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What is SpyParty?

SpyParty is a spy game about human behavior, performance, perception, and deception. While most espionage games have you spend your time shooting stuff, blowing stuff up, and driving fast, SpyParty has you hide in plain sight, deceive your opponent, and detect subtle behavioral tells to achieve your objectives.



Category Archives: esports

Breaking Rhythm

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As a SpyParty player learns the game, they develop their own distinct style and approach. In the course of doing so many players begin, consciously or unconsciously, taking the same basic approach to each game, hitting the same notes in the same places. I’ve started referring to this as the “rhythm” of SpyParty, because I see it time and again, in the majority of my opponents’ games and my own games as well. While this rhythm serves as a strong foundation for play, the best players learn to break it to their own advantage.
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The Dialect Dialectic

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Like many other players, there’s a piece of my brain that is slowly digesting thoughts about SpyParty nearly every day. During the last two years of interaction with the game I’ve approached the game more as an analyst/caster than a competitive player (where I’ve barely avoided relegation from SCL’s Platinum Division for two seasons); I’ve spent far more time describing SpyParty than playing it. Continue reading →

Summer Cup 2019 – Group Stage Results

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The group stages of the largest Summer Cup yet are just about wrapped up. Let’s take a look at who made it out of groups, how, and what their prospects look like going forward.


Group A

Predictions for Group A seemed to be relatively straightforward for most: virifaux would be the winner of the group, while the rest of the group battles it out for second. Though viri did win the group, and Harren came in second past Tflameee and BasiQ, the individual matches didn’t come out the way most expected. viri bled at the hands of Tflameee, and only took first in the group of the strength of tiebreakers. Unfortunately, Tflameee’s 1-1-1 record was not enough to advance, due to their draw against BasiQ, who gained their only point during that match.

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Threat vs. Suspicion

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There are two ways that snipers get highlights and lowlights:

  1. They highlight characters for potentially completing missions. These suspects are Threatening to win the game via mission completion. A partygoer has reached 100% threat if they could have completed the number of required missions.
  2. They highlight characters for acting Suspiciously. Snipers may feel something is suspicious because it looks “non-AI like” or “human-like” or “Like something my opponent would do.”

Note that what is Suspicious varies wildly from sniper to sniper, but what is Threatening is always the same.

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Shark Week(end) – Full Results

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Day 1: Round Robin

Roughly two dozen people showed up to compete in Shark Week(end), a weekend-long mini-tournament to test and explore the game’s newest venue, Aquarium. The new venue’s most notable feature is a massive shark that swims back and forth between the sniper and the party, creating temporary (but significant, and predictable) occlusion.

Given the uptick in participation from the Teien tournament in December, the proceedings on the first day lasted roughly three-and-a-half-hours, and not everyone completed every match. Most players played 42 games. The top four slots were as follows:
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Game Finder 2.0 Released

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We’ve just released a new, dramatically improved version of the SCL Game Finder.

Game Finder 1.0 allowed you to search for any player, in any role, with any outcome, within a specific division and on a specific venue, for the previous two regular seasons. Version 2.0 is a massive leap forward in both available information and options.
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Teien Tournament – Full Results

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Day 1: Round Robin

The first day of the Teien Tournament was a round robin featuring 17 competitors. Each player was scheduled to play every other player for two games: one as spy, and one as sniper. At the end, the four players with the most wins advanced to a small bracket to be played on the second day.
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Want To Be a Better Spy? Be Infamous

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In real life, spies benefit from being anonymous. In SpyParty, they benefit from being notorious.

SpyParty is a game with a lot of skill expression. It’s also very difficult—even those at the top level of play will often say that they feel like they aren’t good enough. Both of these things stem from the fact that SpyParty is a multiplayer strategy game. The mechanics of play and counter-play are well documented and explored within the community, and adapting to your opponent is considered a vital skill to victory. If you don’t know what your opponent is doing to beat you, how can you possibly beat them?
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Challenger Tournament – Finals

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Finals

After nearly four months, the final two Challengers have finished, and the champion of the post-season tournament is #10 seed lazybear, who won 9-6 over #1 seed turnipboy.


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Challenger Tournament – Semifinals

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Semifinals

And then there were two.

Individual games of SpyParty are mental sprints, but for the players still playing in Challenger, SCL Season 4 has been a marathon. After ten weeks of regular season games and five more in the Challenger tournament, 368 total Challenger matches have been played, and now there’s just one left. The prize is automatic promotion from the chaotic mess and mass of its unforgiving Swiss system, to Iron and possibly beyond.

Our Challenger Tournament finalists are set, and they followed very different paths. Our first finalist is turnipboy, the #1 seed who narrowly missed auto-promotion in the regular season, got a first round bye, and has won all of their four matches by a comfortable 9-4 margin. Their last step to the finals was a 9-4 defeat of plastikqs.

turnipboy’s opponent is the #10 seed, lazybear, who joined in Week 3, did not secure a bye, and narrowly won their first round matchup with walliard, 9-7. But the lazybear that began the tournament is clearly not the one still in it, as he’s scored better margins against better players since then, most notably a 9-5 win against #3 seed sheph just this week.

The final match will be cast this Sunday at 3:00 PM PT on the official SpyParty Twitch channel.

The full Challenger Tournament bracket is available here.