Research Guides: Educational Games: Social & Deduction

Games with the Social/Deduction mechanic have hidden information that the players are trying to discover individual or cooperatively throughout. Often using other mechanics to meet certain conditions they can then acquire this hidden information to earn points or achieve other victory conditions.

Codenames, Dixit, and Balderdash are all examples of games using the Social/Deduction mechanic.

Codenames
In Codenames, players work in teams to try and discover all of the agents locations in a field of cards, without finding the assassin and before the other team finds all of their agents. This is achieved by on player giving single word and single number clue pair to their team mates.
Dixit
In Dixit, players take turns selecting one of their cards, that has a picture on it, and try to describe it in a way such that some of the other players can identify it from a larger set. After the description each player chooses one of their own cards that they think might match that description. The choices that players make in voting on what they think is the original players card scores points.
Balderdash
In Balderdash, each player, in turn, draws a card with a random word, factoid, or piece of trivia on it. The other players all write out a definition or explanation that they think matches the information on the card. The original player writes out the correct information and then reads all of the things (correct and player supplied), then voting ensues to try and identify the correct/matching pair.