Spyfall Card Game First Impressions

Spyfall is Who am I? Where are we?

Why am I not making sense?

Spyfall is played over several rounds, and at the start of each round all players receive cards showing the same location — a casino, a travelling circus, a pirate ship, or even a space station — except that one player receives a card that says “Spy” instead of the location. Players then start asking each other questions — “Why are you dressed so strangely?” or “When was the last time we got a pay day?” or anything else you can come up with — trying to guess who among them is the spy. The spy doesn’t know where he is, so he has to listen carefully. When it’s his time to answer, he’d better create a good story!

At any time during a round, one player may accuse another of being a spy. If all other players agree with the accusation, the round ends and the accused player has to reveal his identity. If the spy is uncovered, all other players score points. However, the spy can himself end a round by announcing that he understands what the secret location is; if his guess is correct, only the spy scores points.

After a few rounds of guessing, suspicion and bluffing, the game ends and whoever has scored the most points is victorious!

So that’s pretty much Spyfall. It’s not a very rules-heavy game so there isn’t really that much to go through.

You pick a random deck of cards from a bunch of 20+ sets, each referring to a location. You separate the Spy card (placed on top or bottom of the stack so you can find it without looking) and add X cards out of that stack so each player gets a card. Shuffle and deal.

Set a timer for 8 minutes and off you go.

Spyfall Game Rounds

You ask people around the table questions in regard to their location.

You need to answer so you prove you know where you are, without giving the Spy too much information.

The Spy needs to figure out where they are and needs to answer their question as best as they can.

If the players can work out the Spy or the Spy can figure out their location, they win.

Making it harder for the non-spies is the addition of a role. Each player can play their role which means their own individual answers may not add up.

For example, in our game, we were in the Crusades. Fighters, Monks etc…

The person we thought was the Spy was actually a prisoner so their answers were different from what we would expect. The rest of us were soldiers or something similar so it confused them.

I’ve only played Spyfall once and it was a PnP copy but I hope to play it again as I really enjoyed it.

Update September 2022

I bought this eventually. Then it very VERY quickly got overplayed and I got bored. Players really need to play with the correct intentions and not everyone does. Roleplay isn’t easy.

Jesta ThaRogue