Episode 264 - To Blave!
June 25, 2026
Ambie and Crystal discuss a couple games they played recently, including The Case of the Curiously Quiet Theater, Alibi: 3 Intricate Mysteries, and Flip 7: With A Vengeance. Then we talk about the similarities and differences between deduction, social deduction, and bluffing in board games.
Intro: 0:00
Recent Games: 0:50
Deduction & Bluffing: 15:26
Outro: 30:06
Bloopers: 31:09
Games mentioned this episode:
Flip 7: 11:49
Flip 7: With A Vengeance: 12:06
Tragedy Looper: 16:51
Liar's Dice: 18:26
The Resistance: 23:01
Detective Club: 24:12
Spyfall: 25:17
Clue: 27:07
The Search for Planet X: 27:35
Tobago: 28:07
Cryptid: 28:54
This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Use the code "BLITZ2026" to get 10% off your entire cart.
Board Game Blitz's theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.
Transcript
[00:00:06:21 - 00:00:50:28]
Crystal: Hello and welcome to episode 264 of Board Game Blitz, a podcast about all things board games that you can listen to in less time than it takes to figure out if you can actually get any meaningful information about the game when your friend's eyes dilate. Board Game Blitz is sponsored by Grey Fox Games. This week we're talking about deduction and bluffing games. First, we discussed some games we've played recently, The Case of the Curiously Quiet Theater, Alibi: 3 Intricate Mysteries, and Flip 7: With A Vengeance. Then, we discuss the nuances and differences between deduction, social deduction, and bluffing games. And now, here are your hosts...
Ambie: Ambie
Crystal: and Crystal.
[00:00:50:28 - 00:01:07:12]
Ambie: I got a review copy for The Case of the Curiously Quiet Theater from Bluefish Games. I've talked about The Case of the Curiously Correct Blueprints, I think, before. But this is like a similar game to it in the same series. It's a puzzle game for one or more players aged 14 plus.
[00:01:07:12 - 00:01:15:00]
Crystal: All I know is when I hear the Curiously Quiet Theater, it makes me happy because it's making me think of like a theater where everyone is behaving themselves.
[00:01:16:14 - 00:02:04:17]
Ambie: Well, that's not what the story is. But...
Crystal: I know, but it sort of makes me think of it.
Ambie: This is a 26 game designed by Ace and Anna Ellett. But yeah, the concept of this series is it's an audiobook puzzle game. So it's kind of like an escape room puzzle game, but not timed. And there's five chapters in each chapter. There's like a story that goes along with it. But the story is not related to the puzzle. I mean, it is related to the puzzles thematically, but like you don't need to know the story to do the puzzles. But like the concept of the escape room game is that Stephen P. Hincks, which is a character made up in their universe of all of their games.
Crystal: We love Hincks.
Ambie: You're in a book club with him. And so he read the book. He was supposed to pass it on to you, but he accidentally returned it to the library instead. So he records. He records an audio recording of the summary of the book. So he's like telling you about it. And then at the end of each part, he's like, oh, and then you tell me what happened next.
[00:02:05:25 - 00:03:59:00]
Ambie: So he like stops in the middle of a sentence and you have to like figure out the phrase that's next to proceed. And you type that in. There's a website that goes along with it and you like type it in. It also has a transcript of the audio recording so you can listen to it. The narration. It has like sounds and stuff in the person. I like the audio narration, but like also there's a transcript if you want to read along or if you want to just read it and then there's puzzles. So it comes with like envelopes, like some swag stuff. But I'm not going to show you that or talk in detail about the puzzles, but a lot of the puzzles, it's like papers and like flyers and stuff is different things that look like they go with the theme of the book. And then there's also a little post-its on there that's just for flavor text. It's like, oh, this was something that this character saw in the story, but that doesn't have to do with the actual puzzles.
