Shadow Council is a real-time multiplayer party game of secrets, suspicion and conversation. It is designed to be played as a side activity — something that runs quietly alongside a dinner, a long car journey, a holiday evening or any gathering where a group of people are already talking. Nobody has to stop what they are doing. The game lives in the conversation itself.
Everyone plays from their own phone. There is nothing to download and no account to create. One person hosts, shares a four-digit room code, and the rest of the table joins. This guide explains everything you need to run a great game, from the first room code to the final vote.
One player taps Host game, enters a name, and chooses the language of the secret words — English or Swedish. The app generates a four-digit room code. Everyone else taps Join game, types that code, and enters their own name. When at least four players have joined, the host starts the council.
The moment the game begins, the app secretly assigns roles. Two players become the Evil pair. Everyone else is Good. Each player sees their own role privately on their own screen, then taps to confirm they have read it. Nobody else sees what your screen showed.
If you are Evil, you are one of two secret partners. Each of you receives a single word drawn from a related pair — for example one of you holds anchor and the other holds compass. You are shown your own word and your partner's word, but you are not told who your partner is. That is the puzzle at the heart of the game.
Your goal is to find your partner by listening for their word slipping into ordinary conversation — and to do the same yourself, working your word into the talk so naturally that the Good players never notice it. If you can identify each other and survive the voting, Evil wins.
If you are Good, you receive no secret word. You know only one thing for certain: you are not Evil. Everyone else at the table is a suspect. Two people are quietly steering the conversation toward their hidden words, and your job is to notice it. Listen for words that feel slightly too deliberate, follow-ups that land a little too neatly, two people who seem unusually interested in the same odd topic.
At the start of every round one player is quietly named the Arbiter, shown openly to the whole table on the discussion and voting screens. The Arbiter has one job: if a vote ends level between two or more players, the Arbiter chooses which one of them is eliminated, rather than the game removing everyone tied. A new Arbiter is picked each round, so the role moves around.
In the final round, when only two players are left, the Arbiter is instead drawn from the players who are already eliminated. Since those two finalists both vote in the final round, this keeps the deciding hand neutral — neither of the last two gets to settle their own fate. The Arbiter is shown to everyone regardless of role, so holding it never reveals whether you are Good or Evil.
Good wins when both Evil players have been eliminated. Evil wins if the Evil players outlast the Good ones — once Evil can no longer be outvoted, the council has fallen.
In the final round, when only two players remain, everyone votes — including players who were already eliminated. This keeps the last, most important decision in the hands of the whole table rather than a single pair.
© 2026 Patrik Stalbarg · greblats.com