During this week’s critical play, I played Spyfall in a group of seven people, using an online website (https://www.spyfall.app/). Spyfall, designed by Alexandr Ushan and published by Hobby World, is a social deduction game available in both physical and online formats. Targeted at adolescents and adults who enjoy party and board games, Spyfall revolves around players finding themselves in various locations with one player designated as the spy. Through questioning, players must deduce the location while the spy tries to blend in without revealing their lack of knowledge. It’s a game of strategic communication and deception suitable for players of all ages. Spyfall emphasizes social deduction through its mechanics by creating a dynamic environment where players must rely on communication, observation, and intuition to determine who among them is the spy.
[screenshot of spy role assignment and timer]
Spyfall’s mechanics pave the way for a dynamic environment as players take turns asking questions, with the next question coming from the person who was previously interrogated. This specific design choice allows for a double-edge sword, as non-spies are able to target suspicious players with the consequence of allowing suspicious players to ask more revealing questions about the location. Another mechanic that is unique with Spyfall is that each question can both be a red herring or clue for players. Since the win condition is either that the spy comes forth with a correct guess or the non-spies successfully identify the spy, each question leaves players with the fear of misspeaking or exposing too much information. This makes the playing field dynamic, as one slip up could turn the game’s direction a different way. These aspects of communication, observation, and intuition define this game as a social deduction game, as non-spies must outwit the spy with careful wording of their answers, while the spy must cater their answers to the non-spies. This unique aspect of balancing one’s words in a response is different from other social deduction games like Among Us, where crewmates play based on actions and evidence. One critique I would offer for Spyfall is the fact that it can be a little difficult to identify the spy when everyone is too cautious of their answers, making voting time extremely difficult for non-spies. This leaves many of the answers as broad for an overwhelming majority of questions.
One example of this occurring during one of the three rounds that my friends and I played is when we were stuck on voting out either Alex or Emily. During voting, we debated between Alex and Emily, since Emily’s answer to a singular question was a little broad and Alex had asked an odd question, but had one really good response. However, we ultimately decided to vote Emily on the basis that maybe Alex could have just been bad at making up questions on the spot. Our decision ended our game in a 3-way tie where Alex, Brandon, and Cameron all ended up with 4 points at the end of the session. The double-edged sword, in this case, made the game a little stiff and stagnant. It was hard to deduct anything, when a majority of responses were “too careful”, allowing the spy to easily win each time. I would counteract this by adding more possible locations that the spy would have to guess from so that people can be a little more descriptive with their responses without the fear of slipping up. Additionally, I believe that the game would benefit from a majority vote, rather than a unanimous vote to make voting time not drag on for as long, since we did spend a while deciding between Alex or Emily.
Despite this, I still had a lot of fun and found that the game had integrated formal elements to make this game truly dynamic. For instance, one formal element that makes Spyfall a dynamic social deduction game would be its shift from a unilateral to multilateral multiplayer game. For instance, the game initially feels like a multilateral game as players are pitted against each other, with no clue of who could be the spy at first. However, the game plays like a unilateral game as players begin to formulate an idea of who the spy could be. From there, the singular spy is up against the non-spies in a race to either identify the location or identify the spy. Another formal element that Spyfall leverages is the use of time resources– time affords conflict and dilemma, shifting the momentum of the game rapidly as players scramble to extort as much information as possible.
