Indie Game Studios

Lie to Your Friends in Good Fun

It’s been a while since we’ve gotten to sit around the table and lie to each other. While lots of gaming groups were lucky enough to pivot to playing online, party games have taken a backseat until we can all safely gather again. With Gen Con looming in September, we’re going to break out some social games so we can lie to our friends in good fun once again.

Just before lockdown, Indie Boards and Cards released the party game Finger Guns at High Noon which applies rules to absurd finger gestures. Each player is an outlaw in the Old West and the game is played in only two parts. The first part is conversation where each player discusses what they want to do - there are no rules and you’re not committed to what you say. Then as soon as someone yells “3, 2, 1 shoot!” each player must throw up a finger gesture - each tied to a specific action in the game. This could be shooting a fellow player, blowing up some dynamite, getting special actions from a helper, or stoppin’ into the saloon for a drink.

But before that, Indie Boards and Cards blazed the trail for social deduction games with classics like The Resistance and Coup. Both games have been iterated on over the last few years, including the upcoming Quest. Quest is an evolution of the same gameplay found in The Resistance and Avalonthat streamlines the decisions a little more, allowing for similar deceptive plays at slightly smaller player counts. Quest will be available in distribution very soon.

While we wait the short time for Quest to be available, we’ll be getting the classics to the table. The Resistance and Avalon are similar games with different skins. The Resistance is one of the oldest Indie Boards and Cards games that was released in 2009. It depicts a dystopian future where mega corporations have taken over - constantly interfering and controlling our lives. You can learn more about the world in this game, as well as in the roleplaying game rulebook Uprising: The Dystopian Universe created by our friends Evil Hat Games. In The Resistance players are secretly divided into teams that are meant to pass and fail missions that could lead to bringing down the evil mega corporations.

Also in this dystopian world is the game Coup. Similarly to social deduction games, this game hides each player’s role, and the actions they can take. Any player can claim any role and perform the associated action, but the other players can accuse them of lying. Whenever a player is caught in a lie, they lose an influence represented by one of their two cards. When a player loses both of their cards, they’re out of the game. The goal is to find your opponent’s tells to catch them in lies, or gather enough coins to coup your opponents - forcing them to lose an influence.

Like The Resistance, inAvalon you will take turns forming teams to secretly pass or fail missions. The trick is that players only know their own allegiance. If too many missions fail - the bad guys win. When three missions succeed - the good guys have won the day! Of course, players can veto teams based on what they know of the people around the table. This gives the game several decision points and allows players to analyse their best chances for success.

This is where the new version, Quest, comes in. It eliminates this step to keep the game moving at a much faster pace - you’re always seeing new teams, even though there’s less information each round.

Like any good social or party game, these games thrive at higher player counts. These games still have a wide variance of their top player counts to fit any table. While The Resistance and Avalon top out at 10 players, Coup stops at six and Finger Guns at High Noon at eight. You can find all Indie Boards and Cards products at your local hobby and game store.

Will Sobel is a designer, and developer for many tabletop RPGs and board games, a writer of science fiction and fantasy, and the Director of Marketing for Indie Game Studios. When he’s not catching Pokemon with his daughter he’s either reading or playing games.