Who is the Impostor?

Winning at Impostor requires a delicate balance of vagueness and specificity. If you are a civilian, your clue must be clear enough to prove you know the secret word to your allies, but obscure enough to keep the Impostor in the dark. It's a high-wire act of communication.

For the Impostor, the game is one of high-stakes improvisation. You must listen intently to every clue given before you, looking for patterns and commonalities. A confident delivery can often mask a complete lack of knowledge. Remember, you don't need to know the word; you just need to convince everyone else that you do.

Advanced players often use 'meta-clues'—references to inside jokes or shared knowledge that the Impostor couldn't possibly know. However, be careful! If your clue is too obscure, you might be mistaken for the Impostor yourself. The voting phase is just as important as the clue phase; use your persuasive skills to shift suspicion onto others.

Social deduction games trace their roots back to the mid-20th century, but they exploded in popularity with games like Mafia and Werewolf. These games introduced the concept of an informed minority versus an uninformed majority, a mechanic that creates natural tension and drama.

Impostor builds on this rich tradition by stripping away the complex roles and night phases, distilling the experience down to its purest form: word association and bluffing. It's a modern evolution of the genre, designed for the fast-paced, attention-economy era.