There are different types of puzzles. Sometimes the puzzles are independent from each other, but a lot of times they're connected. Like you do all these different puzzles and then do like the full puzzle and then that's the final puzzle of the envelope. But each envelope has like three or four or five puzzles in it and there's five total. So the whole game took me maybe like two and a half to three hours total. I did it in multiple sittings and I enjoyed it. It's not like super physical. So it's more like word and paper puzzle things. So things that you can do on paper because it's lots of papers and stuff and they do look cool and there's like different art and different like types of paper things. But it's not like... there's no like physical turnings of locks or anything like that. But yeah, so it's similar to the previous one, which I had talked about before. It also had a similar feeling to like the PostCurious Ministry of Lost Things, which is like their smaller more recent one that that one. Was more like just that one had a slightly more physical things. But yeah, it's like a smaller thing. The story itself I think was family friendly, but it's ages 14 plus. I think that's more for like the puzzles because it's like a lot of word puzzles and like there's slightly complicated probably for kids.
[00:04:00:03 - 00:04:17:23]
Ambie: So you could probably do it with like a younger kid, maybe like a 10 year old who's like really into puzzles or like puzzle hunt type stuff. Yeah, so I enjoyed it. There were some puzzles that surprised me and included like other things that I wasn't expecting and it was exciting to like see like, oh, it was this. I remember this or like something like that in the story.
[00:04:17:23 - 00:04:37:08]
Crystal: If you're not watching on YouTube right now, Ambie's just like got the biggest grin on her face. So I can tell that she definitely liked this one and is just like kind of having a hard time articulating it. But like I can tell that you really liked it just based on the way you look. So in case people are just listening to the audio version, I wanted to make sure that that was conveyed.
[00:04:39:15 - 00:05:03:08]
Ambie: Yeah, and then for like the story itself, it was cute. I enjoyed the story too, but like it's like an abridged version because it's just the person summarizing the story. And so it's harder to follow along with and like a normal murder mystery where you can sometimes like figure it out your own kind of you can't really do that or at least I couldn't. I don't know because I think like some of the clues they say, oh, they got this paper, but then they don't say what it was on it until they were able to reveal the solution. It's like because of this?
[00:05:03:08 - 00:05:11:17]
Crystal: He can't remember everything, right? Like, you know.
Ambie: Yeah, but also like I kind of forgot what happened early on because I did it in multiple sittings.
[00:05:12:22 - 00:05:17:28]
Ambie: But normally with books, I do that in multiple sittings, but like I guess books are more in detail than in abridged version.
[00:05:19:17 - 00:05:21:16]
Crystal: Than someone else explaining a book to you.
[00:05:21:16 - 00:05:27:18]
Ambie: Yeah, so it's funny. It has a lot of funny stuff. Yeah. So that's The Case of the Curiously Quiet Theater.
[00:05:27:18 - 00:05:33:22]
Crystal: The names of their games are so delightful to me as well. I love the curiously everything. Yeah.
[00:05:33:22 - 00:05:38:06]
Ambie: Yeah. Well, I think like it has a similar name. So, you know, it's like the similar the series.
[00:05:38:06 - 00:05:41:12]
Crystal: I just I like their naming conventions specifically.
[00:05:41:12 - 00:06:06:16]
Ambie: Then I also got a review copy of Alibi: 3 Intricate Mysteries. This is from DV games designed by Antonello Lotronto and published in 2023. This is a murder mystery game. It's kind of like a murder mystery dinner. I've actually only played one case because it needs five players for each case five or six players and you need to have all of the characters. Because with murder mysteries, you want to you need to have all the characters to know because one of them is the murder and you don't know which one.
[00:06:06:16 - 00:06:28:13]
Crystal: I literally was just rewatching the episode of Schitt's Creek where someone is hosting a murder mystery party and this really isn't a spoiler for the TV show at all. But basically at the end of the episode someone calls one of the characters and they're like based on the way this other person's talking about where you are. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be the murderer and they're not at the party.
