I played Spyfall, using the website game provided by netgames.io. Spyfall seems to be a game targeting adults/young adults, as netgames features a number of alternate location sets themed around more adult activities, and Spyfall also won an award in 2016 for “Best Adult Game Winner”. Spyfall can be played with anywhere from 3-8 players (though 5+ players generally resulted in the most playable games), and game times are set before the game begins, any time from 6-10 minutes. In Spyfall, all players except one are given a location and a role at that location, with that single player being designated as spy. The premise being that the other players are acting as their roles from that location, whereas the spy is attempting to infiltrate the meeting. Rather than a full group discussion, the primary mechanic in each round is asking questions: players ask each other questions one by one to determine who is the spy, whereas the spy attempts to determine the location given to all other players. Questions take place one at a time, with one player asking one other player a single question, with the responding player then asking the next question. At the end of the game timer, all players vote on who they believe the spy is. If they guess incorrectly, the spy wins. If they guess correctly, they win unless the spy is able to correctly guess the hidden location, in which case the spy wins. The questions mechanic is one that differentiates Spyfall from other social deduction games like Mafia, which generally feature lengthy discussions. And while small talk can certainly occur during the game , it creates a limitation by which information can be exchanged. Both questions and answers should intentionally be vague enough to not reveal the shared information, but specific enough to attempt to signal to individuals with the shared information. This ambiguity creates a majority of the intrigue of the game, and crafting questions and answers that best serve a player’s role is what is the primary fun of the game.
My own playing experience of Spyfall was quite enjoyable. While at first I believed it would always be easy to find the spy, it proved to be much more difficult when working around the spy’s alternate win condition. On the other hand, playing as the spy when still not understanding the game was difficult, as it was hard to get a sense of what types of questions and answers might be good without having experienced a few rounds of people giving legitimate questions/answers. Once general game knowledge was established, it allowed for a lot more room for creativity, like “what’s one thing you’d want to know from someone who you think might be spy”. One thing I would change, however, is that in larger games the game round time limit creates unfortunate situations where some players only answer a single question and don’t give enough information to work off of. Expanding the game limit creates the situation where too many questions are asked and it becomes too difficult to find the spy, so perhaps changing it to be that every player is asked some fixed number of questions could alleviate this issue.
