Secret Hitler Board Game Review [Updated 2021]

Secret Hitler board game

Secret Hitler is a solid social deduction game, but of course the theme is the kicker. Set in 1933’s Germany, the fascists are trying to seize political power. It’s up to the liberals to stop them.

If you want to make your friends out for Nazi, Fascist or Hitler, then this is the game for you.

How to play

The game mechanics are almost the same as in the Resistance (number 4 in this list), except that the success of missions (or in this case: whether bills get passed in the senate) is not completely deterministic. This makes luck relatively important in the game, but it also adds some ‘noise’ to the data of how many bills each player passed. This makes the numeric deduction that features so heavily in the Resistance less important and leaves room for more social deduction.

Group size

The game functions best with 8 players or less. Larger groups make it too easy for a small group of Liberals to find each other and play it safe by only forming coalitions with each other. This makes the game hard for Fascists and especially frustrating for Liberals who by chance were left out of the coalition and can hardly participate in the game, even though they never did anything wrong.

Recommendation

Secret Hitler is all about the theme. If you like the theme, you love the game. Otherwise, definitely don’t buy it, but look for another social deduction game.