[00:06:28:13 - 00:08:21:19]
Ambie: I played Case One with my friends and then also turns out like one person my friend really doesn't like this type of game. So it's going to be hard to play the other ones because I enjoyed it. So it's similar to like a Jubensha which we've talked about or like murder mystery. I've been watching Crime Scene, Crime Scene Zero, which is a show a Korean reality show that's like similar. You're each different characters and you're trying to solve a murder and like the characters have different clues.
So the way this one works is the characters have these cards. It's all just a deck of cards and there's like an introduction and it told you to get the characters and each person will pick a character and the characters are each going to have character card that has on the back some text. It basically introduces you and like your relation to the victim and stuff and then you put it down and then there's... this one had five rounds. I don't know how many there are in the other cases, but each round everyone has a card and it tells you some information. So there's some information in the top of the card and then some of the bottom. The bottom is secret and the top is like stuff that you that everyone will need to know. It has stuff in bold. It's like important, but you have to tell everything on the card in your conversation. So like you can play it without any role playing and just read what's on your card word for word or you can try to get into character and like try to have conversations with people because sometimes a lot of times the information will be like related to something someone else. So like one of the things has a star on the top and that's the person who starts the conversation. So they start with something and then someone can reply or they'll ask like what were you doing there and stuff and then for the secret stuff it has like a subject and then if someone asks you directly about that or anything related to that then you have to reveal it. So like if your secret was that you had an affair or something with this person and if they ask like what was your relationship with them or like did you like that person or something like then you have to reveal it. So this is ages 14 plus, some murder....
[00:08:21:19 - 00:08:23:19]
Crystal: Based on the fact that you're referencing affairs, that's not surprising.
[00:08:23:19 - 00:08:51:00]
Ambie: There's murders affairs stuff like that. And what I thought was interesting about this is that you don't actually know you're the murderer until the end. So like it's showing you what you reveal and what you're keeping secret. And so those clues are kind of going to be open to everyone and you don't have to lie because you don't know if you're the murderer. But in our case the solution wasn't clear. We like we got all of the secrets of the person who was the murderer but we still weren't sure about the motive and stuff. And so the murderer themselves also didn't know.
[00:08:53:10 - 00:09:40:23]
Ambie: So that was kind of confusing. And so they want to reveal the solution. We're like what. But I really liked the gameplay part like the discussion and stuff. That was a lot of fun for me. And I think like the reason it doesn't show the motive and stuff is because maybe it might be simulating the criminal lying about it because in Jubensha and in like the show Crime Scene that I watched like the criminal - they study ahead of time. They know their character ahead of time and they have built up a lie. So they are saying the lie. So this might be like it pre built up the lie for you. So you don't have to lie yourself. So it's I think it's better for people like because at a murder mystery party you get it and then you have to like lie on the spot and come up with like, "oh no I did not do that." And so that's my theory is that like it's lying for you. But then that makes it hard to like definitively know which I guess is more thematic with a murder mystery.
[00:09:40:23 - 00:10:29:19]
Crystal: Yeah I've never like regular murder mystery parties, not this game, but like the murder mystery parties that have existed for you know years and years and years or whatever generally like I've never understood that concept because people who don't play games regularly will sometimes like bust one of those out at a party and then you're handing it to a bunch of people who don't do that type of thing normally and you've got a bunch of people awkwardly sitting around looking at their like character and what their.. and like.. I've only been involved in like a couple of these throughout my life. It's never gone great, like it's been fine. But like it's everybody just kind of like trying to make it work. And so this sounds like the perfect for gamers that kind of experience like it really sounds awesome.
[00:10:29:19 - 00:10:55:03]
Ambie: Yeah, so yeah, I like that you don't have to come up with a story yourself. It's like it's just there and then you can do as much or as little role-playing as you want. You don't have to prepare ahead of time. We just like did it. We didn't have to read. I mean, it was just like a little card of an intro. There were times where I didn't know, like sometimes people would know something about my character in round two and then ask me about it. I'm like, "I don't know" and then around three I get something about like "oh, I remember now. What you were talking about!"
