Secret identity board games, or social deduction games, are incredibly popular among casual and hardcore audiences, and it isn’t hard to see why. Perhaps it is the thrill of lying to your friends’ faces and knowing that everything will still be okay between you when the game ends, or maybe it’s the excitement of learning that the quiet one in your group secretly harbors an excellent poker face. Either way, these titles often make for some of the best party games, thanks to the memories they frequently create.

Most already know about genre staples like Mafia and Werewolf, but the category is incredibly deep, with diverse games for various audiences. The secret identity genre features longer epic experiences as well as quick playthroughs – games for large groups and titles for just two players. Regardless of skill level and general interest in the hobby, no matter what you’re in the mood for, social deduction games are a surefire hit to break out at your next get-together.

TL;DR The Best Secret Identity Board Games

• Blood on the Clocktower
• Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
• The Resistance: Avalon
• One Night Ultimate Werewolf
• A Fake Artist Goes to New York
• Spyfall 2
• Inhuman Conditions
• Feed the Kraken

Blood on the Clocktower

• Age: 15+
• Player: 6-21
• Play Time: 30-120 mins

While Blood on the Clocktower isn’t quite as accessible as some other titles on this list, its additional rules aren’t simply bloat, either. Instead, Blood on the Clocktower adds new wrinkles that often solve problems some players have with other games in the genre. It requires a larger group and a bit more time than some other recommendations in the space, but if you can find the time and the players, Blood on the Clocktower is easily one of the best board games money can buy.

The core mechanics of Blood on the Clocktower play out in a manner that those familiar with the genre will immediately grasp: players each receive a secret role with accompanying abilities, the demon kills another player during the nighttime phase when players’ eyes are closed, and during the daytime phase the townsfolk get together to try and deduce who the villains are and ultimately sentence someone to death. The goal of the good team is to execute the demon, and the goal of the evil team is to survive until the end. However, things get truly interesting when Blood on the Clocktower deviates from classic secret identity games like Mafia and Werewolf.

One notable difference is that executed players remain in the game. They lose their various abilities, but they can still contribute to the deduction and even retain one final vote on who to put to death. Additionally, players can share their secret identities, but this is a double-edged sword as it will also give the demon valuable information. It’s also challenging to know who to trust because the demon gets to see three different unused identities at the beginning of the game, meaning they can pretend to be one of these characters. Blood on the Clocktower is one of those games that your group will have just as much fun discussing afterward as they did actually playing it.

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

• Age: 14+
• Player: 4-12
• Play Time: 20 mins

Players take on the roles of investigators hoping to solve the titular murder in Hong Kong. However, one of the investigators is secretly the murderer. As a twist, one player knows the killer’s identity but cannot say it. Instead, they are only allowed to give clues concerning aspects of the crime, such as the cause of death or location. In front of each player are cards with potential murder weapons and clues, leaving the investigators to solve the rest. There is still enough ambiguity within the cards that players are left to discuss who they believe the culprit is, resulting in some classic moments of deduction and a mountain of lies. In a sense, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong plays out as a hidden identity version of Clue, making the stakes feel much more personal as a result.

The Resistance: Avalon

• Age: 13+
• Player: 5-10
• Play Time: 30 mins

The Resistance: Avalon is a team-based social deduction game set against the backdrop of Arthurian legend. It’s a classic good versus evil showdown but with hidden identities. Players work to get elected to positions of power to advance their team’s goals, but they attempt to do so without revealing their alliances. Only the player taking on the role of Merlin knows who is who, but disclosing this information risks losing their team the game, meaning there are layers upon layers of deception going on simultaneously. Fans of the Secret Hitler board game will recognize many of the rules and mechanics in The Resistance: Avalon, but the latter title is far less likely to offend anyone at your next get-together.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf

• Age: 8+
• Player: 3-10
• Play Time: 10 mins

One Night Ultimate Werewolf has cemented itself as one of the most accessible party games, thanks mainly to an excellent audio app that walks players through each phase. It’s so easy to pick up and play that One Night Ultimate Werewolf has become a favorite among nongamers as well as more serious hobbyists. This bluffing game offers players a single card, each with a different role. Some are villagers, some have special abilities, and some are the titular werewolves. For the most part, the villagers want to identify the werewolves, and the werewolves want to remain anonymous.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf has two phases: night and day. During the nighttime phase, players put their heads down as the app narrates them through various card-swapping, identification, and general trickery. In the day phase, players open their eyes and attempt to deduce what happened the night before. Following the thread of who had what card at what time can get quite confusing, helping to cloak the deceit in uncertainty.

