Critical Play: Spyfall
I played Spyfall for the first time today on the netgames.io platform (check it out here). According to this source, Spyfall was originally created by Alexandr Ushan in 2014. Spyfall is a 3–8 player game with a target audience of adults and teens aged 13+ who presumably enjoy social party games.
Formal Elements
The above image shows my sketchnote on the formal elements of this game. In the following sections, I write this out in more detail.
Players
This game uses unilateral competition, with one spy pitted against everyone else (the non-spies). The game is designed for at least 3 players.
Objective
The spy’s objective is to blend in with the other players as a non-spy, and attempt to identify the hidden location that everyone else knows. The non-spies’ objective is to identify the spy without revealing the hidden location.
Outcome
It’s a zero-sum game with respect to the spy and non-spies as two parties, so either the spy wins and all the non-spies lose, or all the non-spies win and the spy loses.
Procedure
Setup: Randomly assign one player the role of spy. Show all non-spies the hidden location.
During game: Players ask each other questions, with the spy trying to learn the hidden location and the non-spies trying to guess who the spy is.
End: Upon timer end, non-spies guess spy’s identity. If they get it correct, spy guesses hidden location.
Rules
No restrictions or particular environments needed, just ask away! The spy wins if they’re not correctly identified by the non-spies, or if they guess the correct hidden location. Otherwise, the nonspies win.
Boundaries
The website contains the countdown timer, keeps track of who is the spy, and provides an interface for entering in guesses at the end of the countdown; thus, the website serves as the magic portal and must be kept open for this implementation of the game.
Resources
The game provides a countdown timer and a list of possible hidden locations. Players are free to use whatever questions they wish to accomplish their objective.
Outcome
Spyfall has a zero-sum outcome. Either the spy wins and the non-spies lose, or the non-spies win and spy loses based on the rule defined in the Rules subsection above.
Intended Type of Fun
Spyfall was intended to create a devious scenario where deceit and mistrust was permissible and encouraged. I thought this implementation on netgames.io met this goal quite well. When I played this with two of my friends over Zoom, we were very engaged— aggressively bluffing and accusing one another of being the spy. The strategies that resulted from Spyfall’s rules were also quite interesting. The spy would often lag for time to delay others from asking more questions, and non-spies were forced to think long and hard before asking questions that revealed too much about their location.
Epic Successes and Failures
I thought netgame.io’s implementation of Spyfall did very well in using dark colors and simple fonts to place the main attention of the game on the players’ interactions and questions. It succeeded in providing just enough resources to understand game progress with a quick look without getting in the way of my intense Q&A sessions with my friends. Thus, I thought this implementation succeeded quite well and didn’t have any noticeable failures.
In one of the rounds I played, the non-spies (which included me) had an epic failure moment where we all accused each other of being the spy. It turned out that the one person who was not voted as a possible spy was the real spy! This was both hilarious and sad, and it made us acknowledge the real spy as having real street creds for bluffing. In addition, compared to similar games such as Mafia, I enjoyed this more because there was no player elimination during the game, so everyone got to participate until the very end.
Possible Improvements
One thing I would improve is lengthening the duration of the game on the platform. With three players, the game only gave us three minutes — leading to us asking only a handful of questions before the game ended. This was particularly disappointing since I was playing over Zoom with my friends, and our conversations required some more time due to the awkward pauses and interruptions that happen on video calls. I’d also like having multiple spies for larger parties to make it more difficult for non-spies to identify the spy.
Final Thoughts
As a whole, playing Spyfall was a really fun experience, and gave me a chance to connect with my friends as we shelter in place during the coronavirus. I had a great time playing it for the first time, and I’d highly recommend it!
