The game I decided to play for this critical play is Secret Hitler, a physical board game intended for adult/older teen audiences created by Max Temkin, Mike Boxleiter, and Tommy Maranges. Secret Hitler and our game have similar concepts but different mechanics. Our team’s game is based on hidden identities and trying to help people from the same group (the liars) win without being noticed. This is very similar to Secret Hitler’s concept where the fascists try to hide they are fascists and try to help “Hitler” get elected as chancellor or pass 6 different fascist policies. This is a team vs team player formal element. Both games also rely on rules that direct players toward an outcome of having one team be victorious. There are also objectives given to each team that is to outwit the other team so they can win, another formal element. Although the overall concept of both games are pretty similar, the mechanics of the games are entirely different. Objectives in Secret Hitler are given to not only each team, but also Hitler themself. Hitler has to hide the fact that he is Hitler from everyone and he also has to find out who the other fascists are that can help him win. In addition, another mechanic that is different (something not included in our game) is that there exist the assigned roles of president and chancellor in each round of the game. These roles get passed around in every turn, which is a mechanic that we don’t have in our game. In addition, the way players win is different too. In Secret Hitler, fascists win by either passing 6 fascist policies or electing Hitler as chancellor. Liberals win if they pass 5 liberal policies. Our game allows “truthers” to win if they find out who the liars are before the liars are able to get away with lying 3 times. As pictured below, you can see how Secret Hitler has multiple components to its game (cards, roles, envelopes, boards), whereas our game only has cards.
I think Secret Hitler has a lot clever design decisions and, at the same time, some flaws which can be improved. I think the fact that players are kept in suspension helps keep the game exciting and fun–it is a main driver for gameplay. This is part of the reason why we chose to include a social deduction component to our game. In addition, I think that adding power progression to player teams as policies get passed also helps keep the game not interesting, but balanced. One could say that the liberals have an easier time cause they can win by numbers (usually more liberals than fascists in the game) and that it’s easy for them to show they are liberals cause they just pass liberal policies (which they only have to pass 5 vs fascists’ 6 policies). However, fascists are given powers when they pass fascist policies that can help them deduce who is Hitler, as well as eliminate players when they are president. This helps keep the game balanced and prevents teams from being too overpowered, which can remove from the fun of the game. As for flaws, I think Secret Hitler could improve the way policies are being given to players. Usually the president in the round chooses two out of the three policies they pick up from the deck and give them to the chancellor for them to pick which one they want to pass. This can get a little redundant and makes it a bit easy sometimes to deduce who is fascist and who isn’t. I think adding another component that would prevent people from knowing what policy was passed could keep the game more interesting.
