What Untrusted is
Untrusted is a text-based social deduction game with a hacking theme, played online in groups of 10 to 16 players. Everyone gets a hidden role: you either belong to the NETSEC group of hackers, you are an undercover AGENT sent to stop them, or you are a neutral class with its own separate objective. The game runs on hidden information and deception, in the same family as Werewolf and Mafia, but the theme is covering up a cybercrime operation rather than a village murder mystery.
Each round you work at your terminal: hacking into computers, reading logs, and using skills to press your advantage. There are 27 playable classes and more than 100 unique skills, so roles differ a lot from one game to the next. The two factions and the neutral classes each want something different, and no two matches are set up the same way.
How a group plays it together
You play as a full lobby, not in small teams, and your group needs 10 to 16 people in the match. From the first moment the table talks, you are reading people as much as reading logs: who claims what, who was where, whose story lines up with the data you pulled from a machine. Keeping your own personal log and cross-referencing it against other players' claims is the core loop for spotting the AGENTs hiding among the NETSEC crew.
Winning comes in several forms. NETSEC can gain root access on the target node, and can also simply kill off every AGENT. AGENTs win by eliminating all NETSEC members, or by receiving root access from the NETSEC operation leader. Neutral classes chase their own goals on top of that, so the end of a round can surprise everyone. Talks, accusations and betrayals matter as much as the abilities you fire.
Before you start
Expect confusion at the beginning. The game describes itself as needing knowledge that is an inch deep but a mile wide, and says you will be lied to and surprised right from the tutorial. Open the tutorial first, and treat early matches as learning rounds rather than ones you are meant to win.
Because there are many classes with distinct skills, a big part of the fun is learning what each role can do and how it signals intent. Reading logs carefully and checking claims against them is the practical skill to develop. The game also features a Discord integration, so a group already chatting together can pick it up quickly. The developer points to a friendly community for questions, so asking for help when a mechanic is unclear is normal here.