Niklo Hidden

TTE SOUND LTD

About this game

A word game for a room full of people and a single phone. Everyone describes the same word in a few words. Some players are secretly working from an extra instruction nobody else can see, and the game is about whether the rest of you can hear it.

WHAT A ROUND LOOKS LIKE

1. Enter the names of everyone playing. The app decides how many spies the group needs and hands out the roles at random.
2. The phone goes round. Each player holds a button to see their role and lets go to hide it. Ordinary players are told to describe naturally. Spies are told to hide their instruction well. No spy learns who the other spies are, so they cannot coordinate.
3. The phone goes round a second time. Everyone reads the same word. Spies also read a private rule that belongs to them alone and appears only once in that round: use a colour, use exactly six words, turn it into a question, work in a number, mention an animal, start with a particular letter.
4. Everyone types one description, four to eight words long, without using the word itself. The app catches the word in every form people attempt, including different cases, endings and letters spaced apart. While a spy types, a private indicator shows whether their hidden rule is satisfied. They can send an answer that fails it, but it will not count for their team.
5. The answers are shuffled and cleaned up so they all look the same: same case, same spacing, same punctuation, labelled A, B, C and so on. Letters are reassigned every round and nothing reveals the order they were written in.
6. The phone goes into the middle. The answers are read out. A timer runs while you argue about which phrasing sounds too deliberate.
7. Everyone votes in secret for one answer, and cannot vote for their own. The app reveals who wrote the most suspected answer and stops there. The role stays hidden.
8. The next round begins with a new word and new instructions.

HOW IT ENDS

After the last round the group votes again, this time on people rather than answers, naming as many suspects as there are spies. Then everything is revealed at once: who was a spy, what every player wrote each round, what instruction each spy was working from and whether they managed it.

Ordinary players win by correctly naming every spy. Spies win if at least one of them escaped the accusation and the team completed enough of its hidden rules, so playing it safe all game is not a winning strategy either.

WHAT THE APP TAKES CARE OF

The forbidden word, blocked in all the obvious disguises. Identical formatting so nobody is identified by their typing. Neutral screens between players so the next person sees nothing. Automatic checking of hidden rules, which means no arguments about whether something counted. A round history that records words, suspicions and accusations while keeping every role secret until the end.

SETTINGS

Discussion timer length, word difficulty from concrete objects up to abstract ideas, number of rounds, light and dark themes, sound and vibration. An unfinished game can be resumed, and a rematch keeps the same names while reshuffling the roles.

PRACTICAL DETAILS

Four to eight players in the same room, one phone between you, about fifteen minutes a game. Nobody is eliminated, so everyone is still playing when the accusations are made.

Works entirely offline. No account, no registration, no online mode, and nothing anyone types ever leaves the device.