[00:10:57:08 - 00:11:30:04]
Ambie: That was kind of weird.
Crystal: That's great.
Ambie: That happens. I guess because like you only get bits of information at a time, but I enjoyed it. Yeah. Like if you like the idea of murder mystery parties, but like not the idea of reading a bunch of stuff beforehand and like prepping a lot. Yeah, I think Alibi: 3 Intricate Mysteries was good, but I only played one case. I do want to play the other ones. It's hard because you need five players. With six players, one person's like a detective and not the murderer and they just I think they have might have other cards or something. So you can do six players, but like you need five because five characters.
[00:11:30:04 - 00:11:38:22]
Crystal: I bet I might be able to wrangle up some folks. I don't know how much time you guys have when you're in Vegas, but maybe we could if you brought it. With you, we could maybe make that work.
[00:11:38:22 - 00:11:40:04]
Ambie: Maybe I don't know.
[00:11:40:04 - 00:15:22:10]
Crystal: Well, that's awesome. All right. Well, I am kind of following up on a past review. I did you all have heard me talk about Flip 7. It was one of my favorite games of 2024 and I've referenced it a couple of different times and they you know, it's one of those things where a card game got real popular. And so they came out with a new version of it. I'm pretty sure that's what happened here. And that is Flip 7: With a Vengeance. I will admit I like the title.
So Flip 7: With a Vengeance is essentially just a new version of Flip 7 with some modifications to the deck and the gameplay. The core gameplay is still the same for those of you who had didn't hear my original review. Feel free to go back and check that out. Players take turns flipping cards over from the deck. Most of the cards just have numbers on them. In this case, instead of from zero to twelve, it is zero to thirteen and you are trying to flip over numbers into your face up row of cards that do not match one another. If they match, generally you bust and you do not get points for the round.
So when it gets to your turn in the original game, you can choose whether you wanted to stop and bank your points or keep flipping cards and just flip another card over. In this game, even if you choose to stop, your cards are not safe and everything else in this version of the game basically is like danger and bad things and you get to mess with the other players more. It is like the "with a vengeance" is a very apropos title because there are lots of things that you can do to screw with the other players. Specifically, you can steal cards, you can swap cards between other players. The modifiers instead of being positive things are all negative points or divide points. And when you get those things, you can give them to other players instead of just having to put them on yourself.
Some of the good cards from the original version aren't in this one. Like the second chance card that existed in the original isn't in this one anymore. And then there are some special number cards as well. For instance, the zero card, which in the original game just made it easier for you to flip over seven number cards, which is how you trigger the bonus in the end of the round. In this game, if you flip over that zero, you now have to keep flipping cards until you either bust or get seven unique. And that's it. You don't..
Ambie: Oh no
Crystal: You can't. Yeah, you can't stop anymore. So it's interesting. I didn't hate it, but I will say it didn't feel different enough or special enough for me to like really like this version more than the original. I'm sure for people who really love Flip 7 and play it a lot, it's probably nice to mix it up and do something like different in that regard. For us, it because it was like a lot of new stuff, it was taking us longer to play, which I'm sure that would alleviate with time and more plays. But me and the rest of the people I was playing with for the most part, we were all kind of like, we kind of prefer the original. Like this one's not bad, but we are also a nice group and the original game is a little less mean. It's.. and we don't mind being a little mean, but this one's just real mean. So it's fine. I didn't dislike it, but I own base game Flip 7 and I don't think I'll probably get be buying With a Vengeance for my personal collection. But yeah, it's still I think it's worth checking out, especially if you really love Flip 7 and you play it a lot and you want to be able to mix it up and you can combine the decks. Like if you want to play Flip 7 with a lot of people, you can buy multiple decks of it and you could combine the regular with With a Vengeance and then have the good cards, bad cards, everything that might be real fun. I don't know. So that is Flip 7: With a Vengeance.
