Secret Hitler – The Ultimate Game of Deception
Overview + Central Argument
Crafted by Tommy Maranges and Mike Boxleiter, Secret hitler is a social deception game that relies on discussions between participants along with signals made by players when taking actions in the position of President or Chancellor. Players participate in multifaceted competition, aiming to outsmart adversaries and accomplish their goals. The formal elements such as the mechanics of government elections and policy implementation determine the course of action, constrained by the thresholds of liberal and fascist policies. I personally love social deception games, and in my opinion this is probably the best game to test social deception ‘skills’ with your friends. Secret Hitler has a relatively low barrier to entry, where the skill curve manifests in players often understanding dominant strategies for each role after playing it once. Nevertheless, there is expertise associated with mastering behavior during discussions, thus the game is accessible but also has some replayability for veterans. Moreover the game objectives force players to work towards their respective goals, preventing the risk of a stalemate or the game from continuing indefinitely (like we see in poker some times). The main critique of this game is that rounds can take a very long time – meaning that players may become bored or frustrated with a lack of tangible changes to the game happening i.e policies being enacted or a person’s party affiliation being exposed. Moreover the role of Hitler can be quite boring at times.
Target Audience
Ranges from highschool to college age students. I do not see much utility for older folks as the subject matter could be a little heavy and really just appeals to ‘edgy’ humor of younger generations.
Platform
The game is designed for in-person play. There are several online adaptations to allow for the game to be played without the friction of having to be in the same place at the same time. Ultimately however, as all group games do, the playability of Secret Hitler is directly affected by the schedules/availability of the players which I believe is the ultimate barrier to entry.
Analysis
Secret Hitler, it is a prolonged game of emphasized social deduction where people on the fascist team are incentivised to lie for the entire duration of the game in order to ensure that their team wins and liberals are constantly trying to figure out who is suspicious and who is not. Therefore there are funny reactions when people (especially in relationships with each other) find out they have been lied to for an extended period of time – which in my case resulted in a bit of anger much to the amusement of other participants.
The rules and boundaries of the game are quite strict, limiting the possible logical actions a player can take. One could argue this has reduced the learning curve for beginners but I believe it could make the game a little repetitive. This is because there is not much wiggle room to be able to modulate strategies each time it is replayed, especially for those play hitler. Perhaps this is something that players enjoy, where similar competitive environments allow for familiarity and thus greasing the gears to flesh out the narrow strategies that are available. Nevertheless I wish there was more wiggle room… For example when I was playing as Hitler, I quickly figured that the dominant strategy to ensure a fascist win would be to play a passive role as a pure liberal. This was because since the fascists knew who I was, all I needed to do was convince the liberals that I was in their party and hope that the fascists would be able to work out to enact at least three fascist policies. This leads to this role in particular being rather boring, apart from defending the occasional accusations that come your way. There is no real plotting or strategy here. Moreover hitler is screwed if the fascists on the team are inept. Therefore I believe it would make things more interesting if there were rules/mechanics that allowed for role players to have more options in terms of strategies (this is ignoring players that purely play to induce chaos).
Despite the above critique I think Presidential powers add a super exciting layer of complexity to the game. The president must first be extremely cognizant of the fact that assassinating a player could signal to players their party affiliation based on the previous rounds. For example one of my friends assassinated a liberal party member by mistake, which caused the other liberals to think that they were a fascist. However, this made me think that because of the potential backlash – a fascist that is elected president should never assassinate someone else as it is high risk for exposure, and also it runs the risk of assassinating one of your own fascist party members. Furthermore the mechanic of shuffling the cards and eliminating cards as a president and then determining which policy to enact as chancellor also adds more flavor to the game, and increases the amount of plotting and scheming in the game. Overall, all the mechanics surrounding the roles make the game more dynamic.
I only played the game with 7 players, and as a result, rounds could also be really long. This made people feel like they were playing the game for much too long and causing others to be bored at times. I assume this could be fixed by adding a drinking component to the game. But for non-drinkers I believe the game could be improved by streamlining some of the steps or putting a timer on the decision making process for electing chancellor and choosing which policies to use, and then choosing which presidential abilities to use on people. I think this added time pressure would cause players to be more likely to make mistakes.
Forgot to take screenshot while playing – so here is me playing bots!
