Can Your Friends Guess Your Answers in Sussed?

Do your friends know your favorite ice cream flavor? Or how you’d react if they all turned out to be super-intelligent robots?

Sussed is a light party game all about guessing another player’s answers. With three different game modes, you can choose whether to play a straight-up getting to know you questions and answers game, make it a competition, or even play cooperatively.

Gameplay

There are three different game modes, but all play relatively simply. In the basic version of Sussed, each player takes one joker card, three answers cads (A, B, and C), and a scenario card. Each scenario card has three questions on it, and each question has three answers to choose from.

Players take turns being the reader. When you are the reader, you read out loud the next question on your scenario card, and the three possible answers. Example questions include: ‘What am I most likely to say? A. Clowns are scary. B. Clowns are funny. C. Clowns are silly’ or ‘Which do I think is more important? A. Having clean fingernails, B. Playing outside, or C. Getting a cake on my birthday’ (psst: the answer is cake!).

You then secretly select the answer card that corresponds to which answer you chose (A, B, or C), all the other players are the guessers. The guessers are trying to predict which answer the reader gave. Each player secretly selects the answer they believed the reader chose. If you are extra confident, you may play your joker as well. But you can only play your joker once for each player.

The reader then reveals his answer. If you are a guesser and you guessed right, you earn one point — unless you also played the joker, in which case you earn two points. A guesser can try to persuade the reader to change his answer at this point, but it is ultimately up to the reader to decide. After each question is read, a new player becomes the reader. You continue playing until everyone has read out all three questions on their scenario cards, and the player with the most points wins.

For the actor mode, only one player will be the reader. He takes two scenario cards. All the other players will be trying to guess together. The reader secretly chooses whether he will be answering the questions as himself or based on how he thinks one other player in the game would answer them. After each question, the team will try to deduce who the reader is answering as. Once all six questions have been read out, the team makes their final guess.

The final mode is simply an icebreaker getting-to-know-you game, in which all players answer each question from the scenario cards, and reveal their answers at the same time.

Review

Sussed is definitely a game about playing rather than winning. The actor mode doesn’t even explicitly state whether the reader wins if the other players guess who he is answering as, or if he’s a neutral participant in the game. And that’s okay. Winning is not the point of Sussed.

It’s enjoyable to guess what someone will answer. Sometimes it’s obvious and sometimes the answer will surprise you. It’s great when you’re sure you know the correct answer, play the joker, and then discover you’ve made a mistake.

We particularly enjoyed the actor mode, as it’s a lot of fun for the reader to try to figure out how someone else would answer a question and hope that everyone is thinking along the same lines. It can also make the reveal at the end quite funny if the guessers weren’t able to figure it out.

There’s already a wide range of questions, covering a large range of topics within the base deck. But there are also multiple different Sussed decks available to buy, such as a wonderland one that has questions about adventures and fantasy scenarios. This is a nice touch if you’d like to play different themes, or want to add more variety, or simply are more interested in one type of question over another.

This isn’t a game that’s going to be for everyone, but if you like light icebreaker party games, Sussed has very nice production value, and has a nice mix of game modes. Everyone is playing every round, the game is fast, and is compatible with a wide range of player counts.  A particularly nice touch is that while there are only a certain number of answer cards (although there are enough for eight players which is quite a high count), the rules include a link where you can print out extra. Sussed is a nice, light little game that has its heart in the right place.

Pros: Range of game modes, variety in the questions, player count range

Cons: Loose structure to the gameplay just won’t be fun for some players

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.