Runs in the background all night
Secret Missions
Turn the whole party into a covert game where nobody can be completely trusted.
Everyone gets secret missions to pull off during the real party without being caught. Normal conversations slowly become suspicious, because everyone else is scheming too.
- 4–20 players
- Runs all event
Free to set up. Start with Secret Missions, then choose 3 games for A$10 or all 6 for A$15 before you pay.
A short look inside a sample BanterBox, with selected examples from all 6 games. Free, no email needed.
How to play
There are no rounds and nobody needs to gather around a table. Deal the missions near the start of the event, set a deadline and let everyone get back to the party.
Step 1
Get your three secret missions
Everyone gets three private objectives. Read yours, hide the card and work out how you're going to make them happen without looking like you're trying to make them happen.
Mission in play
Get another guest to hold something for you.
Jake takes it while you tie your shoe.
Mission complete
Step 2
Act completely normal
Work your missions into real conversations and moments. The trick is not simply getting the result. It is getting there without anyone realising you were steering things in that direction. The harder you try to look innocent, the less innocent you will probably look. When one lands, quietly tick it off.
Step 3
Catch somebody in the act
Think somebody is engineering something suspiciously specific? Call them out before the mission lands and say what you think they're trying to make happen. Get it right and their mission is dead. Get it wrong and you lose a point. Which means loudly accusing everyone of everything is a terrible strategy, unfortunately.
Step 4
Reveal the operation
When the deadline hits, everyone finally shows their card. Score the missions that landed, subtract your wrong accusations and find out which apparently normal conversations were being engineered the entire time. Highest total wins. Everyone else gets several hours of the night retroactively ruined for them.
The game happens while the party does.
Everyone gets their missions, then the night carries on. The fun is trying to pull them off without anyone realising what you are doing.
How we turn your stories into missions
Your inside jokes become somebody else's covert objective.
A mission works best when it grows out of something your group already knows: an obsession, a running argument, an old story or a habit everyone has noticed. Ava talks about her Lisbon trip constantly? Somebody's mission becomes steering the conversation to Lisbon without saying it first. A mission names its own topic, so nobody needs to know the story to pull it off, and it works for anyone, including the guest of honour.
Start it early and let the paranoia do the rest
You never stop the party to play it
There is no table, no turn and no moment where the whole room has to stop what it was doing. Hand the cards out once and the game hides underneath everything else.
The paranoia starts before anything happens
Once everyone knows secret missions are live, completely ordinary behaviour starts to look deliberate. Why are you asking about my holiday? Why do you suddenly care what song comes on next? Sometimes nobody is even attempting a mission. That does not stop the accusations.
It all cashes out at once
Missions can land hours before the deadline and stay secret. Then the cards come out and half the evening suddenly makes sense. The suspicious conversation was deliberate. The person you confidently accused was doing absolutely nothing.
Questions
How personalised are the missions?
Some missions come directly from the habits, phrases and stories you give us. The rest are strong general missions that work at any party, because a personal detail only goes in when it creates something a player can actually pull off. The result is a full game that feels like your group without forcing a private reference into every mission.
What happens if somebody catches my mission?
They have to call it before you complete it and name the exact outcome they think you are trying to make happen. If they are right, that mission is cancelled and scores 0; if they are wrong, they lose 1 point. Simply shouting that somebody is doing a mission does not count.
Can we play another game while Secret Missions is running?
Yes. Secret Missions is designed to run underneath the event while people eat, drink, talk or sit down for another BanterBox game. Set a deadline, keep the cards hidden and reveal everything when time is up.
See the other games
Every game plays differently. Mix and match from the personalised BanterBox collection.
Majority Rules
The biggest crowd wins every round.
The Outsider
One player does not know the secret word. Give a clue that proves you know it, spot who is bluffing, and do not make the answer too easy to steal.
Bet Your Mate
Guess the number. Bet your chips.
Sketchy Business
Everyone is drawing the same thing. One person has no idea what it is.
The Pitch
Two situations. One line that somehow works in both.
Trust nobody
Ready to make everyone suspicious?
Some of the missions will come straight from your group's habits, stories and running jokes. All of them are secret, and all of them are hard to pull off without getting caught. Hand out the cards, set the deadline and let the scheming begin.
Create Secret Missions