- Name of game, creator, platform
- Spyfall, netgames.io, web
- Target audience (as best you can discover from research or the games messaging)
- A group of people, who know each other at any level of closeness.
- Notable elements of the game:
- At least three players must be present for the game to start.
- I would consider Spyfall to be unilateral competition because though the good guys don’t know who the spy is, they are trying to deduce their identity, and the spy tries to outwit all the non spies.
- The actions the player can take are mostly asking questions, this is how each player gains information. The answering of questions is also important to both sides. The closing action is the voting.
- A critical resource is time. In this implementation of Spyfall, we are given 3 minutes to ask questions before we vote.
- My opinions:
- I will compare this game with Werewolf. In my opinion I think this game is better and allows for more creativity, because in werewolf your actions are very simple: kill, save and suspect. In Spyfall however, it’s challenging to describe a location in the vaguest, yet most correct way. The game seems to run faster and use more brainpower because actions are not simply, point at one person. My impression is, the depth of Spyfall is more obvious to see within the first few rounds. I don’t know if it’s more repayable, but it is more simple. Was this game fun? Yes, many creative questions and sentences were said about places. There was not much silence, also a great side effect of asking questions to be the main action os Spyfall.
- I think what makes Spyfall fun is the challenge of balancing revealing information and proving innocence (for good guys) and for the spy, making deductions based on very vague information and also bluffing. To me it felt like a verbal challenge, and I enjoyed both deducing, and formulating cryptic statements.
- Things you would change to make the game better
- The premise is interesting for the first few plays, but I could imagine it becoming boring. What if instead of trying to guess/not reveal a location, we tried to guess/not reveal something more fun, like an abstract concept, or something of personal relevance to the players? I think it would be fun for players to be able to choose which possible words/imahes/objects are in the pool. It would add a Cards Against Humanity vibe to it.
