our review

Spiritual investigations

Mysterium

Case solved with ghostly assistance

It is the year 1922 in the dukedom of Warwick in Scotland. For more than 25 years the soothsayer Conrad MacDowall has been living in the Manor of the former Count of Warwick, where once a dreadful tragedy did happen. It was the night before 13^th of December 1894, when a servant met his death under circumstances so far unrevealed and unexplained. All police investigation petered out without results and the case was archived, after four months of fruitless investigations as “mysterious accident”. MacDowell, for his part, a soothsayer and fortune-teller using a crystal ball, did not believe in such a mysterious accident. Starting with his moving into the house he reported supernatural incidents for which a ghost is deemed to be responsible. However, this ghost needs the concerted powers of additional spiritualists to manifest itself and to get his message received by them. This is the moment where we enter the game.

Up to seven players can take up the daring challenge to solve the puzzle concerning the murder – yes, it was murder – of the count’s servant. One player is taking up the role of the “ghost” manifestation, who must, during seven rounds of the game, gives the other players – the spiritualists – useful hints for our personal inspirations, concerning one suspect, one crime scene and one murder weapon, without being able to speak one word to us. Instead of talking he provides each spiritualist with one vision per round, in the shape of image cards, which need to be interpreted correctly: In Mysterium there are, depending on the number of players and the chosen level of difficulty, different numbers of suspect cards, crime scene cards and murder weapon cards, out of which each spiritualist is assigned exactly one card of each kind. Only the ghost knows which cards are assigned to whom and tries to give us this information with the help of vision cards. He chooses one spiritualist and hand him one or more vision cards that fit his “intuition”, that is, the assigned cards, as well as possible. Then the ghost replenishes his stock to seven cards.

This is repeated as many times as is necessary for each player to have received a minimum of one card. Meanwhile, all spiritualists together consider, discuss and deliberate to which of the cards on display the ghost wants to guide us with his hint. Despite our cooperation in discussing and considering each player decides on his own on which cards he places his bet in the end. All others have, from this moment on, only the option to support or to doubt his decision with a so-called clairvoyance token.

When all spiritualists have given their tips, the ghost informs us on who made a correct guess and who gave a wrong guess. For correctly placed clairvoyance tokens

You now score points on the clairvoyance track; this track is later of assistance in revealing the culprit. But this only happens if each of the spiritualists has correctly identified all three of his “intuitions” correctly before the end of Round 7; otherwise we and the ghost together loose the game and the events of 13^th of December will remain unsolved forever.

In case that we succeed all intuitions of all spiritualists are placed into groups, before the ghost appears for one las time. Secretly he chooses one group of intuitions and is allowed to give us exactly three clues – one for the culprit, one for the crime scene and one for the murder weapon. Then a secret voting is held in which each spiritualist must choose one of the groups as the murderer. Each player only sees as many clues as his score on the clairvoyance track indicates. The more points we have collected, the higher the chances are that we can, together, reveal the real murderer. When the majority of players has chosen the same group as the ghost, he can now rest in peace and all players win the game together.

Such a Happy End is of course the wished-for end of each game of Mysterium – and, despite there not being a failsafe formula for winning – we usually achieved such a Happy End in my games. I must admit that we so far did not play it at the highest level of difficulty, but we will surely make good on this as soon as possible.

Mysterium for me is one of the few cooperative games that allow for good group dynamics without taking away individual personal freedom of decisions. You deliberate and consider together and work towards a common goal, but carry your own share of responsibility. It happens often that opinions vary on the hints that were received, when you try to reach a common consent, but the clairvoyance tokens offer a chance to turn this into an advantage for yourself and the group as a whole.

Additional favorable facts are the amazing thematic design of the game components and the very beautiful graphics of the game which makes all characters and their background stories come alive. Beginning with the player tokens shaped like crystal balls to the cardboard clock that can be erected and works as a round marker to the very functional box insert all comes across as painstakingly created, and nearly “over the top” if you consider what kind of game they serve. With a possible number of players ranging from 2 to 7 and an average playing time of 45 minutes, Mysterium has more in common with a party game than meets the eye at first glance. The basic idea to make yourself understood across communication barriers appears in earlier games like 2Tabu2 or “Activity” as well as in more recent titles - "Aargh!Tect”,  “Sag’s mir!” or the super hit “Codenames”; published only last year. What sets Mysterium apart from those games are the mechanisms, to a lesser extent, and mostly its imaginative flair. Similar to a Tim Burton Film the game emanates is very own special charm which, for me, comes across as innovative and unique, despite familiar elements.

As my opinion I can give a positive recommendation of the game for family gamers as well as for expert gamers, especially for larger groups of five or more players. The more players the better. After a few games and lots of runs through the vision cards a pattern might evolve, so it is essential to always choose another player to represent the ghost or to play Mysterium with different people. For a bigger variation in the cards you can borrow some cards from “Dixit” or you wait for the already announced expansion “Hidden Signs”, which is scheduled for the first half of this year.

In any case, however, I look forward very much to see and play this classy game more often and hope to have inspired a few new ghost murder-hunters among my readers. Have fun in playing Mysterium!

Dennis Rappel

Players: 2-7

Age: 10+

Time: 42

Designer: Oleksandr Nevskiy, Oleg Sidorenko

Artist: Igor Burlakov, Xavier Collette

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Libellud 2015

Web: www.asmodee.de

Genre: Cooperation, deduction, hand management 

Users: With friends

Special: Many players

Version: de

Rules: bg cn de en es fi fr gr jp nl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Beautiful graphics

High-grade game components

Not enough vision cards

Compares to:

Dixit

Other editions:

Libellud for most of them, Lautapelit for Scandinavia

My rating: 6

Dennis Rappel:

A very felicitous and well-made cooperative game with amazing graphics and background story which manages, despite a short playing time, to transport players into another world with its beautiful images. Analogous to holiday destinations, after a few games one might wish for more variations, new vision cards would be very, very welcome.

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 2

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 3

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0