A critical play of ‘Secret Hitler’

Appraising the elements of Secret Hitler, a hidden identity game

A common screen from a free online version of Secret Hitler.

Introduction

It is pre-war Germany, and the Liberals and Fascists are struggling for power. Will the Liberals succeed in enacting their policies, securing their rule over Germany? Or will the Fascists play dirty, investigating and executing the path for Hitler as chancellor?

Thus is the basic premise of Secret Hitler, a hidden identity card game by Max Temkin, Mike Boxleiter, and Tommy Maranges. Since its physical and print-to-play debut in August 2016, the game has achieved impressive notoriety as a fun, high-stakes social deduction party game, allowing for numerous online versions to be made under its Creative Commons license. Secret Hitler is targeted towards players 17 and up (given the strategic elements and mature themes of the game), and can be played by 5 to 10 players.

Elements of play

Players

In Secret Hitler, players are split into two different camps: Liberals and Fascists. In addition, one Fascist player is given the role of Hitler. All identities are obscured at the beginning of the game, and the tension of the game rests on the uncertainty of everyone’s identity.

In one round, I was one of two Fascists, with the other player acting as Hitler.

The historical conflict at the heart of this card game is an interesting placemaking decision that’s reminiscent of another hidden identity game, Avalon, in that there’s an explicit good vs. bad dynamic between the two camps.

Objective

What’s intriguing about Secret Hitler is that there are multiple ways for each side to win:

• As a Liberal. Liberals can win if they enact 5 Liberal policies or if they manage to execute Hitler after 4 Fascist policies are enacted.
• As a Fascist. Fascists can win if they enact 6 Fascist policies or if Hitler is elected chancellor after 3 Fascist policies are enacted.

The game is balanced such that in the policy deck, there are 11 Fascist policies and 6 Liberal policies. The multiple pathways to victory for both sides made for really interesting gameplay and player interactions; more on that later.

Rules and Procedures

Gameplay is organized in a circle, with each player taking turns being the President. The President must elect a Chancellor from the remaining players to enact policies; if the election is successful and the majority of players vote in favor of the Chancellor, the President then draws three policy cards and picks two for the Chancellor to potentially enact. The Chancellor must then enact one of the policies given to them. If the election is unsuccessful, no policies are enacted — after three consecutive unsuccessful elections, the topmost policy card is enacted.

Play is organized around elections, followed by legislative sessions (if passed).

These rules make for really thoughtful, strategic play that leans into the theme of uncertainty present in Secret Hitler. The procedures make it such that these policies go through so many different hands, so even if a Chancellor enacts a Fascist policy, you’re never sure that that player is Fascist as a result.

Analyzing the game

A little secret: I’ve never played Secret Hitler before this class. I know, I know, revoke my game designer card.

So when the opportunity came for me to try it out, I got really excited. I played the game over Discord with other students in this class and immediately loved the gameplay and the discussions borne out of it. There’s a bit of a learning curve to learn the rules, but once you’ve played it it’s far easier to pick it up the next time around.

Secret Hitler seems to target Fellowship and Challenge as its outlets of fun, and the game is largely successful for it. Yes, we were on separate teams, but we were all still laughing during gameplay, and I felt some level of kinship to people I’d otherwise never met before. The challenge of determining who’s who was also appropriately balanced for the game’s objectives.

The action of swiping up to reveal our identities was a small but important touch in the UI to emphasize the hidden nature of our identities.

I think Secret Hitler is strongest at its ability to disorient the game, leading to strange and funny results. At one point in the game, a player was able to preview the next three policies and note that all were Fascist; when the next player drew the same three policies as part of their turn as President, they noted that two were Fascist and one was Liberal. When the Chancellor received the cards, they shouted:

What the hell? Both policies are Fascist!

Who do you believe? Who do you distrust? Going through all the possible permutations hurt my mind, but made for quite a fun experience.

One last thought: the magic circle this game creates can be super strong the more you peel its layers; indeed, Secret Hitler is a fascinating deconstruction of the systematic process that allowed for fascism and Hitler to rise to power. Even with liberal ideology having the majority (as in the game), conceding too much power to fascism can threaten to upend the system with no warning until it’s already too late.

It’s too late.

Ultimately, the narrative strength of the game and how each point of player interaction is well-justified in the context of its world-building is what makes Secret Hitler a game that I intend to return to. There’s something haunting about the majority being thrown into a circle they have to distrust and the minority taking that uncertainty to overtake their power.

I don’t have an improvement to the game in mind, but a potential mod would be introducing a counterpart to Hitler on the Liberals side who could lead to an alternate victory wherein after four Liberal policies are enacted, electing this Liberal leader would also lead to victory. It’d require more playtesting to check for balance, however — I suspect it would require a different amount of Liberal vs. Fascist policies.