For this critical play, I chose to play Spyfall. Spyfall is a social deduction game where players question each other as FBI agents to determine who among them is a spy. The game is designed for a broad audience and has a wide appeal, but is probably most liked by those who enjoy social deduction games and strategy. This means that family and friends of all ages can play since the subject matter is PG and creates fun dynamics among groups. It is best played in larger groups, but can be played with 4-12 people, either in person or over a Zoom call. It was created by Alexandr Ushan in 2014 and was originally designed as a board game, but it can be played in a variety of different settings, including a mobile app, mobile platforms (https://www.spyfall.app/), over Zoom, or analog with self-made cards in a group, which is the method I played in.
Spyfall and Cold War Capture the Flag involved elements of deception and deduction, but they differ significantly in their mechanics, player roles, and the skills required to succeed. Cold War Capture the Flag combines physical strategy and social deduction, whereas Spyfall is more focused on conversational deduction in a single, stationary setting.
The thing that ties the two games together the most is the element of deception, with a subset of the players trying to conceal their true identities or objectives. In Spyfall, the Spy tries to remain undetected by pretending to answer correctly, and in the case of my critical play, the Spy usually answered very ambiguously. In Cold War Capture the Flag, the Spies fake their allegiances to remain undetected.
Another similarity between the two games is the element of deduction from the remaining players. In Spyfall, players must discuss who they think is deceiving the group and vote accordingly. In Cold War Capture the Flag, teams must defend their flag from both the opposing team and those who are deceiving among their own team. This creates an interesting paranoid dynamic where players are looking across the boundary and over their shoulders.
However, the two games do have some obvious differences. One such large difference is the actual gameplay itself. Spyfall is more focused on asking and answering questions whereas Cold War Capture the Flag is heavily physical and uses gradual player elimination. This difference makes the latter have a heavier element of the sensation aesthetic. Another large difference is the player roles. Spyfall only has two roles, the Spy and the other players, and the Spy has to work alone to hoodwink everyone else. In Cold War Capture the Flag there are three teams, and the spies work together to deduce both teams. A final difference that is pretty substantial is the need for physical strategy, teamwork, and social deduction skills that are required for Cold War Capture the Flag. The large play area and team dynamics create a vastly different deduction experience.
A clever decision from Alexandr that makes Spyfall so fun is the fact that the spy has to interact in some way with the rest of the group. In other social deduction games such as Mafia or Among Us, the Spy is able to stay quiet and float by without detection. In this game, though, the Spy is required to perform some action (pretending to know the hidden word) which gives more information to all the players. This led to fun dynamics and blunders when I played because, with a good question, the Spy can be easily sniffed out. One such moment was the question: “what do you like most about this place?” The Spy was hard pressed to give an answer, so they just started laughing.
The voting mechanic also is a great source of information and can be used by any player to vastly impact the game. For Cold War Capture the Flag, we would like to include some ways of forcing the Spies to interact and a way to perhaps, as a team, vote off who is suspected as a spy. In order to do this, though, we would have to create some sort of mechanism of information that the rest of the team knows that the spies do not.
In conclusion, playing Spyfall was very helpful when thinking about Cold War Capture the Flag because of its unique deception and deduction dynamics. This game will help shape how we add more elements of deceit into our game, and even though it was vastly different, the core experience of working together as a team to deduce who is fooling the others is a fun one that we would like to carry forward.
