I played Alexandr Ushan’s Spyfall (intended for young teens and up) over the website https://spyfall.co/ and Discord video chat, and it made me the most attentive listener I’ve ever been (and brought out the worst in me).
In Spyfall, player’s questions to each other serve as the only method to obtain information about the other players, and by design, it is the only method for the win condition. This differs from other hidden role games such as Among Us or Secret Hitler, where investigation derives from cooperative tasks in addition to discussions. While Spyfall’s focus on questions alone can seem like a design flaw since the formal systems seem easily understandable and therefore too simplistic to be worth playing, it’s actually the opposite. It creates a dynamic that rewards complete attention at all times given to fellow players.
One of the possible pitfalls of this question system, however, is that since questions are asked in a chain (where the answerer chooses the next person to question), it is possible for some players to receive few to no questions or. With no other actions or tasks, this could rob a player of agency and inclusion, create a dynamic of futility and isolation, and lose the aesthetic goals of challenge and fellowship. I argue that this tends not to happen though because the win condition of outwitting for the majority of players depends on obtaining as much information as possible from each player. Even when a spy is managing to lay low and happens not to get many or any questions, this will be inevitably picked up upon by the other players and their constant engagement. When in discussion in one of the rounds I played with my friends, all of us were suspicious of Yinlin since he wasn’t reacting to each time a question was asked. He wasn’t commenting on the quality of questions whereas the rest of us were commenting “that’s a good question” or “that’s too vague of an answer.” Our instincts were right since he was the spy. In comparison to the aforementioned games, where players are/can be actually eliminated from gameplay, I believe Spyfall maintains a better overall player engagement across all players.
The parallel game of the spy, where they’re trying to gauge the information to find the location, maintains and adds stakes to the challenge for the non-spies of maneuvering around oversharing information about the location–“vaguing” if you will. This creates a dynamic where players are trying to create a mutual coded speech, and it’s rewarding when you connect your wavelengths. For example in one of the rounds, when we were discussing who to accuse as the spy, I was asked for clarification on a previous answer of mine: what was I referring to when I said “the people at this location skew a a bit younger.” They thought I meant there were children at a military base. I clarified by saying, “a bit younger, as in the way you would say, ‘that woman is dating a younger man!’ in scandal.” Sharing logic like this is the same joy as having an in-joke or a shared secret — the aesthetic of fellowship. Part of the fun is in exploring the ways the players think/their perspectives with the questions and answers given.
Of course, there is the question of the ethics of lying and bluffing in any hidden role game, or conversely, what you do when you’re falsely accused of doing so. Spyfall exists in interesting space when it comes to this question since pure lying rarely comes up in the majority of gameplay. It’s mostly misdirection and and half-truths. The former is particularly relevant when discussing who is the potential spy. Here, I admit that the mechanic of the timed round and need for unanimous vote caused me to be very assertive in convincing others to vote for a person. This also created an overall dynamic of distrust in each other’s memories and some rapidly formed mob hunts.
However, everyone in game still had fun with this element. In fact, since the game exists as a “magic circle,” lying and gaslighting is fine as part of the outwitting gameplay, for they’re not cheating. One of best moments in our rounds was when Julia, the spy, figured out the location and was leveraging her knowledge to convince us that she was not the spy and to vote for someone else. We were more impressed than mad.
Compared to hidden role games focused on cooperative task completion, Spyfall’s main mechanic of questions enforces a dynamic where players must be attentive to each other constantly where threading the communication needle to connect and to stab the innocent is rewarded. The fun lies in both social connection and outwitting in that connection or in spite of it.
