Review: The Traitors Anywhere by CityDays
Be warned: This WhatsApp-based version of the BBC series will take over your life and have you questioning every friendship...
Image: CityDays
With the finale of last year's The Celebrity Traitors drawing in nearly 15 million viewers, it's fair to say that the smash-hit BBC TV series is the closest thing we've got nowadays to appointment viewing. The show's mix of deceit, betrayal and subterfuge has proved to be utterly captivating television and has gone on to spawn versions in nearly forty countries around the globe.
UK-based fans of the series have been particularly spoilt, with an excellent immersive version of the experience located in Covent Garden and an upcoming stage show set to feature Nick Mohammed, due to open next year. The latest addition to this ever-growing list of Traitors-adjacent experiences is The Traitors: Anywhere, which reimagines the show as a WhatsApp-based social deduction game that plays out over the course of a week.
Produced by CityDays (who are no strangers to adapting TV series into interactive games with their scavenger-hunt-style experiences based on Race Across The World currently running in five cities across the UK), The Traitors: Anywhere takes every major element of the series - from breakfasts and daily missions through to round tables and murders under the cover of nightfall - and transplants it onto the phones of up to 30 players at a time.
After spending a nerve-wracking, exhausting and supremely stressful week playing the game with a group of friends turned enemies, we can confidently say this: The Traitors: Anywhere is the closest you’ll get to experiencing what it’s actually like to be on the TV series without having the run of a remote castle and several weeks off work for you and your friends. It's also some of the most fun we've had in years.
It had us questioning every friendship we had, losing sleep over potential gameplay decisions and taking up every free moment we had for a full week of our lives. Work, social commitments and day-to-day responsibilities all fell by the wayside as our Screen Time reached an all-time high, and we became completely engrossed in the game.
Photo: CityDays
So how does the experience work? Before the game begins, groups form a castle of anywhere from 8 to 30 players. The organiser (who sets up the game but is otherwise a regular player once proceedings are underway) arranges a date for the game to begin and has the ability to change the game's daily schedule to best suit those playing. By default, breakfast and each day's mission kick off at 07:30 and run until 13:30; the round table follows, concluding at 18:30; and the Traitors Conclave runs until 21:30, but these can be tweaked as required.
All players are added to a WhatsApp group chat, where breakfast, round table discussions and a lot of the generally devious behaviour takes place, but the missions, round table voting and murders all go via the game's Host, an automated WhatsApp account that delivers key information throughout the game (think of them as a virtual Claudia, and you're not too far off...).
Players are heavily encouraged to send video messages or voice notes through the Host during each banishment, which are later shared with the entire castle as the verdict comes in. Those who are banished or murdered have their ability to talk in the group chat removed, rendering them no longer in the game, but they're able to watch the chaos unfold throughout the remainder of the experience.
Image: Castle Dashboard in The Traitors: Anywhere
While most of the biggest reactions, slip-ups and accusations unfold in each castle's main group chat, the game quickly spreads far beyond it, with numerous other conversations springing up behind closed doors - whether it's additional group chats between players who trust each other, one-on-one chats between potential Faithfuls, or real-life interactions between those still in the game that no one can ever prove took place.
Outside of strategising, players can look forward to daily missions which take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes to complete and allow the castle to accrue gold and increase the total pot. The missions offer plenty of variety, ranging from multiple-choice quizzes about fellow players (all the information comes from a pre-game 'interview' each player completes) to Wordle-like games and team challenges that group players into smaller teams.
Besides bragging rights (not that any player worth their salt would reveal how well they did to the rest of the group...), they're the only opportunity for those still in the game to earn shields and other powers, which can have a significant impact on how the rest of the game unfolds, particularly when a shield prevents the Traitors from murdering a specific player.
It'll come as little surprise that the daily round tables and banishments are tense affairs. With so many conversations likely happening outside of the main group chat, it's not always clear which way the votes will go, and anyone presenting their theories has to be prepared to back them up with evidence to successfully get people on board. Because everything said in the main group chat stays there for the game's duration, there's a permanent record of how people are presenting themselves, and players can comb through it to their hearts' content.
Image: Role reveal in The Traitors:Anywhere
Thanks to the duration of the game (a week or more for larger groups), players will find themselves getting more and more invested with each passing day. While it's still shy of the three to four weeks it takes for the TV series to be filmed, The Traitors: Anywhere is the closest any spin-off has come to recreating the all-encompassing feeling of being in Ardross Castle, and discussions about each upcoming roundtable and who we suspected most dominated nearly every conversation we had that week.
Given the experience’s length, players will also inevitably come up against real-life commitments - another element of gameplay that’s unique to The Traitors: Anywhere.
During our game, a particularly lively round table was swiftly followed by several players having long-standing plans to see a West End show. Amongst the group, we later learned, was a Traitor who spent the evening biting their tongue and avoiding going on their phone for fear of blowing their cover. The deceit was so calculated that once the game was over, they admitted to researching which colours people find most trustworthy and planning their outfit accordingly, all in an attempt to avoid arousing suspicion.
For other players, this blurring of real life and the game lasted far longer, with several couples having suspicions of their partners for the duration of the game, turning what might look from the outside to be an alliance into another source of unease.
Image: Breakfast in The Traitors: Anywhere
Depending on what people's day jobs are, there's a chance that some players won't be incredibly active, but during our game, even those with the most time-intensive jobs managed to keep up with proceedings - even if it meant they had a couple hundred messages to catch up on while travelling home. Being quiet could therefore be both a genuine consequence of having a busy life and a useful strategy for anyone trying to avoid attention.
Given the price to play (£8.99 per player per game), the experience is remarkable value for money. Having made it to the endgame, we easily spent over 50 hours engaging with the game over the course of a week.
Those eliminated early inevitably get less time with the game, but watching the game unfold day by day still proved to be an engaging experience. Once players are eliminated from the game, they’re still able to complete each day’s missions from beyond the grave, working against each other to win a free pass to play again.
Our 18-strong castle has expressed interest in playing again in the future, but for the sake of our sanity, social lives and careers, we’ve agreed to let some time pass before re-entering the castle. It’s a phenomenal experience, but it takes over your life.
★★★★★
[Game passes gifted in exchange for an honest review]
The Traitors: Anywhere runs on WhatsApp for groups of up to 30 people. It's currently available to players in the UK and Ireland only. Game passes are priced from £8.99 per person, with discounts available for large groups. For more information and to buy game passes, visit thetraitorsanywhere.com.
