Spyfall & Spyfall 2 Party Game Review

Do you love party games?

Do you love deduction games?

What about a game that combines both elements?

If so, you’re in luck because Spyfall is both a party game and a deduction game!

We included both Spyfall and Spyfall 2 in our annual Board Game Gift Guides in the past because they’re such fun games.

We’ve played both games a bunch and always have a great time. They work great at a variety of player counts and create a lot of fun interactions.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, we better explain about how to play the games…

 

How to play Spyfall

Spyfall comes with 240 cards that are grouped by 30 different Locations. Each set of location 7 cards plus one “Spy” card are sorted into their own baggies.

At the start of each round, a set of cards is randomly chosen and secretly dealt out to all the players. All players receive cards showing the same location except for one player who receives the card that says “Spy” instead of the location.

Then an 8 minute timer (not included) is started and players take turns asking and answering questions that will help them achieve their goal.

For most players it’s trying to figure out who the Spy is. Whereas the Spy is trying to figure out the location.

The first player chooses another player and asks them a question. After the player answers, that player then chooses another player to ask a question to. Thus, the turn order is based on who gets asked a question. If you answer a question, then it’s your turn to ask.

At any time during the game, a player may accuse someone of being the Spy. The timer is paused and a vote is taken. If it’s unanimous (minus the accused), then the round ends and the accused player reveals if they’re the Spy or not. If that person is the Spy, everyone else wins. If that person is not the Spy, the Spy got away and wins.

If it’s not unanimous, then players restart the timer and continue asking and answering questions.

Also, at any time during the 8 minutes, the Spy may stop the game to announce they know the location. If the Spy identifies it correctly, the Spy wins. If the Spy is wrong, everyone else wins.

After the 8 minutes are up, players can freely discuss who they believe the Spy is and make accusations and take votes. Once unanimous, the accused flips their card and if they’re a Spy everyone else wins. And if they’re not, then the un-caught Spy wins.

Then players can dive into another round of play!

(Actually, the rules outline how players score points depending on the outcome and then after a chosen number of rounds, players tally their points to see who wins. But we like to just play rounds as individual games and have winners after each game.)

 

Additional Level — Roles 

At the outset of the game, players can choose if they want to play using the Roles.

At the bottom of each Location card is a Role of someone that would be at that location. When answering, players should take their Role into account.

For example, at the Zoo location a player may be a Veterinarian. If they’re asked why they’re here, their answer should relate to being a Vet at the Zoo. Which would be different than the person with a Visitor role.

 

How to play Spyfall 2

If you’ve read the section above, you know exactly how to play Spyfall 2 because it plays out just like the original — with only 1 exception.

Spyfall 2 is set up for more players and includes 2 Spy cards!

The original Spyfall allows 3 – 8 players to play the game. But Spyfall 2 allows up to 12 players to play!

If playing with 6 or less players, only 1 Spy card should be included when passing out location cards. With 6 or more, player can choose whether to include 1 or 2 Spies.

Also, the original Spyfall includes 30 Locations whereas Spyfall 2 includes 20 Locations (different locations than in the original).

In a typical game of Spyfall 2, when playing with 2 Spies, they also don’t know who the other Spy is. But the rules do suggest an alternate way to play where the 2 Spies can know who each other. Before starting, everyone closes their eyes and the 2 Spies open their eyes to see each other.

 

Can the whole family enjoy Spyfall?

Having played both Spyfall and Spyfall 2 many, many times, we can confirm that Spyfall isn’t for everyone.

While the majority of people we’ve played with have loved the games, we have played with a few people who it just didn’t click for. They struggled with answering, asking, bluffing, and guessing. And after a couple games would opt to stay out of future games.

So we know the games aren’t for everyone.

But, that being said, we do give big thumbs-up for both Spyfall and Spyfall 2.

And as far as age range goes, the publisher recommended age is 13+. We know there are families who enjoy playing with kids 8 and up, but those are unique cases. In general, we’d say 11+.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, we enjoy Spyfall because it’s fun to play at so many player counts. And that makes it great for not only our whole family of 6, but also when we get together with extended family and friends.

We enjoy the deduction element on both sides — trying to figure out who the Spy by both the questions and answers of other players as well as trying to figure out Locations when we’re the Spies.

Plus, there’s a ton of variety in the locations.

You can also mix both games together to have 50 Locations!

But when doing this, just make sure to put the same number of cards in each baggie before shuffling them otherwise it will narrow down the possible Location choices for the Spy (since Spyfall 2 has 12 cards for each location set).

Speaking of Spyfall 2, having 2 Spies in a game adds a bit of a twist to the accusations, voting, and Spies guessing the Location. While the differences aren’t huge, the differences do factor in to how we make our guesses. The timer is also set for a longer time when playing with more players so each player can have more chances to be asked questions.

The only issue we have with the production of the games is the lack of Location reference cards!

Both rulebooks have the locations as the center spread. Players should become familiar with all these locations before the game begins. And to stay hidden, the Spy won’t want to look at this in the center of the table during the game or they’ll give themselves away.

However, that’s a lot of locations to keep track of as questions and answers are flying around.

So we made our own reference sheets!

My daughter simply wrote down the Spyfall locations on multiple sheets of paper and we pass those out so each player can have them close to them during play.

But we also came up with an alternate solution that may help you when playing. When a player is asked a question, the spread of all Locations is pass to them. Thus, as they answer, they can look at all the possible locations.

This helps both defray suspicion from the Spy and allow other players the chance to come up with a creative answer that may throw off the Spy while still letting others know that they know where they are.

We found this solution works great. But we still wish Hobby World and Cryptozoic Entertainment included Location reference cards for each player.

 

How do Spyfall and Spyfall 2 score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

I thought about leaving this section out of this review since it should be obvious by now that both games score high on our “let’s play again” game meter.

But tradition is tradition and keeping with format is big in my book. So this section remains.

Both games have appeared on my most-played games of the year for the last few years if that’s another indication for you.

With the holidays in full swing, and family gatherings all around, we’d recommend you grab a copy of Spyfall, Spyfall 2, or both for your family!