Questions
What this is, what it needs, and what it deliberately will not do. The short version: you need five to ten people in one room and a phone each, and nothing else.
Do I need the physical Secret Hitler game?
No. The app replaces every physical component - the role cards, the party membership cards, the ballots, the policy tiles, the board and the placards. You need five to ten people and a phone each.
Can I play Secret Hitler online with this?
Yes, with one caveat: bring your own voice chat. Everyone opens the same lobby code from wherever they are and the game runs exactly as it does at a table. What it does not ship is chat or voice, because it was built for people already talking out loud in one room. Over a call on Discord, Zoom or anything else, it works.
How many phones do we need?
One each. You can also open the shared board on a laptop or a TV, on as many screens as you like, but that is optional - the game runs perfectly well on phones alone.
Is it free?
Yes, and it has no ads, no accounts and no sign-up. Secret Hitler is licensed non-commercially, so this adaptation cannot be sold or monetised and is not trying to be.
How many players do you need for Secret Hitler?
Five at minimum and ten at most. Table size genuinely changes the game: the split of liberals to fascists shifts, the presidential powers on the board move, and from seven players up Hitler is no longer told who his fascists are.
Can other people see my role on my screen?
Only if you show them. Every secret is hidden until you ask for it, and while it is hidden it is not on the page at all. Your role and an investigation result sit behind a press-and-hold veil: let go and they are gone. The policies you drew are shown and hidden with a button, because you have to think with them in front of you - and they put themselves away the moment you switch tabs or lock the phone.
What happens if a phone dies in the middle of a game?
That player opens the site on any device and joins the lobby under the same name they were playing under; the game recognises the seat and asks for a claim PIN. The host issues one from Host tools and reads it out. The old device is invalidated and the game continues, role and all.
Does the game survive a refresh or a lost connection?
Yes. Your seat is held by a token in the browser, so a refresh, a screen lock or a dropped connection costs nothing. The server also snapshots every lobby to disk, so a restart or a crash does not kill a game in progress.
Is there a game log to check what happened earlier?
Deliberately not. The board shows what a physical table would show right now. Arguing about what happened three rounds ago is the game, not a feature.
What is it like to play remotely?
Workable, and a little more demanding than at a table. A few things are tuned for people who can see each other: you are told who your fellow fascists are once and never again, a cast ballot is not shown back to you, there is no game log to scroll, and nothing is ever timed out, so the table waits on whoever wandered off. None of that stops a game; it just means everyone has to pay attention the way they would in person.
Do we need a moderator or a narrator?
No. The app deals the roles, runs the reveal, collects the votes simultaneously, enforces term limits and executions, and applies the presidential powers. Nobody has to sit out to run it.
Something else
The full rules cover the game itself.