Designed by: Phil Walker-Harding
Snakesss is a guessing and deduction game for 4-8 players. Over six rounds, players guess the answer to a series of fairly niche questions that – most likely – nobody is going to know the answer to .
Roles are randomly assigned between all players with a mix of humans (who don’t know the answer and get points for every correct guess) snakes (who are told the answer ahead of time, will get points for every wrong guess) and one player is the Mongoose of Truth: essentially the same as a human to all intents and purposes, only their role is revealed the moment it’s dealt: they are on the side of the humans and can be trusted! As for everyone else, things are a little more murky…
There’s then two minutes of civilised discussion follows, with the humans trying to figure out the correct answer and the snakes – who are pretending to be human – doing their best to ensure the humans guess wrong. When the two minutes are up (or sooner) everyone places their guessing token (A, B, C, or snake token if you’re a snake) face-down – and they’re revealed along with the correct answer. Every human scores a point for every correct answer – every snake scores a point for every wrong answer. Repeat six times and compare scores – the player(s) with the most points wins!
It's not the type of game where anyone is targeted, but there's such a avalanche of honesty the atmosphere is somewhere between a party and a police interrogation
None!
None on the rules at all - it's all about the hidden roles
There's a decently-sized deck of those bonkers questions, so it would take a far number of plays (and a good memory) to wear the game out.
4-8
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
Knowing the answer isn't really the point of Snakesss, the fun is in who is who at the table and when you're human, working out who you can trust. The snakes know who the other snakes are, but even if the identity of the snakes is obvious (in a four player game, the only human is instantly aware!) they can still mess with your mind, poker-style, with bluff, double-bluff and triple-bluffs galore. I think it's better with 6, but I've had a blast with Snakesss regardless - duplicity and sneakiness made fun. If I'm being blunt, I think it's not quite up there with the likes of Insider and frequent play would see you chew through the cards fairly quickly. But it's a fun conceit.