[00:15:26:14 - 00:16:08:19]
Crystal: On some recent episode, I don't remember which one, we tried to think about it and then we stopped thinking. We were talking about kind of the idea of deduction games versus social deduction games versus bluffing games and how a lot of those games kind of sit in a similar area, but not exactly the same. And how they attract different types of players, but sometimes the same and how they there's a lot of crossover and yet not. And so we just figured this was a topic that was worth exploring. I will say for me personally, there are games that I very much enjoy in all of these categories and games that I don't like in all of these categories as well.
[00:16:08:19 - 00:16:47:04]
Ambie: Yeah, I guess that can happen. But let's first like say what we mean by these categories. For me, like deduction game is more a logic deduction type game for me. Deduction game also includes like the other types of deduction, like induction and abduction, which I always get confused which is which, but it's like you're logic-ing out a thing and you're kind of going against the board. Like there's a puzzle on the board itself on the game itself and you're trying to find clues from the game and solve it. A lot of those are races against other players. Sometimes other players can like do things to confuse you and stuff, but it's not like you're not trying to think about in their minds as much. Whereas-
[00:16:47:04 - 00:16:50:09]
Crystal: The players didn't create the puzzle. They're trying to solve the puzzle.
[00:16:50:09 - 00:17:23:20]
Ambie: Although there are some like Tragedy Looper where you're trying to get more in your minds and I don't know where like hidden role goes under. I mean, not hidden role, hidden movement. Because like social deduction, when I think of I think of more like the party games where you're like The Resistance or Mafia where you are roles and you're trying to deduce what roles people are. So like the social part is in like, yeah, the deduction is of the person themselves kind of more than the game. And then bluffing is less logic for me. It's like it's not logic. It's just people just trying to guess what people are doing.
[00:17:23:20 - 00:17:46:25]
Crystal: Yeah, because the difference between social deduction and bluffing, I think is in social deduction, they could be telling you well, I guess in either technically like they could be telling you the truth. They could be telling you a lie. But in bluffing games, you are specifically incentivized to lie usually to move the game forward. It's often in your best interest to lie.
[00:17:46:25 - 00:18:10:29]
Ambie: And I think with bluffing, there's like not information to be able to deduce if they're bluffing. It's just like I'm playing a card face down and you don't know. Whereas in social deduction, it's like a mixture of bluffing and deduction because you have they play a card, but then you kind of like you see what cards are played or something like. So it's like, oh, three people played a card and you see which cards are played. You don't know which is which, but like you see that there was these cards. So you know, those cards are played.
[00:18:10:29 - 00:19:38:09]
Crystal: So that's interesting is then like my brain immediately goes. Okay, so then but are some bluffing games also like social deduction to me is essentially at its core. Trying to deduce your friend, right? Or the person. So I think Liar's Dice is a really good example of kind of like a pure bluffing game to so to speak, because it's just I have dice under a cup and I'm going to tell you how many of which ones they are and you have to figure out whether I'm lying about it or not. And so to me, it's like the thing that you're actually trying to deduce is what you know about your friend, either their past behavior or their current behavior. And so like is Liar's Dice like in a way like is that social deduction because you're looking at your friend and being like, do you really have four fours under there? I don't know if you have four fours under there. It is a bluffing game, right? Like I would categorize it as bluffing, but I do think that you're using social deduction skills sometimes in those types of games and to your point in a hidden movement game, it's kind of similar. Like I think social deduction plays a part in a hidden movement game because you're using deduction skills to determine what's possible.
Ambie: Yeah.
Crystal: Okay. Where could they have gone? And then you're also using your social deduction skills based on what you know of the player, either in their past or in their like what you know what they've been doing to try and figure out like where they likely went.
[00:19:39:11 - 00:19:59:12]
Ambie: Yeah. So like I always call that mind games. Like that's the social deduction part. But the fact that it's hard to define this is shows that they blend together. Like with Liar's Dice, there's no information other than the social part, right? So that I think is just pure bluffing because there's no like physical like tangible information. It's just what's in your mind.
