Play Mafia online with AI bots
When you play Mafia online with AI bots, a full ten-seat game is ready whenever you are: nine AI players sit with you, talk, accuse, defend, bluff and vote. When the game ends, a coach review shows what your reads got right and wrong. This page explains what a game against the bots is like, how it differs from a live table, and where bots stop being a good stand-in for people.
What it is likeWhat the bots doA game, step by stepBots, live table or friendsCoach reviewHonest limitsWhat it costs
What it is like to play against the bots
A practice table has ten seats: you and nine bots. There is no other human at the table and no chat. Open it from the home page; you can try it without an account.
There is no microphone at a practice table: on your turn you act with the buttons — make a statement, nominate a player or pass — and the rest of the time you listen to the bots in turn. The host and the bots are AI, and their voices are synthetic: the table says so on screen, and the bots’ voices are made on your own device, not on our server. You can check any clip from the host with the AI voice check.
What the bots do
Each bot is an AI player made for this one game, not a general chatbot. It has its own character and its own role. By day it speaks in turn, nominates and votes. It cannot hear you: it reacts to whom you nominate and how you vote, not to your voice. A bot on the mafia side lies to you; a bot on the town side has to decide whom to believe.
When you name a bot, it can get rattled and start to justify itself. An innocent bot reacts to pressure the same way a guilty one does, so a nervous voice alone proves nothing. That is the lesson: a read has to rest on what was said and how the table voted, not on a feeling.
A practice game, step by step
- Open the home page and start the practice table. No account is needed to try it.
- The roles are dealt. Ten seats: seven red (the town, one of them the sheriff) and three black (the mafia, one of them the don). The black players know each other; the red players do not.
- Night: the mafia shoot one player, the don looks for the sheriff, the sheriff checks one player. Players with no night move wait.
- Day: the bots speak in turn; on your turn you make a statement, nominate one player or pass. The table votes one player out.
- Night and day alternate. The town wins when no black player is left; the mafia win when they are as many as the red players.
- When the game ends, the coach review opens (next sections). The full rules, with every number, are on How to play Mafia.
Bots, a live table or a room with friends
These are three different ways to play. The bots are the quickest to start; the other two put real people in the seats.
| Practice table (bots) | Live table | Room with friends | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who sits with you | Nine bots | People you do not know; bots take any seat nobody fills | Your friends; bots take any seat nobody fills |
| Account | Not needed to try | A free account | Friends join with a code and a nickname, no sign-up |
| Age | No other human at the table | Everyone 18 or older | Everyone 18 or older |
Use the bots to learn the rules and to try a read you are not sure of. Speaking for a minute is practised only at a live table or in a room, where the microphone opens on your turn. Use a live table or a room when you want to learn how real people sound when they bluff. Rooms are explained in How to play Mafia online with friends.
The coach review after the game
After a game the Coach review goes round by round and compares your reads with the engine’s, and it shows the specific evidence you had in front of you and did not use. Free players get one full review a day; the rest of the time they see their score, how many reads they missed and the day and seat where the game turned, but not which reads they missed. While the beta lasts, anyone signed in gets the full coach review up to 3 times a day.
With an account, a finished game opens again from its own link for 30 days, with its review.
Honest limits
- Bots are bots. They are AI players, their voices are synthetic, and every table says so. A bot has no face, no habits and no bad evening, so it cannot show you how your friends bluff.
- A practice table has no other human and no free-text chat. If you want to talk to people, sit at a live table or open a room.
- The site is in beta: accounts and games may be deleted without notice.
What it costs
Playing is free, and free play is not metered. Purchases are switched off for now. While the beta lasts, a private room is free for anyone signed in: up to 3 rooms at a time, nothing is charged. After the beta a new room gets 3 free evenings first (within 30 days), with no card, if that room and your address have not had them; we will tell you before the beta ends. The plans and the current price are on the Pricing page.
Who it is for
- People who have never played: the bots let you learn the rules at your own speed; the free school teaches the game in short lessons and roles tells you who is who.
- Players who know the game and want a table at any hour.
- Anyone with nobody to play with tonight: you can play Mafia online with bots at any hour.