over the course of the match. This log book will help serve as proof that you're innocent and are performing your role, and you can post it to the chat either on your own terms or whenever you're accused of being the killer or a member of the mafia, or some other evil role.
If you're playing as an evil role, still making use of your log book is just as important. But it's more difficult because now you have to make up a bunch of stuff each night to make yourself look legitimate and credible, even though you're busy causing mischief, distracting people and killing townspeople.
Needless to say there is a huge learning curve to ToS, and a big part of that comes from understanding all of the roles and what they can do, which roles are in the match and are still in play, and having the charisma and social skills to be a trustworthy and believable player.
Both Town of Salem and its sequel, Town of Salem 2, have their pros and cons. I like 2 because of its slightly improved graphics, houses you can customize, changes to roles and overall focus on the town vs the coven which fits with the Salem theme better. But 1 has way more skins, pets, and other customization options for the most part. 1 is generally more popular, but you have to purchase it, whereas 2 is free-to-play for the most part. 1 also has a lot of roles and some factions that don't exist in 2, most notably the Mafia is gone and a lot of their roles were re-tooled into new Coven roles. 2 also introduces some new factions, such as the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
With all of that in mind, I guess I'd say 1 generally has more customization options for players right now, but 2 might be set to receive more new content in the future. It's also worth noting that, at least on the Steam version of ToS, the player icons shop never updates and has had the same offerings for a long time. I think it was also that way on the mobile version and browser version, though.
If you want a game that is chill, but also kind of frustrating to get good at, and like typing and chatting with other random people, then ToS is an easy recommendation in the social deduction genre. If you're trying to decide between playing ToS1 or 2, at this exact moment 2 is unplayable. But in the future 2 will likely get fixed, and probably get more new content. I'm not sure if ToS1 will ever get any brand new content, aside from occasional bundle offers and seasonal packs of some kind.
