Shadow Council is a free, browser-based social deduction game built for groups of friends and family. It belongs to the same family as games like Werewolf, Mafia and Spyfall — games where some players have a secret and the rest must work out who. But Shadow Council was designed around one specific idea that sets it apart: it is meant to be played alongside something else, not instead of it.
Most party games demand the table's full attention. Everyone stops, gathers round, and plays until the game ends. That is wonderful in its own right, but it means the game competes with the dinner, the conversation, the evening itself.
Shadow Council was built to do the opposite. It is a quiet layer that sits underneath an ordinary gathering. A round of discussion is simply the group talking the way it would anyway — over a meal, on a long drive, on a slow holiday afternoon. The only difference is that two people in the room are hiding a word, and everyone is listening a little more closely than usual. When the host feels the moment is right, a vote happens in seconds, and the conversation carries on.
The result is a game that adds tension and attention to a gathering without ever taking it over. It can run for ten minutes or stretch across an entire dinner.
Two players are secretly assigned the role of Evil. Each receives one word from a related pair — anchor and compass, fika and lunch, storm and calm. The Evil pair must find each other by working their words into natural conversation, while the Good players listen for the tells and vote out who they suspect. A full explanation lives on the How to Play page, and tactics for both sides are covered in the Strategy guide.
Shadow Council runs entirely in a web browser. There is no app to install, no sign-up, and no personal information required — players choose only a display name, used for the duration of a single game. Everyone joins through a shared four-digit room code, and the game state syncs between phones in real time.
The design follows a few deliberate principles:
The secret word pairs are available in both English and Swedish, chosen per game by the host. The Swedish set leans toward everyday, conversational words — including some distinctly Swedish pairs — so that players who are not native English speakers can slip their word into talk just as easily.
Shadow Council is made and run by Patrik Stalbarg and hosted at greblats.com. It began as a game played among friends and was built out into something any group can pick up and play. The plan is for greblats.com to grow into a small home for games of this kind — light, sociable, and easy to start.
Questions, feedback, or a word pair you think belongs in the game? Get in touch at hello@greblats.com. For anything relating to data and privacy, see the Privacy Policy.
© 2026 Patrik Stalbarg · greblats.com