How to Play Liar Game: Players, Roles, Rounds and Voting

What you need and how many people

All you need is phones and friends. A room holds 3 to 12 players. The sweet spot is 4 to 8: everyone gets a turn quickly and the table stays lively. Once you go past 10, one lap of clues starts to drag, so it is worth switching to two liars. Two liars become available when there are 5 or more players in the room.

The standard way to play is one phone per person. The host taps "Create room", then "Copy link" and drops the link into the group chat; everyone taps it and joins. There is no sign up and no account, you just pick a nickname of up to 10 characters (it has to be unique within the room). If you are all sitting together, people can also scan the QR code on the host's screen or type the 6-character room code. Only one phone at the table? Use Pass one phone and hand it around.

The roles: citizens and liars

• Citizens get the secret word (for example, pancake) plus the topic (Food). Their job is to find the liar.
• The liar gets a card that just says "Liar" and shows the topic. They have to listen, piece the word together from other people's clues, and act like they knew it all along.
• In Fool liar mode the liar gets a similar but different word instead, so they do not even know they are the liar. See Rule variants for the details.

Your role card is only visible while you press and hold it (the screen says "Hold to reveal"). Let go and it hides again, so the person next to you cannot sneak a look. The topic is public, which means the liar at least knows the conversation is about food, animals or whatever the host picked.

How a round goes, step by step

1. The host chooses a topic (one of 21, or "Random"), the number of liars (1 or 2) and the mode (Classic or Fool liar), then taps "Start".
2. Role cards appear on every screen at the same moment. Each player holds their card to read it, then lets go.
3. A random speaking order is shown to everyone. Going around in that order, each player describes the word with one short phrase. The order changes every round.
4. After one lap (or two, if your group likes a longer discussion), the host taps "Start vote".
5. Everyone votes on their own phone for the person they think is the liar. You cannot vote for yourself. When the last vote is in, the counts are revealed all at once.
6. If the accused player is a liar, that liar gets one chance to type the secret word.
7. The result and the scoreboard appear. The host taps "Next round" and the same group keeps going with a new word.

Voting and who wins

If one player has the most votes, that player is accused. From there the round can go three ways:

• The accused player is a citizen: the liar wins.
• The accused player is the liar and types the word correctly: the liar still wins.
• The accused player is the liar and gets the word wrong: the citizens win.
• Tie for most votes: only the tied players are put up for a revote, once. If the revote is tied again, the liar wins.

The guess is forgiving about formatting. Spaces, capital letters, punctuation and accents are ignored, so "Pan Cake" counts as pancake. A different word with the same meaning, though, is wrong, so the liar should aim for the exact word. If someone is taking forever, the host can tap "End vote" and the result is decided with the votes received so far.

Every member of the winning side gets one win added to the scoreboard. When the liar wins, only the liar scores; when the citizens win, every citizen scores.

Example round: five friends, topic Food

Emma, Jake, Olivia, Tyler and Mia are hanging out on a Friday night. Emma hosts, sets the topic to Food, one liar, Classic mode, and starts. Four phones show the word "pancake". Tyler's phone shows only "Liar" and the topic Food.

The speaking order comes up as Olivia, Tyler, Mia, Emma, Jake. Olivia opens with "Sunday mornings". Tyler, with nothing to go on, plays it safe: "Better when someone else cooks it". Mia says "Stacks", Emma says "Syrup", and Jake says "Flip it at the right moment".

In the vote Tyler gets 3 votes and Jake gets 2, because Jake's clue sounded a little too much like a cooking tip. Tyler is accused and he is indeed the liar. He gets his chance and types "pancake": Mia's "Stacks" and Emma's "Syrup" pretty much handed it to him. Result: the liar wins and Tyler takes the point.

The lesson for the citizens is that their clues were too specific. How to confirm your teammates without giving the liar a free answer is covered in Strategy tips.

The next round and wrapping up

"Next round" keeps the same room and the same people and deals a new word. On the result screen the host can change the topic or the number of liars before continuing. A word that has already come up in your room will not appear again until that topic's words are used up. Anyone who joins while a round is in progress simply plays from the next round on.

A room expires once it has gone unused for 3 hours since the last activity, and is deleted within a day along with the nicknames and scores. Browse the word lists in Topics and words, and check the FAQ if anything is unclear.