Take the deceit of Resistance and sprinkle in the unknown exhilarating death threats from Werewolf and you get Secret Hitler. The brand new party game by a co-creator of Cards Against Humanity, Max Temkin. The Kickstarter campaign has surpassed its $54, 450 USD goal by nearly double at the time of writing and is looking to surge even further. Having only begun the campaign today, the team has been working on the stretch goals for the remainder of the campaign.
Secret Hitler is described as a 5-10 player social deduction game. In it, a role card will be dealt to every player. They will either be a liberal, fascist or Hitler. Every round, the players will take turns in electing in a President and a Chancellor. The table can decide to accept or reject the roles of these players and vote again until the accepting party is unanimous. Once this is done, the President must then draw three cards from the randomly shuffled deck and give two of these to the Chancellor where the spare card is discarded. The Chancellor will then choose one of these cards to enact and discard the remainder. Should the card enacted be a fascist policy, the President is then tasked to investigate a player’s party, look at the next 3 policy cards, pick the next president and kill a player. The win condition for the liberals is to pass 5 liberal policies or kill Secret Hitler. For the fascists to win, 6 fascist policies need to be passed or Secret Hitler needs to be a Chancellor when there are 3 fascist policies in place.
What gives this game its unique twist is the randomness of cards that throws monkey wrenches in easily determining the roles of players. It could lead the Chancellor under intense scrutiny to either be framed by a fascist or by misfortune. That said, players can have a form of mental strategy by knowing the contents of the deck (11 fascist policies, 6 liberal policies). Another is its improvement over the Werewolf formula in which the main problem is the early elimination. Due to the fast nature of the game, executed players would only need to wait a few minutes before the game can restart.
Overall, Secret Hitler looks incredibly addictive and mind melting. Its dramatic intensity is insane, especially as the game draws to its conclusion. As mentioned, the Kickstarter campaigned has already successfully funded with the game being released in early 2016. If you contribute over $25, you’ll be getting a copy of the game when it’s in print.