Spyfall is a social deduction game created by Alexandr Ushan. It was initially released as a card game, but I played a free, online version created by Luke Tsekouras. It is very quick to learn and has a family-friendly theming, which makes it great for a general audience. The main thrust of the game is the tension it creates between gaining information and revealing information. The game emphasizes social deduction in two key ways: by (1) tasking players either with uncovering how much information other players have or hiding their own lack of information, and (2) creating a tension between revealing information and gaining information.
The game puts players in the role of a spy organization that is meeting at a secret location, with one enemy spy having infiltrated their ranks. The loyal spies have the objective of figuring out which player is the enemy spy, while the enemy spy has the objective of guessing the secret meeting location and keeping their own identity secret. The game’s competing objectives produce dynamics of social deduction as players try to hide the information they have while deducing what information other players have.
The game further emphasizes social deduction by creating a tension between revealing information and gaining information. Players rotate asking one other player a question about the secret location. Loyal spies want to ask questions specific enough to gain useful information about the other players’ roles, but vague enough that they don’t reveal the secret location to the enemy spy. On the other hand, the enemy spy wants to ask to gain information about the secret location, but they risk revealing themself if their questions are too vague or present false assumptions about the secret location. Because players need to balance the discovery of information against revealing information to the spy, coming up with clever questions becomes a fun challenge. Social deduction arises as a dynamic as players are required to anticipate how much information other players may be able to glean from the questions they ask and the responses other players give. Cleverly, performing this social calculus of information exchange requires players to draw on their specific knowledge of other players’ past, lived experiences, mannerisms, etc. For example, one round the enemy spy was able to deduce that we were on an ocean liner because I said my family “likes going there often” (my grandparents like to vacation on cruise ships). This creates an aesthetic of fun-as-fellowship that emphasizes the social deduction elements of the game.
One weakness of the game is the way that the mechanics and theming conflict, which undermines the game’s ability to create fun-as-fantasy. The premise of the game suggests players are role-playing spies having a secret meeting. However, as the enemy spy’s objective is to guess the secret location the other players know, the game seems to require the enemy spy to guess the location of a secret meeting they’re currently attending. The theming is a bit ambiguous, so we could imagine that the enemy spy is trying to guess the loyal spies’ next secret meeting location. But then how are the spies all communicating? The game’s murkiness means it somewhat undermines its own premise of role-playing spies, and players who want to lean into the fantastical and narrative elements of roleplay might find difficulty doing so.
This could potentially be resolved by slightly adjusting the premise: rather than the enemy guessing the location of a secret meeting, perhaps they could be guessing the location of the organization’s secret base. Or perhaps the enemy spy is guessing the loyal spies’ next secret meeting location, and spies are communicating via secret missives. Since the spies suspect an enemy moves amongst them, it would make sense for them to intercept each others’ messages and for “secret” missives to be known to all players. Since these changes do not require changes to the mechanics of the game, they could clear up the premise’s ambiguity, enabling players to buy into the roleplay more while keeping the social deduction elements of the game intact.
Despite not capitalizing on its potential for roleplay, Spyfall’s social deduction elements are effective because of the ways players are made to navigate opposing objectives under information asymmetry and the challenging tension between keeping secrets while probing for clues.
