Full disclosure: A review copy of Totally Human was provided by Bitewing Games.

Social deduction! It’s a genre that I routinely clown on for being a lot of aggressive yelling in certain groups which is a lot. That said, there are always new innovations happening in the genre, so we are duty-bound to try new social deduction games as they come out to try and see what are great, what are … not my favorite, and the rare extremely-well-implemented-game-that-I-do-not-like. I do have a hub page for my favorites, though, if you’re into that. Bitewing has thrown their hat into the ring with Totally Human, a social deduction / party game hybrid, so let’s see how it goes!

In Totally Human, the aliens have invaded, so it’s time to seek your fortunes elsewhere. Preferably another planet entirely, to be honest. Unfortunately, the aliens can look pretty convincingly human, and they like to eat you. You’re surprisingly nutritious! You don’t want to get eaten, so you’d ideally leave them behind. They can have the planet. You’ve already messed it up enough. To figure out who you can let on the rocket, you’ve decided to do some basic get-to-know-you questions. Normally, a bad idea, but thankfully the aliens haven’t been on the planet long enough to really pick up on cultural nuances. Unfortunately, some of the humans are weirdos, so your screening might be a so-so outcome. Can you successfully get on a rocket with no aliens, or will you get eaten during your escape?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

Each player gets a character! This starts with a button for that character:

Their standees:

And their answer cards:

Then, shuffle the Role Cards and deal each player three:

If you get three Humans, you’re a Human! If you get any Alien, you’re an Alien! This means that a game could be all Aliens, all Humans, or any combination. Be careful! Set the Word Cards nearby:

Set the Question Cards nearby:

Set out the six Rocket Cards:

You’re ready to start!

Gameplay

Totally Human is all about getting onto a rocket and going into space with people you trust! Or getting eaten by an alien. Or something in between. Let’s dive in!

To start a round, flip an Adjective Card and a Noun Card and put them together, then add a Question Card. If the Question Card has a limited number of Shapes on the side, the Noun Card needs to have one of those shapes. If not, draw again.

Then, each player chooses an answer to the question and reveals them simultaneously! If you’re a Human, you can choose any answer to the question. If you’re an Alien, you must use one of the three numbers on your Role Cards. Once you reveal, everyone can discuss and react, but you also place one of your Standees on your answer so you can remember who said what. And you’ll want to remember! Then start a new round.

Once three questions have been answered, it’s time to get on the rockets! Everyone places their standee on a rocket (it can be empty or not) and then the jockeying starts! Players play and move simultaneously, and you can move to an empty rocket for free. To enter a rocket that someone else is in, you have to get permission from every player on the rocket. Once everyone is comfortable with the other people (hopefully!) on the rocket, they can hit the big button to LAUNCH! The rocket jets upwards and exits play. Once all rockets have launched, the game ends.

Going from smallest number of people on a rocket to largest, everyone reveals their identities. If you’re an Alien on a rocket with at least one Human, you win! If you’re all Aliens or there are no Humans on your Alien rocket, you lose. If you’re on the largest Human-only rocket, you win! If there’s a tie for largest Human-only rocket, you … lose. Good luck!

Player Count Differences

With more players you do successfully avoid the all-Alien game (can only happen at 5 or fewer players), but you will run into an issue where someone has to share a rocket at 7+ players, since there are only six. Naturally, it’s better to have someone on your rocket regardless of your role, but with more people you have to make more calls. I think the extra chaos makes the game more fun, but you naturally take on more risk and things can get even more silly. The chaos works to the game’s benefit, though, because it encourages parties to split and try to rocket off in suboptimal situations to try and avoid an Alien (and then half the time you still end up with an Alien). I don’t have a ton of preferences, here! It’s a hoot to play.

