Secret Hitler is a social deduction game designed by Max Boxleiter, Tommy Maranges, and Max Temkin, designed for groups of 5-10 people. Secret Hitler was originally published as a board game, perfect for gatherings of friends and game nights, but is also available via an online platform (which we used for our critical play.) The game draws in an audience of adults and older teenagers who are interested in broader historical and political themes. In Secret Hitler specific game mechanics such as role assignment, election and legislative sessions, and presidential powers encourage players to analyze other’s social behaviors, strategize in secret, manipulate information, and take on false identities.
Firstly, players are assigned roles of Liberal, Fascist, and Hitler. Liberals are in majority, but are not given any information about the identity of other players; Fascists and Hitler play for the same team, but the Fascists know Hitler’s identity while Hitler does not know who his fellow Fascists are. In comparison, other games such as Spyfall and Among Us involve deception from one single player (i.e. the Secret Hitler equivalent), operating as many players vs. one. By incorporating an extra element of the Fascist team to aid the single Secret Hitler, the game becomes more multilateral and team vs. team. This clever mechanic of role assignment, which withholds information from some and offers information to others, facilitates an environment of speculation from the get-go. Additionally, each player balances different social priorities: Liberals primarily want to deduce who the enemy is, Secret Hitler wants to find his Fascist allies, while Fascists want to conceal their identity from Liberals and reveal it to Hitler. This complex and varying array of goals is a dynamic that creates a rich social playground for players to navigate.
Each turn commences with an election, in which the President and Chancellor are chosen democratically. This election facilitates social deduction, as players discuss and persuade each other with hidden identities and motivations. Today, we heard many of these persuasions at this step of the game — “Naima smiled! She’s Hitler, don’t vote her as Chancelor! And Rachel is Fascist because she proposed Naima!” Accusals were flying around the table. Each player is driven by the following win conditions: Liberals win by enacting five Liberal policies or assassinating Hitler; Fascists win by enacting six Fascist policies, or by electing Hitler as Chancellor after enacting three Fascist policies. Thus we can see that the outcome of Secret Hitler is zero-sum, and the objective of the game becomes clear – to outwit opponents and to align with team members, both of which are achieved through social deduction.
Another mechanic that facilitates social deduction is the legislative session in which the President and Chancellor vote to enact a policy. The President draws three policy cards (which can be Liberal or Fascist), discards one, and passes the remaining two to the Chancellor, who then enacts one of the two. This process is critical to gameplay, as it can reveal the allegiance of the players based on which policy is enacted. However, because the policy must pass through the hands of two players, this process makes space for deception and blame between the President and the Chancellor. In our game, the moments of most tension occurred after a Fascist policy had been enacted, and the President and Chancellor had mere moments to defend themselves before fingers were pointed at who was Fascist and suspicions aroused. While I was President and on the Fascist team, I was able to lie and convince the other players that the Chancellor is the one who chose the Fascist policy. However, the clever design of the game introduces nuance that prevents this moment from being a pure success. The Chancellor who I had blamed knew the true nature of the cards, and thus through lying, I had revealed myself to that person as a Fascist.
One area of improvement could be to introduce more varied mechanisms through which Liberals can discover Fascist’s identities. In our game today, we found that in the beginning, the game could more heavily favor the fascists, especially when those players are the more experienced ones. Ultimately, Secret Hitler successfully achieves the aesthetics of suspense, paranoia, and social deduction through many mechanics, including but not limited to role assignment, opportunities for discussion, and the win conditions that drive the game.
