Project 1: Lie To Me

1. Artist’s Statement

Why We Made “Lie to Me”

We created “Lie to Me” to give young adults who crave deeper, more meaningful friendships a safe, playful way to move beyond surface-level small talk. Our generation grew up with digital interactions and superficial connections, so our goal was to design a game that acts as a catalyst for genuine conversation and trust-building, without forcing anyone to be the “weird one” who gets deep out of nowhere. Our goal was to create an antidote to the surface-level conversations people often limit themselves to today, and believe games are both an excuse for people to break the ice with new friends and a way to unlock new levels of understanding with old ones.

“Lie to Me” is a social deduction party game for 5 or more players, built to facilitate connection through personal storytelling. At the start, each player secretly receives a role: Innocent or Liar. Every round, players draw a personal question designed to spark stories and confessions. Players go around the circle sharing their answers, but only the Innocents must tell the truth; Liars do their best to weave believable lies, following the house’s custom rules for what counts as a “lie” that players agree to before they begin the game. Power-up cards are assigned by players who’ve already been voted out as a way to keep them engaged in the gameplay, and after each discussion round, the player who is voted “out” can give any remaining player a power up card to steer the conversation or muddy the waters before the group votes.

After everyone has shared, the group debates, accuses, and tries to spot the Liars among them. A timed discussion determines who gets eliminated each round, with the accused forced to reveal their true role. The goal for Innocents is to identify and vote out all Liars by the final round; the Liars win if any of them survive to the end.

No one wants to be the weird guy asking you about your life at a party, yet everyone wants what’s on the other side of a deep conversation — connection and community. We figured a good way to tackle this dilemma was to combine the emotional intimacy a game like We’re Not Really Strangers provides with the game pace and goal of Mafia. By embedding personal storytelling into a social deduction format, the game reframes sharing intimate stories not as awkward oversharing, but as a strategic way to accomplish a shared goal: rooting out the liars. This shared goal encourages players to open up, while maintaining the safety net of gameplay. Vulnerability is our player’s asset, not their risk.

We wanted to make getting vulnerable feel purposeful, safe, and fun. “Lie to Me” is both a social lubricant and an engine for inclusion. Humans are reciprocal creatures. If someone else shares, we will too. We felt there was a game lever hidden in there, and figured if we could create a safe space for one person to share their experience, through reciprocity it will make everyone feel a little more at ease sharing their’s. That’s why our question cards outsource the heavy lifting—no one has to come up with “the deep question,” and everyone participates equally, regardless of personality type or background.

Our primary audience is young adults and college students: people navigating new social circles, looking to build authentic relationships, or wanting to deepen existing ones. That said, we intentionally designed the mechanics to be accessible and enjoyable for a broader age range (roughly 18+ since we have some romantic/edgy topics). We’re mindful that “getting to know you” games can be uncomfortable for some, so we included house rules for the group to agree upon for edge cases, empowering players to define what counts as a “lie” and set boundaries on what kinds of questions or stories are fair game.

Ethically, we encourage safety and consent throughout the game: during any round, groups can vote to veto any question cards that feel too personal, and house rules can be used to skip questions or limit required detail. Our intention is always to prioritize psychological safety — you cannot enable genuine connection without it.

Kind of Fun We Hope to Create

At its core, “Lie to Me” is about connection through play. We designed it to deliver multiple types of fun:

Narrative: Players share short, real-life anecdotes in response to cards.

Challenge & Fellowship: Players collaborate and compete to unmask the liars, building camaraderie through playful suspicion and debate.

Discovery & Expression: The game encourages both self-reflection and surprising revelations about others. Everyone gets to express themselves in new ways.

2. Concept Map (or Equivalent Model)

3. Initial Decisions About Formal Elements & Values

Rules

“Lie to Me” is a social deduction party game intended for 5 or more players. Before starting the game, all players should gather around in a circle, and all the cards (Status cards, Question cards, Power-up cards) should be shuffled so that no players know the order. Then, the status cards will be passed out. Each player should receive 1 status card with their role (which will be either “Innocent” or “Liar”), which they do not show other players. Both Liars and Innocents do not know the roles of other players. Players may decide together on how many Liars they want in the group, but we recommend that about 1/3 of the Players should be Liars, rounded up (so 2 out of 5 or 6, 3 out of 7 or 8, etc). Before starting the rounds, the group must also decide House Rules on what kinds of lies are acceptable. For example, are half-truths or true stories with slight details changed allowed? Does the entire story have to be completely fake? After everyone is in agreement, the rounds of answering questions can begin.