A Fake Artist Goes to New York

• Age: 8+
• Player: 5-10
• Play Time: 20 mins

A Fake Artist Goes to New York is a fun twist on deductive games and drawing-based titles like Pictionary. Players take turns collectively drawing a single picture one line at a time. The twist is that every player except for one knows what the final drawing is supposed to look like. The fake artist must guess what the image is supposed to be and add a line to the drawing when it is their turn, using only a vague category and the picture forming in front of them. After each player draws two lines, the group can guess who they believe the fake artist is. Identifying the phony artist may seem simple, but as many people are simply bad at drawing, it is more challenging to decipher who the trickster is than you might think.

Spyfall 2

• Age: 13+
• Player: 3-12
• Play Time: 15 mins

Spyfall 2 is an ingeniously simple game where players try to deduce who the spy is with only a card and a location. Each player receives a single card, all of which, except for one (or two if you’re playing with multiple spies), has a location on it. The outlier card simply says the word “spy.” Players must discover who the spy is among them by asking questions about the listed location. The key is to pose questions and give answers that won’t reveal the setting so the spy doesn’t catch on. Unless you’re the spy, then the goal is to bluff your way to victory. After just a few minutes, the group concludes the interrogation process and votes on who they think the spy is. Not only is the game fun and addictive, but it’s also simply a joy to locate the cartoon spy lurking in the background in each card’s artwork.

Inhuman Conditions

• Age: 12+
• Player: 2
• Play Time: 5 mins

A true rarity in the secret identity space, Inhuman Conditions is a social deduction game for only two players. It’s not just the player count that makes Inhuman Conditions unique; it’s also that this Blade Runner-inspired bluffing game is centered around a five-minute conversation. In each game, there is one investigator and one suspect. The investigator’s goal is to identify whether the suspect is a human or a robot, and the suspect’s goal is to pass as a human. However, this is easier said than done, as robots are given specific prompts to follow. The trick is to naturally work these prompts into the conversation, which can quickly become tricky when every word you say is being analyzed by the other player. As Inhuman Conditions’ writing can be a bit wacky, it is best suited for two players who can embrace its sillier role-playing elements.

Feed the Kraken: Deluxe Edition

• Age: 12+
• Player: 5-11
• Play Time: 45-90 mins

While most social deduction games omit the board altogether, Feed the Kraken: Deluxe Edition brings players to the figurative and literal table surrounding a beautifully constructed board and stunning minis. Players in Feed the Kraken are split between three secret roles: sailors, pirates, and cultists. The players’ goal is to simply move the ship from one side of the board to the other, but each team is secretly working to navigate toward a different game-ending location. Each game starts with one player selected as the captain, and that player chooses their lieutenant and navigator. This trio ultimately decides the direction the ship will head for that turn, but opportunities for mutiny ensure fate isn’t always left in their hands.

Along the way, the ship might move to spaces with icons that enable the captain to perform various tasks, such as seeing another player’s role or even keeping someone from talking for the rest of the game. If the ship reaches a Kraken tile, the captain will fulfill the title by feeding the sea beast a crew member. However, feeding the cult leader to the Kraken will result in victory for the cultist team, so players should tread carefully.

If you’re looking for more great titles to play with larger groups, check out our picks for the best six-player board games and the best four-player board games.

Bobby Anhalt is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering board games and LEGOs. He has more than 8 years of experience writing about the gaming industry with bylines at Game Rant, Screen Rant, TheXboxHub, and Ranker. You can follow him on Twitter.

Sony has announced the PlayStation Plus Essential Tier games for July 2024 are Borderlands 3 (PS4 and PS5), NHL 24 (PS4 and PS5), and Among Us (PS4 and PS5).

Revealed on the PlayStation Blog, all three games will be made available at no extra cost to PlayStation Plus subscribers on July 2. Genshin Impact players will also gain access to the PlayStation Plus Pack on July 16 which includes 160 Primogems, four Fragile Resin, 20 Hero’s Wit, 30 Mystic Enhancement Ore, and 150,000 Mora.

Borderlands 3 is perhaps the biggest game in July’s line-up as the latest game in Gearbox’s beloved looter shooter franchise. Players explore the world of Pandora either solo or with friends, taking on all manner of over the top baddies and teaming up with just as many wacky allies.

In our 9/10 review, IGN said: “Borderlands 3 sticks to its guns and outdoes itself with an amazing arsenal of weapons, humor, and missions.”

Perfectly timed with the NFL season wrapping up, fans can keep the excitement going with NHL 24, the latest in EA Sports’ hockey franchise.

“NHL 24’s new gameplay features reinvigorate the on-ice action, but its collection of unimproved game modes has grown increasingly boring with each passing year,” IGN said in our 7/10 review.

Finally, the PlayStation version of viral deception game Among Us will be available at no extra cost to PlayStation Plus subscribers. Players must work together with a team of crewmates to prepare a spaceship for departure, but not everyone will play nice.

“Among Us successfully transfers the devious gameplay of in-person cloak-and-dagger games to video game form,” IGN said in another 9/10 review. “Murder and deception on a whimsical cartoony spaceship is so much fun that the only real question is what took it so long to catch on?”

Borderlands 3, NHL 24, and Among Us will be available be available at no extra cost until August 6, 2024. Those who’ve yet to add June 2024’s PlayStation Plus games to their library — SpongeBob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake, AEW Fight Forever, and Streets of Rage 4 — have until July 1 to do so.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Have you ever wondered what you’d do if you ever ran into another version of yourself? What you’d say? How they’d act? What kind of haircut they’d have? Whether or not you’d be proud of them, and vice versa? How their life would be different from yours? Where they live, what they do for work, who they are?

Well, imagine being stranded on a hostile planet and having to create, manage, and work with several versions of yourself to survive. That’s the predicament Jan Dolski finds himself in in The Alters, the latest from This War of Mine creator 11 bit Studios. In a previous interview with game director Tomasz Kisilewicz and lead designer Rafał Włosek, we talked about how The Alters handles branching narratives, but what about the alters themselves? Who are they?

To truly understand The Alters, you need to, well… understand the alters. To do that, we played the Steam demo so we could meet a couple of them in person, and then sat down with game director Tomasz Kisilewicz one more time to get a better idea of who the other Jans were, how many of them there are, and perhaps most importantly, how they interact with you and each other. The interview that follows has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

IGN: We’re going to encounter a ton of other Jans on our journey. Can you talk about building a character whose branching paths could lead to such dramatically different people?

Tomasz Kisilewicz: When designing the character of Jan, we really wanted to create the everyman type of character. We felt this way it would be easier for people to relate to him, understand his backstory and the choices that he has made in the past and the choices that shaped him. And it was crucial for Jan’s background to have those points of regret, because from these points we can branch into drastically different scenarios of how his life could turn out if he had made some different choices along the way.

IGN: So far we’ve seen the Technician, the Botanist, the Refiner, and the Miner. How many Jans can we expect to run into in The Alters? How did you go about deciding what these different types of Jans would be, and how they’d impact The Alters?

We needed to build a variety of Jans, not only for gameplay reasons, but also to create a compelling story of Jan and truly dive into the topic of the “what if?” question. Different alters, have very different skill set that strongly affects your strategy in the game. You can’t create all possible alters in a single playthrough. So the decision on who you bring on board will affect the way you handle the base and how you handle your objectives.

Having various sets of characters with very different personalities will strongly affect our story and also create very different dynamics between Jans. When it comes to how many alters we can create, when you look at the cover of the game, there are 11 characters and I think it gives a good sense of magnitude. But we have some surprises up our sleeves about that. So I don’t want to spoil the fun, and I think I will leave it at that.

IGN: Based on the demo, the first Jan you’ll create is the Technician, who is basically just a more competent version of our Jan, despite taking a very different, less traditional path at an early age. Why did you choose to start off with the Technician?

Kisilewicz: We decided to start with the Technician because, in many ways, he is the polar opposite of the main Jan and he is more competent in some ways, while at the same time, he can be quite flawed in others. But what’s interesting about him is he always keeps challenging our Jan. That’s why he’s so useful at the very early stage of the game when we are onboarding the player with the whole idea of engaging in the relationship with your alters.

Jan and the Technician, they branched out quite early in their life paths. The Technician is someone who stayed with his family. He stood up to their abusive father, something that the main Jan was never able to do. And that’s why he’s a very important axis of the story of our main Jan because that’s one of his biggest regrets that he has.

IGN: One of the immediate differences between Technician Jan and our Jan is that Technician Jan is a little more standoffish, and much more assertive, which seems like it came from the decision to stand up to Jan’s father, and has influenced a lot of his decisions since. Can you talk about how the decisions each Jan makes influence not only their skills and profession but as a person, and how we might see that play out?

