Spyfall is a 3–8 player card game created by Alexandr Ushan and published by Hobby World in 2014. For this review, I will focus on the online version of Spyfall published by netgames.io, which is a platform for online social games. (Link: https://netgames.io/games/spyfall/)
The target audience of this game should be age 12+, as some of the locations may require knowledge which kids younger than 12 do not typically have, although there is no specified age range by the creator.
The game begins with each player getting a secret card which says if he is a spy or not and a location. Then players need to ask each other questions, trying to guess who is spy or what is the location (if the player is a spy). Therefore, this is a unilateral game where a group of players is against a single player. What is intriguing is that non-spy players may not know who is the spy until the game is over. The only way to figure out who is the spy is to ask clever questions and at the same time not give out too much information about the location within the given amount of time, which means there are different objectives for non-spys and the spy. The resources in this game are defined by the questions asked and answered by the players. The game has boundaries when the spy is trying to guess the location. In this version, the spy will be given a list of possible locations among which hides the correct location. These boundaries limit the number of guesses the spy could have and make the game more playable. In the end, everyone will have to vote for who they think is the spy. If all the players have the right guess, the spy losses, otherwise wins.
Spyfall is intended to be a social game which involves lots of interaction among players. So this game is suitable for playing at a party. For this critical play, I invited 5 friends to join this game in a voice chat. According to the outcome, this game basically meets its goal.
Since the netgames platform assumes all players know about the rules, it does not have any explanation of rules of Spyfall nor how it works on this platform. Therefore, we spent quite some time trying to understand the game procedure and the interface initially. Furthermore, game procedures of the same game on different platforms may differ a little from each other, so it would be more user-friendly if the tutorial is provided with the game. While playing, we also found that no one knew how to ask questions since none of us had played this game before. This would be a big problem since this game depends on question asking/answering to proceed. Another problem was that some of the locations such as the crusader army and the circus tent may be difficult for players to describe.
To improve the overall experience of Spyfall, I would change the locations to more common ones so that players won’t get confused. Furthermore, rather than give a certain amount of time to finish the game, we can specify the total number of rounds and have each player asks a question and answers a question during each round. At end of each round, each player has the chance of accusing a player as the spyfall and gives out their reasonings. These changes will engage the players in this game more.
