Social deduction

A social deduction game, a genre of party games played exclusively in multiplayer and entirely reliant on communication with other players, is based around a large number of players having to uncover one or more conspirators among themselves before they can kill or otherwise sabotage the rest of the players.

Players may be given a wide variety of roles, but they are always unknown to others and thus they must be deduced through their actions, if they cannot convince through words that they are innocent. The common exception to this is if the conspirators are allied with each other, in which case they're informed of their allies' identities and sometimes allowed to privately communicate with each other.

Players will oftentimes use multiple techniques such as assassination, interrogation, sabotage, elimination voting, stealth, observation, lying, charming, and befriending in order to survive. Chat either through voice or text is the main form of communication. It's a distinct genre that oftentimes borrows and combines elements from other genres such as survival, crime investigation, strategy, and stealth.

The concept of social deduction games precedes video games with the party game 'Mafia', and has gained popularity in the field of video games with the popularity of Garry's Mod gamemode Trouble in Terrorist Town and Murder. Their popularity would increase with the successes of games such as Town of Salem and Among Us.