Kisilewicz: From the point of branching between Jans, their lives can go in very different directions. It’s like this butterfly effect where changing one little decision can affect your entire life and in the end make you a different person. So understanding those differences helps us understand alters as people, and in the end, helps us effectively manage our crew.

Different Jans can react to our decisions in different ways. For example, one of them can expect us to be a very efficient and mission-oriented leader. While the other might want us to be more empathetic towards the rest of the crew. And pleasing everyone won’t be easy, if not impossible.

IGN: As you interact with the Jans, you can see their responses in real-time, and that seems to determine their reactions to what you see and how they view you. Can you talk about how your choices affect your relationships with the Jans or influence their behavior?

Kisilewicz: The alters have their emotional state that affects how they work, how they behave. And if it’s not managed well, it can lead to some drastic results, including rebelling against us. We can influence their emotions both through economic strategic decisions that we make, and also through interactions.

A big part of the game is dialogue, and actually, every dialogue choice in the game affects the emotional state of our alters. So it is crucial to understand who they are, and where they’re coming from, because different approaches can work better with different alters.

IGN: The more Jans you get, the more complicated it seems those relationships will become. Can you talk about how the Jans react to other Jans? Do you have to mediate disputes? Do they get jealous if you don’t hang out with one of them enough or become friends with another Jan they don’t like?

Kisilewicz: The more Jans we create, the more different dynamics between them are generated, and that can of course lead to fights and arguments. We have a chance to intervene or pick one of the sides. For example, alters can argue about the quality of food in the base. One can think we should invest in a better quality to food while the other thinks that this is a waste of precious resources. So every time we make a promise, we need to make sure we can fulfill it, otherwise there will be consequences.

IGN: Speaking of getting along, a large part of whether Jan and the other Jans get along seems to be shared experience, which you can track via the quantum computer in the base. Jan bonds with the Technician by trying to recreate the pierogi their mom made when they were kids. Is it harder to relate to the other Jans if your common experiences diverge more drastically, and if so, how do you deal with that?

The relationship between Jans is always about what we have in common, but also what makes us different. And that can lead to both emerging conflicts, but also it can help us in resolving them. So no matter how far different Jans are from each other on the branches of the tree of life, there is always something we share. There is always something we have in common. It’s just that, sometimes, it will require us to do a little bit more digging to find this common ground.

IGN: Can you tell us about the other Jans, and give us some insight into what we might expect of them? Do you have a favorite Jan that you’re excited for players to meet?

Kisilewicz: With Jans you can expect the unexpected. We put a lot of effort into creating these multi-layered characters that you’ll uncover piece by piece. At first, when you learn the life path of one of the Jans, you feel like you understand that character just by knowing what he went through. But then you go deeper and deeper and you are uncovering different surprises in not just his outlook on things, but also how he behaves, how he interacts with us, and how he interacts with other alters.

I do have a favorite alter, although it’s a bit like picking your favorite child. [Whispers] It’s the scientist.

IGN: Obviously, it might be a little weird if several Jan Dolskis came back from this mission. Is that something we see the Jans discuss? Does that cause friction in the group? How do they deal with that?

Kisilewicz: Between alters, there is this question of “what’s going to happen to us? What is our future? Do we even have a future?” And the closer we get to actually going back home ,this question will raise more and more tension inside the base. Different alters are different people, so they also differ in their outlook on this topic. That will put even more pressure on us as a captain regarding what are we going to do about it.

IGN: This question may be a bit silly, but can I create multiple versions of the same Jan? Can I have five Technician Jans running around if I want to?

Kisilewicz: Something we knew very early on in development was that we don’t want to allow to create multiple versions of the same alter. First of all, the game was never really about cloning. So multiplication of the same character, it’s an extremely interesting topic, but it’s just not the topic of our game. But most importantly, we always wanted alters to feel like real people with real emotions and real stories. We were afraid that making too many of them would make them more of an NPC or a unit in the game rather than a character with his own thoughts and emotions. So we felt that increasing the number of them might, in the end, reduce their significance as individuals.

IGN: Is there anything we haven’t covered about the Jans that you’d like folks to know about?

Kisilewicz: I think the biggest surprises about the alters lie in their backstories, in their storylines, in the situations they can generate. So we really can’t wait for the players to start unraveling it all and start making their own decisions about the shape of their crew, about what alters they bring on board, in what order, and most importantly, what decisions they make about the alters and about the fate of our main Jan.

Our month of exclusive IGN First content is almost over. If your curiosity has been piqued by this game, you can wishlist The Alters on Steam if you’re interested.