Who's the Bot guide: reading four characters and catching the impostor

What this game is

Five characters sit around a table: you, plus Milo (a corgi who never stops talking), Juno (cautious, writes everything down), Pip (a cat who talks in daydreams) and Rex (cool shades, terrible puns). Four of them have the same secret word. One of them has a slightly different word.

You have three rounds. Each round all five seats speak once, so the whole game is fifteen messages, and only three of them are yours. After the final round everybody votes, the impostor is revealed, and both words are shown side by side.

Who's the BotA five-person group chat where one impostor holds a slightly different word. Chat three rounds, then vote out the bot.Play free in your browser →

There is no timer and no losing screen. Two outcomes count as a good round: you catch the impostor, or you were the impostor and nobody pinned you down.

What you are actually looking for

The pairs are all near neighbours: coffee and tea, sofa and bed, pizza and burger, rainbow and sunset, penguin and polar bear. There are 49 pairs spread over five packs, and the packs unlock as you play: Everyday and Food from the start, Travel after 2 games, Fun & shows after 4, Nature after 6.

Because the two words are so close, the tell is never a slip of the tongue. A line that names the word outright is rejected and rewritten, so what you are listening for is a description that fits the wrong word. If four people describe something warm and comforting at breakfast and one person describes a cup you sip slowly in the afternoon, that person is holding tea while everyone else holds coffee.

The most reliable habit is to compare, not to judge. After every line, ask yourself: does this hint fit both words, or only one? Only-one is the evidence.

The 40-character rule

Each round you get exactly one message, capped at 40 characters. That is roughly six or seven words, which sounds tight until you realise how little a hint needs. The game ships eight openers you can pull up with the idea button, and three are offered at random each time: "It makes me feel…", "You can find it near…", "I always think of it when…", "It sounds like…". They are deliberately word-free, so they can never betray you.

Two things will bounce your message: typing your own secret word anywhere in it, and a small list of rude words. Both are caught before your turn is consumed, so a rejected message costs you nothing except a second of your time.

When to stop talking and vote

After rounds one and two the game offers you a choice: go to another round, or vote now. Voting early is a real option and sometimes the right one, because two rounds of chat is often enough to hear a mismatch and a third round mostly adds noise.

What happens at the vote

You tap one of the four character cards to nominate them, then confirm. The other four seats vote too, and the tally decides it.

The behaviour of those votes is deliberately mild, which is worth knowing:

• When you are a civilian, each character identifies the impostor outright about half the time, and otherwise picks someone at random.
• When you are the impostor, that recognition rate drops sharply, to roughly 0.32 plus 0.08 for each round completed. So a bot caught in round one is much safer than one caught in round three. Surviving to the vote is genuinely easier as the impostor.
• Crucially, you do not need zero votes to win as the impostor. You only need to be the most-voted seat, and a tie counts in your favour. Dumping your suspicion on one loud character and keeping quiet yourself is often stronger than spreading it.

Free games and links

You get five free games per device per day, counted locally and reset by your calendar date. When they are gone the Play button greys out and the message says so.

Two kinds of links exist, and they are easy to confuse:

• A challenge link puts your friend on the identical board: the same word pair and the same hidden impostor seat. It is a fair comparison, not a rematch against you.
• A relay room is five seats filled by different people taking turns on the same conversation. You play your own turns first, then send the link. Whoever opens it next sees your recorded messages already in the chat and adds theirs; seats nobody has claimed are played by the characters. A room holds five people, and once it is full you start your own. Your vote is recorded too, and it is replayed faithfully when the room resolves.

There is also a host screen for a physical party: you set a player count, get a party code, and each player opens their own card link to see only their own word. You can use the links on ordinary phones without any cards.

Progress you can actually track

The home screen keeps a catch rate across the games where you were a civilian, a detective level that rises every two catches, an impostor level that rises every two escapes, and your fastest catch measured in rounds. The leaderboard board tracks the best single lines players have posted and a catch-rate table.

If you play without a connection, the game still runs end to end; the characters simply fall back to their written lines, and the leaderboard says it needs the internet. On the reliability of the generated lines across all seven languages, quality varies by language, so treat the characters as personalities rather than as consistent speakers.

A reliable routine

1. On the deal card, commit your word and note what it is not.
2. In round one, use a corner-of-the-mouth hint that only your word satisfies.
3. Keep a running note on which two seats keep describing incompatible worlds.
4. Take the early vote the moment you can name the odd seat with a specific reason, rather than collecting more lines.
5. As the impostor, mirror the room's mood, agree with the majority, and cast doubt on the most confident speaker.

An estimate, since no official timings exist: fifteen messages with a short typing pause for each character works out to somewhere around five to eight minutes per game.