If you’ve spent the last few years yelling at your TV during The Traitors, or you’ve worn out every Jackbox pack you own, Ghost Camp has a new one for your group chat. Forest of Deceit, the social deduction party game from Thomas Mackinnon, launched today on Nintendo Switch for $9.99, joining its existing home on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.
The pitch is simple and a little unhinged: you and 3 to 7 friends are stranded in a forest, a storm is coming, and if your shelter isn’t built in time, everyone dies. Cozy stuff. The catch is that the forest has driven some of your group mad, and those newly minted Traitors are quietly sabotaging your resource pile, sending people wandering off into the trees, and generally rooting for the storm to win.
It’s the same DNA as Werewolf or Mafia, filtered through the specific paranoia of watching Claudia Winkleman’s cast turn on each other. You gather, you vote, you accuse the wrong person with total confidence, and you live with it.
How Forest of Deceit Actually Plays
Here’s the loop: the group heads into the woods to collect resources for the shelter. Traitors can slip bad resources into the pile or try to strand people in the forest, quietly working against the clock while pretending to help. After a few rounds of this, the group stops to talk it out and votes someone off as a suspected Traitor.
If the Innocents finish the shelter before the storm hits, they win. If the Traitors stall things out long enough, the storm rolls in and takes everyone with it.
What sets Forest of Deceit apart from a straight Jackbox comparison is that it’s fully customizable. Ghost Camp built in house rules and adjustable game options, so once your group has run through it a few times, you can start bending it toward whatever keeps your specific friend group screaming at each other the loudest.
You Only Need One Copy to Play
Like Jackbox, Forest of Deceit is built around bring-your-own-device play. One person hosts the game on Switch, Steam, PlayStation, or Xbox, and everyone else joins in through a web browser on their phone, tablet, or laptop. That’s not just convenience. It’s how the game hides secret information from the rest of the table, which matters a lot when you’re one of the Traitors and you’d very much like to keep that to yourself.
It works for local game nights and for online play over screen share, and Ghost Camp specifically calls out Discord as a good fit for remote groups.
Sylvester McCoy Narrates, and That’s Not Nothing
The Narrator role goes to Sylvester McCoy, who you’ll know as the Seventh Doctor from Doctor Who, or as Radagast from The Hobbit trilogy. Having a recognizable voice guide you through the paranoia and the vote-outs gives the whole thing a bit more theater than the average party game, and it’s a smart casting choice for a game that’s leaning hard into dramatic, reality-TV energy.
Who Made Forest of Deceit
Forest of Deceit comes from Thomas Mackinnon, the creator behind THE CORRIDOR and It Takes a War. Ghost Camp is publishing the game, which had already built a following on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox before today’s Switch release brought it to a portable, couch-friendly format that fits the “pass it around at game night” pitch even better than the other platforms do.
Should You Buy Forest of Deceit?
If your group already loves social deduction games, The Traitors, Werewolf, or Mafia, this is an easy yes at $9.99. The BYOD setup means you’re not stuck passing a single controller around, the house rules give it staying power past the first few sessions, and the Switch release specifically makes it a strong pick for actual in-person game nights, which is where this style of game lives or dies.