Strategy

• You can’t necessarily trust a player who agrees with you on an answer. Sometimes an alien gets lucky and lands on the same thing with you and offers a perfect explanation that gels with what you’re saying.
• That said, a player that never aligns with anyone on anything is likely worth just keeping off of your rocket on principle. Either they’re specifically not matching with other players because they can’t or they’re being intentionally contrarian. If it’s the latter, well, I don’t particularly want to help them win. There’s likely a lesson there.
• If you’re an alien, be careful with your forced answers. If you goof yourself and get stuck with only bad answer options, you better be ready to justify your answer. If you can’t, you’re not getting invited on any rockets, and you will certainly lose the game.
• Watch out for players making weird choices. We had one where a player wanted to evenly split the rockets, which doesn’t make any sense if everyone’s human (everyone would lose). That kind of made us all suspicious, and we were right to be. If you’re hearing a logically confusing argument, maybe suspect that person of chicanery?
• The largest all-human rocket wins and any alien that eats a person wins, so be wary near the end of the game. People are almost always going to try and argue their way on to your rocket, and you’re right to be suspicious of them. The problem is, everyone else wins if they’re on your rocket, essentially. You only win if you can get on someone else’s rocket (unless they’re an Alien). A lot of people are going to be making a lot of excuses.
• Sometimes you just wanna get out. It’s okay to leave people behind! It’s not the most ethical thing you could be doing, but honestly sometimes it’s better than to take a risk on them being an Alien. They’ll understand. Plus, sometimes getting left behind is good! You can end up on your own Alien-free rocket and you’ll win the game.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• I really don’t like social deduction as a genre, but this is a very fun one. I think it’s a little less argument-prone than other games that I’ve played, and letting someone onto your rocket is a group decision. Plus, the game is extremely fast in a way that reminds me of the social deduction elements of something like Don’t Mess With Cthulhu. Fast social deduction games are never a bad thing. But I also think that it spawns a lot of silly and fun discussions! You just have to assume that someone in that discussion is being disingenuous. Which is also silly!
• I also love the way that roles are distributed in this game; it’s super clever. It’s kind of a Bloom filter, almost, since you’re getting the options randomly and all it takes is one alien to tilt you to being an alien. It’s very cool!
• Hiding a get-to-know-you game where you have to argue silly answers is very nifty. It’s a good way to get to know people by couching all the normal social deduction elements inside of more silly discussions, especially since the answers are randomly generated silliness. Who is going to seriously argue in favor of a “Fluffy Detective” and get mad if someone doesn’t agree with your answer? But if you’re debating who is most helpful in an apocalypse, maybe a Fluffy Detective will keep you warm? It’s worth discussing.
• The art style is delightful and whimsical. I like all the little guys running around and their alien!sonas are really fun as well. The colors are fun and inviting and even the Answer Cards look good! It’s great.
• The various winning configurations are super interesting. I like that multiple distinct groups of players can win. A bunch of humans can win as a group by surviving together in a rocket and then aliens can win if they eat even one person, which leaves you a lot of options! Everyone can also lose, which is a little funny.
• I appreciate that you have to keep your role cards in your hand. If you didn’t, then Aliens would constantly be looking at them and Humans wouldn’t be, which would be a pretty obvious tell. This way, everyone’s forced to look at them at all times, so there’s never any confusion.

Mehs

• An all-alien game is feasible and kind of a mess. Technically, nobody can win, but you won’t find that out until much later. If you know it’s possible, it can make the game much sillier. But it does seem like there should be some kind of outcome if that happens, but it can only happen at <= 5 players, I believe.

Cons

• There are some vague issues that can come up where you can get forcibly outed by just a question having a canonical “right” answer. Since aliens are limited in their choices, sometimes you’re stuck justifying an absolutely abysmal answer when everyone else has agreed on a canonical choice. That’s a huge bummer and there’s not much you can do about it, but a particularly skilled player can likely argue their way out of anything. There’s some idea that you could potentially metagame this by throwing in a weird answer every time you play so players think to expect that from you each game, but that’s not really something I’d recommend because metagaming is a little annoying.

Overall: 8.5 / 10

Totally Human is a blast! I was not expecting that. I wasn’t kidding; I usually hate social deduction games, these days, since they’re just a lot of arguing over nothing and it doesn’t always hit the way it used to for me. So I generally end up looking for alternate styles of social deduction games. Usually “someone has more information and you need to find out who”, like Insider, or “there are strict communication rules so players can’t dominate the conversation”, like Deception: Murder in Hong Kong; those are the social deduction games that usually work for me. This one ends up playing like a debate over silly topics and that, surprisingly, works. I think part of it is that there are a number of anti-frustration features in this, like the ability for different groups of players to win or the idea that you can very easily end up with no Aliens in the game at all! There’s also just some elegant design elements, like how roles are assigned or how Aliens are forced to answer based on their role cards. It keeps the game interesting and unique each time and it’s a lot of fun, and you get to know your friends better, even if they’re lying! Add in some fantastically whimsically and charming art and you’ve got a recipe for success. I’m looking forward to my next play, and if you’re looking for a low-intensity social deduction game, you enjoy silly questions and comical answers, or you just wanna eat a guy, Totally Human might be perfect for you! I’ve had a lot of fun playing it.

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