For my critical play, I decided to play the game Spyfall. While I played it on an online interface, the original game is a board game created by Alexander Ushan. The game requires at least three players and is intended for ages 12 and older. The premise of the game is as follows: one player is the “spy.” Each player only knows their own identity and every non-spy player is given the same location at the beginning of the round. Each player takes a turn, asking another player a question about the location – either to uncover more clues about where the location is (if you are the spy) or to uncover who the spy is (if you are a non-spy player). The round ends when the spy correctly identifies the secret location or when the players correctly guess who the spy is.
I believe that the game successfully emphasizes social deduction through making a game that is unilateral in concept, but more multilateral in terms of play. Throughout the game, one feels like they are against all the other players, rather than competing against one single player (if they are a non-spy player). This is due to certain aspects of the game that make it feel more multilateral.
The overall purpose of the game is deliberation to figure out who the spy is. Unlike other deception games like Among Us or Mafia, Spyfall is distinct in that the information and knowledge throughout the game is widespread (everyone has the same information about the other players in the group, based on answering questions in real-time). In Among Us, players find out about game events at the meetings or they can witness them happen. In Mafia, players who have a certain role (i.e. detective or mafia) have more information about other players than the rest. From the reading on MDA (Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek), we know that Spyfall solely focuses on a fellowship dynamic between players – to find out more information, a player has to give up some information.
The game mechanics themself are quite simple – if you are a non-spy player, then your focus is on asking knowledge-verifying questions, but if you are the spy, then your focus is on asking knowledge-seeking questions. If you are a non-spy player, you are perhaps more incentivized to be more vague about your questions, so that the spy has fewer clues as to what the secret location is.
One of the more complex formal aspects of the game is in outcome. While it’s quite clear-cut that there are three possible outcomes (either the spy guesses the location, the players guess the spy or the players can’t guess the spy), the feeling of a multilateral game complicates the game.
Take this screenshot for example:
Although the screen says, “You Lose,” the player had correctly voted that Shelly was the spy. However, because the team did not all come to an agreement, Shelly won and this player lost.
One of the criticisms of the game is despite being a team effort at the end for voting, the deliberation and problem-solving is more individual (evidently if it was a team, it would be quite clear who the spy was).
My main critique of the game is that after prolonged periods of playing, the game might be more predictable. Because the guessing of the spy mainly relies on the questions, this can lead to establishing clear playing patterns, bluffing techniques, and general question-asking strategies.
In a similar game of Mafia, guessing who the killers are ultimately boils down to luck (or if the detective correctly guesses who) – players mostly randomly accuse other players, in hopes that they are correct. There is less reliance on shared knowledge because certain individuals have significantly more knowledge than others.
My recommendation for this game (to promote longer playing) would be to introduce different variations. One possible variation would be to give suggested questions and have the focus be on the answer, rather than the question (this may make it less clear who the spy is). Spyfall could introduce “roles” to the game, where in addition to the spy, they could add a jester, who wins if people guess that they are the spy, but can also still win as a non-spy player.
To conclude, it is interesting to see how the formal aspects of deception and social deduction games influence overall playability, especially playability with new groups of people. Despite their differences, both Mafia and Spyfall can be fun to play with a new group of people due to their limited interaction with an interface and their emphasis on conversation.
