Sniff out the spy

BENGALURU:  Picture this — you’re a spy (James Bond, Jason Bourne, Johnny English; pick whichever one you like) and you’ve just woken up in an unfamiliar place. Maybe you were drugged, or maybe you were hit over the head? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is figuring out where you are. So you infiltrate a group of nearby people, who are chatting away, and try to listen for clues as to your location. The problem is that they keep asking you questions, and they’re starting to get suspicious of your vague and evasive answers. Can you figure out where you are before they realise that you most definitely don’t belong there? That, in a nutshell, is Spyfall.

Spyfall is a party game for three to eight players, in which every player is dealt a card from a particular deck. Each deck is associated with a single location — school, spa, space station, pirate ship, and so on — and most of the cards in that deck will have a role or occupation written on the card as well. So, for example, one player might be a student at the school while another might be a janitor, and so on. However, one player will be dealt the spy card which gives them no information about the location they’re all in, and puts them in the hot seat.

Games of Spyfall tend to start out in a slightly cagey manner. The active player (chosen randomly at first) must ask a player of their choice a question, upon which that player is required to answer. The player who was asked a question then becomes the active player, and must ask somebody else a question, and so on until the game ends or time runs out. This immediately puts players in a tricky situation — you want to ask questions that both prove that you’re not a spy to all the other non-spies, and that are pointed enough that you could potentially catch the spy out with them. 

However, that’s a fine line to walk — if you’re too vague with either question or answer, you’ll arouse suspicion in the group; but if you’re too obvious, you’ll give the location away to the spy. The spy can, at any time, reveal themselves and guess the location — get it right, and they win. Muddying the waters considerably is the variety of roles included for each location. The rulebook says that you can ignore the roles if you’d like, but that would be a huge mistake — they add so much to the game! Apart from the sheer comedy value inherent in requiring people to answer questions in character, there’s also always one role at each location that’s a little bit suspicious.

At the bank, the player who’s the robber will likely be giving answers that make them sound like the spy; while at the space station, the player who drew the ‘Alien’ role card is in for a tough time as well. It’s a brilliant piece of design, and it really brings out the best in people by forcing them to improvise. All right, fine — Spyfall’s premise doesn’t make much sense. That said, if you can find it in yourself to overlook it and dive in anyway, you and your friends are in for a treat! (Even better, this is a game that’s eminently playable over a video call, so grab some like-minded people and you’re good to go.)

Arjun Sukumaran