Last Wednesday, we had a fantastic board game event where we played Spyfall. For those unfamiliar with it, Spyfall is a social deduction game that involves players taking on different roles in a given scenario. One player is randomly (and secretly!) assigned to be the spy, and all the others (the non-spies) are assigned a specific shared location as well as a role unique to them. For instance, they may all be at the beach and have roles such as a lifeguard, a kite surfer, or an ice cream truck driver. Or maybe they are on a space station with roles such as engineer, alien, or space tourist. The non-spies know the location, but the spy hasn’t a clue. While the spy is trying to find out where everyone is, non-spies are to work together to figure out the spy’s identity!
Gameplay proceeds as a series of questions and answers. As the spy is trying to figure out the location (and avoid detection), the non-spies are working together to figure out the spy’s identity!
For instance, if the non-spies indeed are at the beach, Person A (the kite surfer) might ask Person B (the lifeguard) what they are doing “here.” Person B might then answer: “I am making sure that everyone avoids danger.” This satisfies Person A, and the game continues. Person B asks Person C (the spy) what they can see. Person C describes the location saying “Clear skies, the seas are calm, and people are sharpening their swords.” Uh-oh! Looks like C thinks everyone is on a pirate ship! A and B see right through this disguise, and call C out. Person C then reveals that they were, indeed, the spy. They then move onto a new round at a new location.
We found that Spyfall was an excellent opportunity to practice not only our poker face, but also our ability to use nuances to describe something indirectly. These skills are useful in both personal and professional settings, as they help us communicate more effectively and understand others better. This makes it a great language skill to master, and this game makes it both fun and easy to apply those skills.
While we were only a small group, there were enough of us to determine that:
- The game is quite easy to learn and fun to play; and,
- The game has a lot of potential for language learning (especially oral) for students at an intermediate or advanced level
I would like to give a warm thank you to those who have participated and made this pilot project possible. I hope that, next year, we will be able to increase the scale of this project and welcome many more language learners at the centre. Naturally, everyone will be able to come into and make use of the Language Learning Resource Centre until the last day of the semester. We hope to see you around. See you next week for another blog post!