Crystal: Yeah, you don't see
[00:19:59:12 - 00:20:02:27]
Crystal: Yeah, because you just you know how many dice they have. Right. That's it.
[00:20:02:27 - 00:20:05:20]
Ambie: Doesn't everyone have the same or does not.. or I don't know. I don't actually know how to play Liar's Dice.
[00:20:05:20 - 00:20:18:16]
Crystal: I think everybody has the same number of total dice. Well, you lose dice throughout the course of the game. If you do poorly, you lose some of your dice.
Ambie: Yeah
Crystal: You'll you know how many dice they have. You know what's possible.
[00:20:18:16 - 00:20:24:05]
Ambie: Okay. Yeah. So like if they say more than the dice they have then you know for sure.
[00:20:24:05 - 00:20:26:23]
Crystal: Which I think most people don't because that would be a little obvious. But yeah.
[00:20:26:23 - 00:20:38:21]
Ambie: Yeah, but like I guess yeah that that could be the deduction part. But yeah, I think that's like mostly bluffing. But a lot of social deduction games have a mixture of bluffing in there because it's a common thing for people to bluff.
[00:20:38:21 - 00:20:44:05]
Crystal: So like what's the difference between a bluff and a lie? Is there a difference?
[00:20:44:05 - 00:20:46:02]
Ambie: A bluff feels more like a game.
[00:20:46:02 - 00:21:06:11]
Crystal: Yeah, okay. But no that actually that feels that tracks like it feel like a bluff feels like a deliberately light-hearted lie. Right. Like whereas the word "lie" kind of just comes with the connotation of something bad, but technically in games theoretically, I guess they could all be called bluffs. But, I think at the end of the game
[00:21:06:11 - 00:21:11:26]
Ambie: Maybe, I feel like a lie is more like straightforward than a bluff, maybe. Okay.
[00:21:11:26 - 00:22:11:29]
Crystal: Yeah, no, no, no. I think a lie could is it well, this is we're all this is all speculation on our part. I'm not going off-
Ambie: Yeah, this is just how we feel.
Crystal: Yeah. This is all like emotional whatever. I'm not we're not going into etymology territory here today folks, but I think yeah a lie is like "this is not true" and a bluff is often and Liar's Dice is a good example of this a bluff is "this isn't entirely true." Cause like for instance, you might have two fours under your cup, but you might say you have four fours. So it is technically a lie, but it's like a bluff to me feels more like there it might be some kernel of truth in there and that actually in my experience if there is some truth behind it, I found it's easier to present that information as fact. If there's nothing truthful behind something in a game, I know I personally struggle more to present it as true because I'm a good person generally and my brain doesn't want to lie to people.
[00:22:11:29 - 00:22:20:26]
Ambie: For me, I don't like bluffing games. And I guess somewhere I'd have a definition of that. But for me, I like lying,
[00:22:22:03 - 00:22:25:21]
Ambie: but not so I don't like making up.
Crystal: That's a quote!
[00:22:26:22 - 00:22:30:20]
Crystal: That one should live on beyond the podcast. Ambie Valdés - "I like lying!"
[00:22:30:20 - 00:22:54:10]
Ambie: So like so a lot of times bluffing is like making up a thing like I have this many right. Whereas lying you can just say no, like someone asked you a question you say yes or no or something like without having to create something so like...
Crystal: No elaboration.
Ambie: But that's that's a different type of lie to those. So I don't know. Like there's the type of lie where you're creating a thing and then there's a type of lie where it's just like facts.
[00:22:55:23 - 00:22:57:29]
Ambie: False facts.
Crystal: Not facts. Yeah.
[00:22:59:20 - 00:23:14:29]
Ambie: So like my favorite social deduction game is The Resistance and that used to be like my favorite game back when I played with more people with that one. There's no like story. You don't have to make up a role or anything. It's just did you fail it? Are you bad? And yes or no.
