I’ve always loved playing Spyfall with friends — I play it often while waiting in lines at restaurants, on road trips, and even when just hanging out in dorm rooms. In particular, I really love how Spyfall offers a competitive framework within which aesthetics of fellowship and challenge deliver a fun experience. It has several important mechanics which allow for the creation of this fun experience:
- At the start of the game, a secret location is randomly selected from a pre-set list of secret locations such as “bank”, “airport”, “hospital”, and so on.
- One player is the spy. This player does not know the secret location.
- All other players know the secret location.
- The players are collectively able to make one guess of the spy’s identity.
- The spy is able to make one guess of the secret location.
- The players win if they correctly guess the identity of the spy without the spy correctly guessing the secret location.
- The spy has two possible win conditions. The spy wins if either (1) the players fail to correctly guess the spy’s identity or (2) the spy correctly guesses the secret location.
From these mechanics, a couple of interesting dynamics typically emerge through play:
- The players ask targeted questions to each other intended to determine whether each other do in fact know the secret location and thus are not the spy. Players want to be vague enough in their responses so that they don’t reveal the secret location while also signaling that they know the secret location and thus cannot be the spy.
- The spy wants to blend in. If they are asked a question, they will typically try to be vague in their response so that they don’t reveal that they do not know the secret location. At the same time, they do not want to tip off that they are not the spy. Consequently, they will typically try to guess possibilities of the secret location from prior answers which they heard, so that they can give an answer in line with previous answers.
