I played Secret Hitler this week for our first Critical Play, and it was incredibly fun. The game was created in 2016 by Max Temkin, Mike Boxleiter and Tommy Marange. The players can be a group of 5-10, and although the version I played was a board game, it can also be played with cards or online. From my experience with the game, I would say the intended audience for Secret Hitler is teenagers or older people. However, people with any knowledge background can learn!
In this game, there are two teams fighting to win: the Liberals and Fascists. Players are assigned secret roles as either Liberals or Fascists, with one player being Secret Hitler. We played multiple rounds, and I had the chance to play as a Liberal, Fascist, and Hitler at least once each. Players must work together with their teams, each with its own agenda, leading to a complex system of deception and manipulation. The enactment of policies, voting on leadership, and the asymmetry of information between players all contribute to the game’s emphasis on deduction, requiring players to rely on their ability to read others and make strategic decisions based on incomplete information.
One example of social deduction is the need to protect your identity. As a Fascist, I knew I would never get the role of Chancellor if I revealed my identity too quickly. The Liberals would obviously not want me to pass Fascist policies, and the other Fascists would not want to reveal themselves by making me Chancellor.
In the early rounds, I noticed that the strategy was the same whether I was a Liberal or Fascist. It was often best to not take sides and pick Chancellors that the group considered safe. Then, later on, if I was Fascist and received the President role, I would want to put a Chancellor into power so we could work together.
Another important detail to keep in mind was that the policy mechanism wasn’t a clear indicator of a player’s role. It made total sense for a Liberal to play a Fascist policy if they wanted to use the ability to eliminate a player they thought were a Fascist or Hitler. At the same time, a Fascist would clearly want to implement a Liberal policy to divert attention away from themselves. Thus, there was a lot of incomplete information that you couldn’t trust when playing.
A lot of strategies also change over time. For example, if there were already three Fascist policies or Liberal policies on the board, all players would need to start playing more safely. If I was a Fascist, I had to start thinking about a foolproof defense in case people wanted to vote me out. The social deduction strategy changes at each level of the game. Once I was discovered to be a Fascist, I had to shift to offense or defensive depending on the progress made.
The importance of betrayal was also incredibly important. Sometimes as a Fascist, one of my teammates would give themselves away early on, and I had no choice but to vote them out. In these cases, I needed to be as persuasive as possible, and this could mean that I would be one of the first people voting them out.
The aesthetics of the game mainly focused on Fellowship, Discovery, and Narrative. Fellowship comes from the need for players to work with their teams, discovery arises from the exchange and observation of information, and the narrative is clear from the way the story progresses and policies are enacted. I believe the way would be better if there were more avenues for discovery. For example, if there was something akin to a detective role, it would make it easier for all players to gather information or avoid suspicion by being able to investigate a suspicious player. Otherwise, people can just simply say “I’m not the Fascist because I didn’t play a Fascist card or nominate a suspicious player as Chancellor,” which is what I used as defense countless times when I was a Fascist.
Another way to improve the game is to change a mechanism of the game: the way Fascist cards can be played. It was always immediately suspicious whenever someone played a Fascist policy, which discouraged people from passing these policies at first. Thus, there were usually two to three Liberal cards played before anyone played a Fascist policy. You could lie and say you only received three Fascist policies, but this was suspicious as well. In my opinion, there should be more Fascist policies in the deck so that someone claiming “I received three Fascist policies to choose from, I had no choice!” would be believable. This would add another layer of social deduction, since you would need to continue drawing cards and interrogating the players to see if they were lying.
A popular game Secret Hitler relates to is Mafia. While Mafia is a lot more simple, Secret Hitler introduces new dynamics to the table. There’s so much more information and moves available that allows people to act on different inputs and outputs. There are also more roles that provide players with more options for deception and social deduction. For example, the President and Chancellor have the ability to help or betray their team members.
