Insider
03 Nov 2019Twenty Questions, with a betrayal mechanic, and guessing structure. Insider is a lighter party game that makes you second guess whether or not the people you are working with is really on your side. It is quick, about a 15 minute round, and everyone is cooperating.
The roles of the game are clearly laid out, a master whom knows the work and answers the yes or no questions, the insider who also knows the word and is helping the group get the answer right without getting caught, and the commoners who are attempting to guess the word correctly. All roles are attempting the same goal, to get the word correct, if no one guesses correctly within the time period everyone loses.
A game of Insider will last at most about 15 minutes. The guessing phase lasts about 5 minutes, there is a discussion period that will take at most 5 minutes, and the setup and voting take marginal time, but at most about 5 minutes.
Voting is probably one of the weirdest aspects of the game, there are two stages of it, the first stage concerns the person who guessed the word correctly, and the second occurs only when a vote does not occur and people cannot come to an agreement if they are not the Insider. This sounds pretty confusing and it really is, the flow chart is unintuitive. Essentially if the majority of players do not believe the person who got correct answer was the insider and they are right, then it moves to a point vote system. I just tried to explain it twice, the chart doesn’t help either.
When I played the game with my co-workers modified the rule to having the point at who they believe is the insider after a discussion, quicker and simpler, more like One Night Werewolf.
I really like the game, the role cards and nice and tactile, the clues (which players could easily come up with by themselves), are nice and abstract. The game is actually really hard.