[00:23:16:09 - 00:23:24:18]
Ambie: And so I like that type of lying better than like oh no because I went over to the market and did this or like
[00:23:24:18 - 00:23:28:12]
Crystal: yeah, where you don't have to be more specific.
[00:23:28:12 - 00:23:37:04]
Ambie: Yeah. So even if I'm specific and like have partly truth like I don't like making up a lot of stuff. I like to saying like "no, I'm a good person."
[00:23:37:04 - 00:24:34:24]
Crystal: I find that especially because they feel different than a lot of other board games... I find that sometimes social deduction games are really quite fun to break out. But there are a lot of board gamers who and I like no judgment here but like who aren't keen on social deduction games because they kind of create a little bit too much stress and anxiety like that fear of being you know the person that has to lie. And so that's why I like throughout my board game career I've kind of looked for games that alleviate that. I've seen a lot of games that are on the show before. If you are one of those people please please please at some point try Detective Club. It is my favorite social deduction game that makes it that you do have to lie but you don't have to lie about anything until you know everything like you have all of the information by the time you have to lie about it. So it makes things way easier than most games where you just have to lie with no information.
[00:24:34:24 - 00:24:48:19]
Ambie: I agree and this is one of the ones where you're lying and like making up stuff but for me I liked it too even though you have to like elaborate on your lie because you have all the information you're like trying to explain why a picture is the one or something I forget what it is.. it's like Dixit, right?
[00:24:48:19 - 00:25:12:25]
Crystal: Yeah it's like based on like a term like it's an abstract thing kind of like like Dixit or anything like that. It's like here's a weird picture explain why this word relates to it and you can almost always find something like oh in the very background there was like a bird back there. So when you said, "Wing" I you know picked this picture even though there's nothing else in it that has to do with wings or whatever like you can usually find something.
[00:25:13:26 - 00:25:19:14]
Ambie: So I agree with Detective Club because that's a it's kind of like a Spyfall but like better.
[00:25:19:14 - 00:25:29:15]
Crystal: Yeah, it was so funny because when Spyfall came out everybody was like obsessed with it. And then when I played it I was like I don't really like this all that much.
[00:25:29:15 - 00:25:33:07]
Ambie: Yeah, I didn't like it. I like watching people play it.
[00:25:33:07 - 00:25:44:02]
Crystal: Yes, but yeah yeah yeah but like I played that game with multiple groups where people were just really uncomfortable with what they had to do when they were the person who didn't know the location.
[00:25:44:02 - 00:25:48:05]
Ambie: Even when I did know it was so hard to come up with questions.
[00:25:48:05 - 00:26:05:18]
Crystal: I even played a digital version of that game like it got so popular so fast that somebody made like a web based version of it. And we played it in a hot tub like on our phones at one point and I was just like why why are we doing this like it's not that good. There was a moment everybody loved Spyfall and I don't know why.
[00:26:05:18 - 00:26:27:26]
Ambie: I mean a lot of my friends liked it and I think it did work well it's just for me personally I find it hard. I mean I think it's similar to like the lying and coming up with something even when I'm not lying it's hard for me to come up with questions that work and answers too because you had to come up with creative answers that go don't give away the thing but also be good enough to convince people that you do know the thing.
[00:26:27:26 - 00:27:26:09]
Crystal: Yeah well pivoting to pure deduction. I know you and I both really enjoy deduction games quite a bit. If there was one deduction game that you would recommend for people because I've also run into people who were like, "oh I'm bad at deduction games." I'm actually one of them, like in the past I kind of used to say that and now I've found that there are a lot of deduction games that holding your hand is kind of, like I don't really like that term because it sounds a little bit childish I guess, but I like that there are more games that kind of give you better note taking and other tools to make the parts of deduction easier. I've talked before about how when I was a kid I thought I knew what I was doing in Clue and then I would be like, "okay I've got it all figured out" and then I'd open the envelope and I had none of it figured out and that was me in deduction games for most of my life. And now I'm actually like kind of good at them sometimes. So like do you have any recommendations for people who are like I'm bad at deduction games but I want to play one like what would your recommendation be?
