In Codenames, two teams compete to see who can guess all of their words correctly first but those words are hiding in plain sight in a 5×5 grid that includes the words of the other team, neutral words, and an assassin that will cause you to lose the game immediately if you guess it. One person on each team is a spymaster and only these two know which words belong to each team. Spymasters take turns giving one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the board. Their teammates try to guess words of the right color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team and everyone wants to avoid the assassin.

Codenames Marvel Edition keeps the Codenames gameplay, while featuring characters and locations from the Marvel Comics universe.