Mysterium (2015)
Players: 2-7
Playing Time: 42 minutes. (Which is odd to have such an exact time on a box.)
Age: 10+ (I had a nine-year-old play this and she did fine.)
Weight: 1.92/5 (Source: Board Game Geek)
Designer: Oleskandr Nevskiy, Oleg Sidorenko
Artist: Igor Burlakov, Xavier Collette, Oleskandr Nevskiy, Oleg Sidorenko
Publisher: Libellud
What’s it About?
It’s the 1920s. You died. Sorry. These things happen. But, thankfully, a group of psychics is on the case, and during a nighttime seance on Samhain (Halloween), they are attempting to contact you in order to discover who, where, and what killed you. Since you’ve been dead for years and the afterlife has exhausted you with boredom (maybe), you will attempt to guide the psychics using abstract visions to bring them closer to discovering the truth. Will the ghost be able to use their artistically drawn cards and wit to assist the investigators? Will the so-called psychics figure out exactly what the heck the ghost is trying to show them with whatever they have? Only time and seven game rounds can tell.
Mysterium is a co-op game where one player plays as a ghost and the others play as psychic investigators. The ghost, using a variety of aesthetically pleasing (and some downright strange) cards, will attempt to aid the mediums in choosing the right person, location, and weapon.
It’s a seven-round race to determine the suspects, and if the mediums manage to collect enough evidence, there’s a final round in which the ghost chooses a group, gives out only three clues, and the other players have to vote in secret. If the majority of psychics choose the right group, you all win! If not, you all lose.
It sounds simple, right? Because it is. And it’s great.
It’s Your Turn
There are two roles in Mysterium: the ghost, and the psychic. One player plays the role of the ghost and everyone else will play as a medium.
Let’s begin breaking down what the ghost does on their turn.
-Ghost:
Using a hand of seven cards, the ghost will hand out cards to the investigators that will help them identify the person associated with them (who the ghost believes to be one of the suspects, location, and weapon). Each card is a work of art that, in my opinion, deserves its own gallery. If you’re the ghost, you’ll want to choose cards that the mediums can interpret either by the symbolism associated with a person in the lineup, or a common color, or whatever you can to help your team out.
Once you’ve handed out cards, you’ll start a timer and you can’t say a word. You can just sit back, watch the chaos ensue and you are either praised or damned for the cards you handed out.
Times up! Now you get to reveal whether they were right or wrong and you still can’t say a word. You can knock on the table (once no, twice yes) or, because I’d like to believe myself a Roman emperor, a thumbs up or down.
You’ll continue doing this until, hopefully, everyone has figured out their own person, location, and weapon before the seventh round. If they do, you get to choose from one of those groups and give out three clues to the table to help them vote on which group to vote for. If the majority vote for the same group you chose, you all win! If they didn’t, you all lose.
Being a ghost is fun… and can be frustrating. But fun!
-Investigator:
Ah, the investigator role. Your job is to make inferences based on the cards that the ghost gives you to figure out the person, pl-yeah, you get it by now.
You also get to vote on whether your fellow mediums were right or wrong in their own guesses. If you’re correct, you move up on the clairvoyance track, which allows you to see more clues at the end of the game before you vote.
Some of my favorite interactions come from this because telling someone they are dead wrong and engaging in debates about it while the time slowly ticks away can be very entertaining.
If you’re correct on guessing the person, you move onto location, the weapon, and then you’ve made it! Laugh as others attempt to catch up and get to the end themselves… but also help them out. It’s a co-op game after all.
Once all of you reach that finish line, you’ll decide which group is the one that the ghost has picked secretly (thematically this is the person, place, and weapon that killed them). Here’s where you’ll give people shifty eyes since you can’t help anyone vote and you can only see so many cards based on how well you did during the game.
If the majority votes correctly… you already know.
And that’s really it! It’s a very easy game to play and experiences board gamers and newcomers will both feel at home playing it.
What Works… What Doesn’t.
So many things about this game work. It’s thematically rich; the publisher even developed an app that plays spooky music that you can download for free. The art on all the cards fit the time it takes place in, and I cannot gush enough about the dream cards. Each of them holds so much detail and creativity that I would almost want to buy an extra copy of the game and create a collage of them. (Yeah, that sounds crazy, I won’t do that.)
The turns are short and fun and tense. As an investigator you sit there and struggle with the vision card that the ghost gave you and you’re talking to everyone else to figure out what the hell it matches up with and then you put down your glass ball looking marker and then people are voting that you’re wrong and you sit in despair and the ghost is silent and now you’re crying on the floor. As the ghost all you can do is sit there and wonder why they can’t figure out what you’re trying to tell them and you look at your hand of seven cards and why has this game cursed you with cards that are of no help and you ran out of crows and now you’re trying to cry but can’t because you’re a ghost and supposed to be quiet.
But it’s fun!
In all seriousness, the game is such a joy to play and just about anyone can get into it. At first glance, it can look a bit complex, but it’s anything but. It’s simple, fun, and engaging. Everyone’s playing at the same time, everyone’s involved, and the best joy a board gamer can have is the after game discussion and asking how this card associated with that person and why did they think you were wrong… it’s just great.
What doesn’t work? Honestly, the only downfall I could potentially see here is with the people you play with. Make sure you play with a group that’s fun, can take a joke, and are helpful.
That goes with all board games, really.
Let’s Play Again! …Maybe?
The replay value for this game is incredibly high. You’ll always have a new set of suspects, locations, and weapons in countless orders, the number of vision cards the ghost has for a deck is staggering, so they’ll always be challenged, and speaking of ghosts, different players can take turns playing as the ghost, so their approach to clues could be different and thus adds a different element to the game.
I’ve played this game six times and I can play it a hundred more with any group of great people. You’ll definitely get your money’s worth.
Is It Fun, or Not?
Yes, this game is incredibly fun. The experiences you’ll create with your fellow players, the excitement of guessing correctly and the agony of getting your pick wrong, the duality of playing as either a ghost or a psychic and how different and engaging those roles are, the theme, the art, the simplicity of the game… it just comes together so well that it’s hard not to have it in your game collection. Even if you’re into super-heavy Euro games with a million pieces, this game allows you to enjoy a simple game of deduction with your group.
Verdict (Finally, the End!)
Get it. Now. Go.
Milton Plays Board Games 