Spyfall - Social Deduction Party Card Game (Cryptozoic / Hobby World, 2015)

Product Overview

• Title: Spyfall
• Publisher: Cryptozoic Entertainment (English edition); originally Hobby World
• Designer: Alexander Ushan
• Art: Sergey Dulin and uildrim
• Year: 2015 English edition; Hobby World original 2014
• ISBN: 978-1-61768-428-9
• UPC: 815442019042
• Players: 3-8
• Age: 13+
• Playtime: 15+ minutes
• Contents: 240 cards, 30 card containers, rulebook
• Locations: 30 unique
• Accolade: Recommended by Shut Up & Sit Down

Description

Everyone at the table gets a card telling them where they are - a casino, a pirate ship, a space station, a circus. Everyone except one player, who gets the Spy card and no idea of the location at all.

Then the questions start. Non-spies have to prove they know where they are without saying anything specific enough to hand the location to the spy. The spy has to answer questions about a place they cannot name, bluffing convincingly enough to avoid the accusation while working out where everyone is. Rounds run about eight minutes, which is exactly long enough for the tension to become unbearable.

What makes it work is that there is no board, no tokens, and nothing to manage. The entire game is conversation. A good question is one that only someone at the location could answer well; a good answer is one vague enough to be safe and specific enough to be convincing. It rewards observation, nerve, and a certain willingness to lie to your friends - and it teaches itself in about ninety seconds, which is why it has stayed on shelves for a decade.

Alexander Ushan designed it for Hobby World, the largest board game publisher in Russia and Eastern Europe, and Cryptozoic brought it to English-language markets in 2015. It has since produced sequels and spin-offs, but the original remains the cleanest expression of the idea.

Collectible Value

Spyfall belongs to the small group of party games that actually earn their shelf space. It handles three players and it handles eight, it plays in fifteen minutes or fills an entire evening, and it works equally well with hardened board gamers and with people who have never played anything more complex than Uno. Games that flexible get bought once and kept.

The Shut Up & Sit Down recommendation on the box is not incidental either. That outlet's endorsement carries real weight with the hobby audience and is a significant part of why the game found its footing in English-language markets.

Complete copies of the original Cryptozoic edition are the version to own. The game has spawned Spyfall 2 and Spyfall: Time Travel, but the first release contains the classic thirty locations that everything else was built against - and because the card sets live in individual bags, incomplete copies are common on the secondhand market. A complete one is worth seeking out.

Order Now

A genuine modern classic of the party game shelf - fast to teach, endlessly replayable, and good with almost any group. Add Spyfall to your cart today. Please review the listing photographs for box and component condition before ordering. Packed with care and shipped promptly from Hammer of War in Tacoma, Washington.