Are you tired of bringing the same board game to every social gathering? Do you yearn to lie and stab your friends in the back in a (mostly) light-hearted way? You should try social deduction games! The genre started with simple card games, like Mafia, but now you can find social deduction games that will fit your unique style of play. Whether you like fast and playful, or drawn out and tactical, there is a social deduction game for you. As a lifelong board gamer, I have made a short list of games that I and everyone I have played them with have thoroughly enjoyed. Here are my top five social deduction games that are sure to get your friends shouting accusations at one another.
#5: The Mole
The Mole is a 2020 game published by Clarendon Games in which you and your friends try to suss out who the titular mole is based on random question cards that the players draw. Everyone draws location cards except the mole, who has no clue what the actual location is. They still must ask and answer questions vaguely enough to not get caught, while baiting others to answer more revealing questions. What sets this game apart from other social deduction games is its humor. The Mole includes comical questions, locations, and occupations that upon first reaction, will definitely get laughs. With questions like “Would you bring a date here?” and “What’s that stain?” in locations like “The Rapture” and a “Dingy Motel Drug Deal,” the combination of silly locations and ridiculous questions are sure to insight laughter with players. It has the same vibe and aesthetics of Cards Against Humanity, so definitely only play with mature players. The only reason this is not higher on the list is because the humour can get old after playing with the same group for multiple sessions, and the question cards can feel repetitive. As long as you play this with different groups and do not play too many rounds, you should have a fun night of gaming.
#4: Sounds Fishy
Sounds Fishy is a 2022 game published by Big Potato Games, is a game of trying to find the needle of truth in a haystack of lies. The premise of this game is one player each round reads off an obscure fun fact posed as a question, such as “In South Dakota where is it illegal to fall asleep?” The rest of the players see the answer on the back of the card, “A cheese Factory”. Players take turns making up fictional answers – except for one player who must tell the truth. The person with the question then must go around eliminating the players they think are lying, while avoiding the one telling the truth. This game is different from other social deduction games in how it does not force just one player to be creative and try not to get caught by others. It makes the rest of the players create lies and relatively gives the person who is trying to not get caught a more relaxed gaming session. A common issue in social deduction is that when you are the faker, it can become unenjoyable if you aren’t good at lying. Another really unique and fun part of this game is the aspect of gambling and stakes. The stakes come in when the guesser has the ability to choose to keep guessing “red herrings” or end the round with the points they have. This is a very unique spin on the genre, as it does not have to be a win or lose scenario. Playing this game with a group more than once or twice can lead to players remembering some answers but that can be easily avoided. With so many cards, as long as you are shuffling and taking long breaks in between playing with the same people, you should come out of it learning a ton of lesser known trivia while having tons of fun.
#3: Secret Hitler
Secret Hitler is a 2016 game published by Goat Wolf and Cabbage. In this game you and your fellow players are politicians trying to get your party into power. Most of the players are liberals, but there are a few fascists, including the secret Hitler card. You go around passing the title of president each term, and said president nominates a chancellor. The president pulls a few policy cards, picking the ones they want played, and then gives the chancellor two to pick from. There is a lot of strategy to this game and that is what makes it fun. For example, say you are secretly a fascist player and you know the president is not. They hand you one liberal and one fascist policy to test your allegiance. Do you play the liberal one, so you can stab them in the back later, or do you play the fascist one to advance your team? You could even then lie to the others and say the president handed you two fascist cards, pinning it back on them. One of the most unique aspects of this game, and why I enjoy it so much is that there is not one clear cut way to win. Normally games like this try to stack the odds against the traitors so that the good team prevails, i.e. giving them harder tasks and giving them fewer teammates, but this one balances it out by giving you an easy win just by electing the secret Hitler once you pass a threshold of points. It sounds complex right now, but as soon as you actually get into a game it will make you feel like you are in an actual high stakes bureaucratic situation. This is definitely the most advanced game out of the bunch, so make sure to play with people who know their way around social deduction. Some players may not want to play a game that revolves around fascists and Hitler taking power, so just be mindful of who your players are. The other main issue is the price point. This is by far the most expensive game out of the five but it does show in the quality of the game itself. You can sidestep this by printing the free version on their website, but if you want to play with an actual board and pieces, you’ll have to splurge a little. If you and your friends are experienced board gamers and liars, this one’s for you.
#2: The Chameleon
The Chameleon is a 2017 game published by Big Potato Games in which you try to let everyone else playing know that you know a word, without being too obvious you alert the chameleon to what the word actually is. This is hands down a party favourite, as with little explanation, you can have fun for hours with their two different grid cards and tons of different topic cards with sixteen words on each one. This game is incredibly close to perfection in a party game to me, as it has lying, deduction, and listening to others trying to contextualize their terrible clues. The amount of stretching I have seen players try to do for words so that they make it known to others they are not the chameleon, never ceases to make me laugh. For example, in a game, one player tried to say the clue “Lightning” for the word “Volleyball.” He quickly got voted on as the chameleon, but when he confessed he wasn’t he tried to tell us the thought process. To him he had gone: Lightning-Lightning Mcqueen-Owen Wilson-Wilson the Volleyball from Castaway. That shows you just how abstract players will start to get once they realize the strategy of the game, and just how funny it can be when they go overboard. The one downside of this game is that there are some cards with niche topics, such as famous artists and famous authors, but if you are big into those topics, this would be a plus to you. With how many topic cards there are though, you can just skip doing cards your players won’t understand and continue having an incredibly fun gaming session.
#1: Werewords
Werewords is a 2018 game published by Bézier Games. This may seem at first to be a simple game of guessing hidden words, but you will be proven incredibly wrong by just how much strategy you can have while playing. In this game, each round one person is the mayor, trying to get their villagers to guess the hidden word, but the catch is the mayor is unable to speak. Instead, they are restricted to a small variety of tokens, that they must lay in front of players when they ask yes or no questions. The fun part comes in with the secret roles. Each player, even the mayor, pulls a card that will decide how they must play the round. The seer, werewolf, and mayor all see the word, but all have different goals in mind. The werewolf wants the players to not guess the word, while the seer and mayor want the players to guess the word. This is where the strategy comes in, as neither the werewolf nor seer want to be so obvious they are caught at the end of the round. One thing I love about this game is that it is very accessible for the casual gamer. Rounds only last a few minutes each, meaning you do not have to be stuck in your role for too long. If you are not the best liar, A. you only have to ask yes or no questions for the majority of the round and B. You most likely won’t be someone who has to lie in five minutes from said round. One of the greatest things about this deduction game, is that instead of a big box, it is small enough to fit in a purse or even a coat pocket. All you need is the tiny box and the free companion app on your phone to play this game. We have gotten to a state of gaming where you, for the most part, either have a huge box game that costs an arm and a leg, or a five dollar game that is just a deck of cards. Werewords is right in the middle, and packs endless fun into its small package. Instead of having a large deck of cards with the words that you will inevitably run out of, it uses what I assume are randomly generated words on the app, that you can even change the difficulty of. This is consistently the game that is requested the most for me to bring to gatherings, and the one I have the most fun playing. To me, this is the perfect social deduction game for people at any level of board gaming, lying, and deduction skills.
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