Each round, a player draws a random question card and reads it out loud to the group. Players can vote to veto or remove any questions if not everyone in the group is comfortable answering it. Everyone takes turns answering the question, with Innocents answering truthfully and Liars telling a lie according to the House Rules. After everyone has answered the question, there is a discussion round (30 seconds per player) during which players discuss who they think is lying. After the discussion ends, but before voting, players can activate Power-Up Cards (explanation for how to receive Power-Up Cards is in next paragraph), which are one time only use cards that stir the pot (such as redirecting a vote, looking at someone else’s status card, etc).Then, everyone simultaneously votes for the suspected liars by pointing a finger at the player they would like to eliminate. The person with the most votes is eliminated and must reveal their role.

In the case that two players are tied for the most votes, there is a 30 second lightning round during which the group can question those two players. Then, there is a revote during which players can only vote for the two players that tied for the most votes. If they are still tied at the revote, no one is eliminated.

Eliminated players can still stay engaged in the game. They may still speak and be involved in the discussion, but cannot vote or answer questions. Immediately after being eliminated, the eliminated player selects any Power-Up card, and can choose a living player to give the card to. This way, eliminated players can still influence the outcome of the game. The player may save their Power-Up card for a future round if they do not want to use it immediately.

Round 3 is the only special round, in which during the voting phase, more than one player may be eliminated, depending on how many liars are left.

Win Conditions

Innocents win if all Liars are eliminated by the final vote
Liars win if at least one of them survives to the end (is not eliminated by the end of the final vote)

Player Roles

Innocents: Answer questions truthfully and win by eliminating all Liars
Liars: Answer questions by lying and win if any Liars survive till the end
Eliminated Players: Stay involved in the game by distributing Power-Ups to remaining players (objective of Innocents is still to eliminate all Liars and Liars is still to help other Liars survive till the end).

Values and Experiences we want to encourage

An important aspect we want to encourage is inclusivity through continued engagement with the game, even after elimination. We do not want eliminated players to feel bored or left out. With the mechanic of distributing Power-Ups and the team win condition instead of individual ensures that eliminated players can still influence the outcome and still have a stake in what happens. In addition, we hope that the personal aspect of the questions will ensure that eliminated players are still interested in listening to their friends’ answers to the questions.

We also want to encourage vulnerability. Similar to other getting to know you games, the question cards in “Lie to Me” encourage vulnerability since it allows you to open up to your friends, and in turn might make your friends more comfortable opening up to you. “Lie to Me” also goes one step further, since vulnerability can be used as a strategy to make stories seem more genuine and authentic.

What Makes “Lie to Me” Different

“Lie to Me” differentiates itself from other getting to know you games, such as We’re Not Really Strangers, and other social deception games, like Mafia. “Lie to Me” is more straightforward than most social deception games, because unlike trying to latch on to vague or suspicious behaviors, all players have to do is listen to the stories their friends are telling. Instead of analyzing what people do, you’re analyzing what they can say. Instead of lying about what they did in the game, liars lie about something that happened in their lives, which makes it more of a creative storytelling contest. You need to be actively listening to stories to spot inconsistencies, which can help you detect the liar but also helps you learn more about other players. Everyone answering the same question puts everyone on the same level of vulnerability, and any questions can be skipped.

Intended Audience

18+ Young adults/college students who are meeting new friends or want to play a casual social game with their existing friend groups.

4. Testing and Iteration History

In the very first prototype of our game, we had all players each answer a different question in each round. For example, one student could answer, “What is the most delusional thing that you have ever done for a crush,” while someone else could answer, “Share a time you were weirdly proud of being petty.” We found through playtesting that this led to a very convoluted and confusing game. This is because, since our game has liars, players found it hard to keep track of people’s lies and which questions they were even answering. We also found that having all players answer the same question would help them get to know the other players better, which is the objective of the game. Initially, we also allowed liars to delay their lies. This means that they could opt to tell the truth, if they pleased. From the feedback, we found that players found this unnecessary and making the game harder than it needed to be. A student asked us for feedback, “Why would anyone delay their lie?” We were surprised by this response, as we added this rule to help the liars prolong the game. Our thought process was if a liar feels like they are going to be caught, they can tell the truth for a round to get other players off their back. Unfortunately, we did not consider the fact that if liars continuously lie, then players will never be able to pick out the liars.

To combat the issue of all players answering different questions, in the next playtest, we decided to make it easier to keep track of people’s lies by having all participants answer the same question. We received excellent feedback on this, as we noted that players seemed much more engaged in the game than before. Through our playtest, we also found that people seemed much more engaged in the game when the questions related to a crush or love interest. Because of this, we went back and added more questions about this topic. No game is fun once players are dead, so we decided to add power-up cards for dead players. These power-up cards allow voted out players to interact with the game by asking one person to reveal their Truth/Liar status and more. Surprisingly, we found that players found this confusing, as one student quoted, “I do not know when to play the power-up cards.” In light of this, we decided to make the rules clearer on this subject to ensure that all players understood the purpose and advantage of the power-up cards.

During another playtesting session, another issue we found in our game was what to do when there was a tie when two people had the same number of votes, after a tiebreaker. We decided that in the case of a tie post-tiebreaker, no one is eliminated and we have another round. We did this to give the players another chance to determine who the liar is so no one feels unfairly eliminated. To make the game have an element of adrenaline and suspense, we added a time limit of two minutes to the discussion round. This makes players feel like they are on a time crunch, which brings an added sense of pressure and fun.

*Our first prototypes with Google Slides*

Another topic we heavily debated was whether each person should reveal their Truth/Liar role once they are eliminated. On one hand, if players reveal, then players will know how many liars are left and thus, when the game is over. On the other hand, if players keep their roles secret, then it adds another layer of surprise, as no one knows how many liars to look out for. This keeps the suspense up, as they will continue to suspect everyone left in the game. There is a challenge with this, though, as now players do not know when the game is over. To overcome this challenge, we decided that when people die, they reveal their status to other dead players. Then, once all the liars are eliminated, the dead people will let everyone know that the game is over. This allowed us to keep the element of suspense that we wanted while still knowing when the game is completed.

5. Playable Prototype

6. Video of Final Playtest

7. Design Mockups

Front and Back of Box

The overall goal we had with our design was to make something young adults would want to pick out of a crowded shelf at Target, put on a table at a party, and gravitate towards playing. To do this, our design process involved three steps:

We considered card games that already land well among young adults in group settings (namely We’re Not Really Strangers and Cards against Humanity). Taking these both as inspiration, we liked how bold and minimalist both games felt: it made the card games feel elevated and mature, and players weren’t distracted by any excessive design details.
We decided what emotions we wanted to evoke: namely discretion (hence the shhh… on the front) and anxiety (like you’d expect with all deception games). This influenced which graphics we looked for (cited below).
We included the relevant information on the back of the box, to not take away from the stark, super minimalist front while communicating what we wanted our players to know to decide if the game was worth purchasing.

Status Cards

A key goal we had in mind with the status cards was to make them distinct enough that players can lift a corner and, based on whether the card is white or black, know their role. This is helpful especially in more crowded, large games, where flipping a card over to see a small difference in design that informs you of your role may risk another player seeing and having to reshuffle the cards for everyone. Since the cards are either white or black overall, it makes discreetly checking your role easy.

Question Card Power Up Card

We made our question cards light since they were interfacing with living players, and our power-up cards dark since they’re to be distributed by players who are “dead” or out, as a way to keep them engaged in the game.

Our rules document went through a lot of changes after playtesting, but we settled on a clean, segmented design that very clearly showed the progression of the gameplay, how the game loop works, and what players should be expecting out of the game, just on one sheet.

Citations/Attribution