Secret Identity 

• Designers: Johan Benvenuto, Alexandre Droit, Kévin Jost, Bertrand Roux
• Publisher: R&R Games, Funnyfox
• Players: 3-8
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with copy provided by R&R Games

ln Secret Identity, you must guess the hidden identity of your opponents while trying to make them guess yours. At the start of a round, you receive a key card that indicates your identity among the eight characters on the table. Using double-sided “picto” cards, you try to give clues to your character so that others can guess who you are, while simultaneously guessing their character — earning points for each success. Each round, new characters appear on the table, giving you and everyone else a fresh face to guess, but your supply of picto cards is never replenished, so you must be judicious when using them in order not to run out by game’s end.

After the fourth round, whoever has scored the most points wins. Will you be able to act both as a skilled informant and a sharp observer?

Each player is given the keys in their color and their player board.  Each is also dealt 10 Picto cards.  Players put their scoring marker on the main board which is placed on the center of the table.  8 Identity cards are dealt to the 8 spots around the board.  The 8 master keys are shuffled facedown and each player chooses one; placing it into their player board.  The number on this master key tells them which of the 8 cards is their secret identity for the round.

Now, players choose 1 to 3 Picto cards from their hand, placing them onto their board – they can be located above the red or green dots.  The cards have two icons on each side, and the cards must be placed so that only a single icon can be seen above the dot on the player board.  The goal here is to convey ideas to get people to choose your secret identity.  Icons over the green dots are supposed to have affinity to the secret identity while icons over the red icons are more opposites or unrelated to the secret identity.

Once all players have chosen their picto cards, all the boards are displayed.  Each player then looks at all the other boards and each will give one of their numbered keys to each opponent; the number of the key being the guess to each player’s secret identity.   When all the keys are placed, players can flip down the flap at the top of the board to display all the keys.

Each player scores 1 point per opponent that correctly guessed their secret identity and 1 point for each correct guess they made this round as well. Move your marker up on the scoring track.  Repeat this three times to play a total of four rounds.  Discard any picto and identity cards that were used in this round.  It is important to note that you generally don’t get any new Picto cards, so you have to make your supply of ten cards last for all four rounds.  That being said, there is a catchup rule that if you are 10 or more points behind the leader, you get two more Picto cards.

My thoughts on the game

Secret Identity is an interesting little party game that has enough restrictions on communication to be challenging and keep you on your toes.   There is a nice variety of celebrities in the identity deck, and when the game starts, you definitely have a wide choice of 40 different icons to decide from.

The components are well done.  The double sided picto cards have a huge variety on them, and I really like the way the board holds the different player pieces.  Part of me wants the flap to be able to be on the other side of the board as it’s hard to place the keys in someone else’s board and keep them secret.   With the way things are now, you have to cover the number part of your key as you slide it into the other player boards; but that could also be a user issue on my end…

Some people have said that the game maybe a bit too challenging (i.e. you just don’t get any cards that work for your identities) and I am probably in that camp.  I’d prefer giving each person a few more cards.  As it stands, you get 2.5 picto cards per each round, and while it is possible to effectively communicate with a single icon in a particularly lucky draw; we’ve found that you often need at least 2.  Then, in the last round, it becomes kind of a crapshoot as you might only have 2 cards left, and there’s not much you can do if you don’t have any icons that are good synonyms nor antonyms for your identity.

I’ve played with both my game group as well as casual friends; and we had no issues knowing the people on the cards with the gamers…. But with my casual friends, we played with some teenagers, and we did have to throw out a couple of the cards – we just followed a simple rule that anyone could veto any card that they didn’t recognize.  It worked fine, and there are more than enough identity cards in the box to allow for this.

My most enjoyable game of this was late at night, after we were well into our after dinner wine.  There was much laughing at the answers (and at some of the attempts of communicating some particular cards), and the fun was had more in the journey and less in the destination (final score).

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor