Mysterium boardgame review

Well a few weeks back we got to try a game called Mysterium. Our local library does these monthly open game nights and they were running a demo of it. We had seen the box and were intrigued by the art, name and concept. We have become more likely to try before we buy, so we passed on this game for a while.

After one game we were hooked and bought it the next day.

Alright here is the official description of the game…..

Welcome to the haunted manor of Mysterium!

In the 1920’s, Mr. MacDowell, a gifted astrologist, entered in his new house when he immediately detected a supernatural being. Gathering  eminent mediums of his time for an extraordinary seance, they will have  7 hours to contact the ghost and investigate to unlock an old mystery…

Unable to talk, the amnesic ghost will communicate with the mediums through visions (illustrated cards). They will have to decipher the images to help the ghost remember how he was murdered (who? where? which weapon?). The more they cooperate and guess well, the easier it will be  to the catch the right culprit.

So enter in this strange manor and let yourself be led by your intuition!

The suspect cards

First off it is a co-op game and the ghost and psychics are trying to reach the same conclusion. This is achieved over a max of seven turns. Each turn the ghost “communicates” by playing cards with wildly random images upon them. The psychics, other players, have to try and figure out what these images mean and tie them to a suspect, a location and a murder weapon. While they are working together they can help each other try and decipher the meaning of the cards. The player as the ghost cannot speak at all. However, they can devise some way of communicating a correct and incorrect answer to questions. We use a knock once/knock twice for yes/no questions.

Ghost clue cards.

It really sounds like clue at first, but after playing it really isn’t like clue at all.

The ghost is trying to lead you to a person, place and weapon. They have to try and make random images tie together with what you are trying to investigate. This can mean using the shapes in the cards, the colors, the random items, etc. to try and lead you to an answer. This is where the game gets twitchy.
The players have to try and think like the ghost player and that is rough and it isn’t.

Play this combo of cards and one can see that this is what the ghost might be thinking.
Play this and just scratch your head because it is a bunch of nonsense that you can’t see any commonality between cards.

It can be run with 2-6 players. It is fast and easy to learn, however, depending on the ghost player and the cards, it can sometimes be very frustrating. If you cannot think like the ghost, then you easily go down the wrong guessing trail lose time trying to wrangle yourself back on the right path.

Really fun game to play. It has a party game feel without being obnoxious. Really fast to play and good for wide  range of ages.

Mysterium.

Check it out.