When it comes to my closest friends, our hangouts usually consist of doing one of the following three activities: playing Spyfall, playing Canadian Fish (see Jeffrey Cheng’s blog), or just acting stupid in general (see all of Eric Wang’s blogs). Be it guessing locations, guessing half-suites, or guessing who the hell stole Eric Wang’s Minecraft potatoes, I guess it’s time for me to round things off by explaining a go-to for spending quality time with the lads.
In essence, Spyfall is an online, real-time “Guess Who.” After joining a game on spyfall.crabhat.com with your friends, every person except one is given a predetermined location and role from a displayed list. The last person is deemed the “spy” of that round, and he/she is not informed of the location nor the roles of the other players.
The objective of the game is to rat out the spy without giving away the location solely through asking and answering questions. If the spy figures out where the rest of the people are, he/she wins. If the non-spies can determine who the spy is and accumulate a majority vote, they win.
Seems simple, right?
Not so fast. The problem with asking extremely revealing and obvious questions is that, with each clue you drop, the spy can hear it, too. With that being said, the dominant strategy, in general, is to ask misleading, referential questions that only a few other players would know the deeper meaning behind in order to single out the clueless spy. Puns, childhood memories, and inside jokes are all fair game, forcing every person in the game to expand their craniums to stay afloat.
Yet, the scope of the game spans far beyond just the content of the intense Q&A session, as it’s often easy to forget that your teammates/opponent are all sitting within ten feet of you. Staring too much at the list of locations as if you don’t already know where you are? Suspicious. Slow to get a reference that directly relates to your past because you “didn’t hear it correctly the first time”? Doubt.
Grinning stupidly all of the time and acting clueless in general?
Unless you’re Josh Tennyson, I think we’ve found ourselves a spy.
(Yeah that’s right, celebrate. Source: Brian Zheng’s New Years Party)
Thinking back, Spyfall brings me closer to my friends not because of the present, but because it allows us to relive our pasts. It forces me to make near telepathic connections with each individual player, transcending the childish roleplaying and scenarios our phones spit out to us. It creates drama, frustration, and skepticism, all while sitting quietly in a friend’s car.
And when the spy is unveiled, with pointed fingers lashed out towards suspects, the game may come to a close, but the newly formed bonds of friendship and uncovered memories don’t. The long, once-boring car ride had been transformed into an all-out mental battlefield, and the winners and losers alike relish in the hardfought war they’d just experienced. As the final hands are raised and a majority consensus is reached, there’s only one question left to ask as we finally reach whatever destination we’d traveled to.
Where are we?