Dria – Critical Play

We played the game Spyfall, which was created by Alexandr Ushan and published by Hobby World. The game is an online game and targets children/young adults.

To play Spyfall, you need 4-12 people in the same room or over zoom. Each player joins the game, and then all the players except for one are given the same one location. The one player is the designated spy of the game and does not know the location. The timer then starts, and players go in a circle asking each other yes/no questions about the location. The goal for the players is to guess the spy, who has to answer the questions without knowing the location. The goal for the spy is to guess the location. The game finishes if the players guess before the time is up, otherwise when the clock runs out. An epic success would be a very obvious and fast decision on who the spy/location is. A fail would be if everyone guesses a different person and there is no obvious decision. 

Spyfall reminded me of other detective games I have played, like “Guess Who?” or “Clue” in that the whole premise of the game is asking questions and trying to find the culprit. However, it is a lot more simple than other detective games because the questions are much more limited and instead of asking questions about their identity the focus is a location. Still, I did not think this game was that fun because it felt very challenging for me to think of questions and after a few questions it became very repetitive. 

If I were to change the game, I would include a larger variety of topics to choose from, not just locations. For example, including categories like different countries, buildings, or even things more personal could be fun. To extend this further, it could be more of a get-to-know-you game if the topics were things like “Childhood Memories” or “Hometown” and the players say one word that comes to mind when they hear the word, and the spy then has to guess the topic.

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