[00:27:26:09 - 00:27:48:24]
Ambie: like this is hard for me because I.. I'm not bad at deduction. But if you're playing with other people who are good at deduction games there is in The Search for Planet X there's like different difficulty levels and it's app based so like the app keeps track of all the clues and stuff so you don't have to like have the pressure of giving a correct clue which can sometimes be tough.
[00:27:49:29 - 00:28:03:23]
Ambie: But also like it has different levels like one person can play on the advanced difficulty while one person can play on the easy difficulty. So I think that works well for people for a competitive deduction game of people who are at different levels of deduction ability.
[00:28:03:23 - 00:28:51:02]
Crystal: And then I also like it's a little bit older now but I really like Tobago because the deduction is kind of happening in public so to speak. Like you're playing out cards there's different buried treasures on this island basically and as you're narrowing down where it's located the possibilities are physically getting removed from the map. Like there's cubes that represent where a thing could be possibly and as people play out cards then those cubes get removed so you literally are seeing your options narrowed down visually. And so everybody knows those four cubes like those are the only places this treasure could be at this point and you just keep narrowing it down until you figure out where it is. I really love Tobago and I think not enough people talk about it anymore so that's one that I like to bring up because it's really fun.
Ambie: That sounds cool.
[00:28:51:02 - 00:28:58:15]
Crystal: Yeah, I like it a lot.
Ambie: I haven't played it. But it sounds like the opposite of Cryptid. Like, in Cryptid you add it.
Crystal: It kind of is actually. Yeah.
[00:28:58:15 - 00:30:06:08]
Crystal: Well, I mean, we, you and I, I think could probably talk endlessly about these types of games because I think there's a lot of them that we really really enjoy. But obviously we're a 30 minute podcast and stick to that so we'll end the discussion here but I would love to hear from our listeners, what deduction, social deduction, or bluffing games they really love and would recommend to others. So if you all have suggestions in that regard, please hit us up on social media or in the Board Game Blitz discord. And I'm once again going to mention before the outro that if you are not in the Blitz discord, we have had people that were like, "yeah, I don't listen to the outro. I didn't know you guys had a great community on discord." We do. And that community will be continuing beyond the end of the podcast. So if you like playing games online or just chatting with lovely folks in an online space, our community is going to stay alive after the podcast ends. So come join our discord. Lots of fun stuff happening there all the time, including weekly game nights twice a week or more. So yeah, come hit us up there if you want to discuss this episode or any of our past episodes.
[00:30:07:10 - 00:31:07:08]
Ambie: And that’s it for this week’s Board Game Blitz. Visit our website, boardgameblitz.com for more content and links.
This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Late pledges are still available for the Gods & Prophets expansion to Reavers of Midgard, so head to Kickstarter now to secure your copy today! And since Grey Fox is awesome, anytime you shop at greyfoxgames.com, you get 10% off everything in your order when you use the code BLITZ2026 at checkout!
Join the blitzketeer community on discord for game nights, discussions and more by following the link in the show notes.
Support the show by leaving us a rating and review on your podcast provider or by getting some official Blitz swag at merch.boardgameblitz.com
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Our theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.
Until next time,
You can't hide your lyin' eyes
And your play is a thin disguise
I think that now we realize
That bowl of snacks won’t hide your lyin' eyes
Bye everyone!
Crystal: Bye!
[00:31:10:00 - 00:31:25:14]
Ambie: I think that now we realize that... I forget how it goes.
Crystal: No, you've got it.
Ambie: What is the last part?
Crystal: That bowl of snacks won't hide your lyin' eyes.
[00:31:26:25 - 00:31:36:05]
Crystal: Less time than it takes to figure out if you could actually get any meaningful information about the game play when your eyes... Wait, so I'm just gonna start over. It just got weird.
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