Will you dare to walk through the gates of the Mysterium manor?
Halloween was upon us, and we figured it was time to try another festive game: Mysterium! Betrayal at House on the Hill was hit or miss with my group, so I wanted to give something else a shot. This was also our game of choice for a corporate virtual event, as you can find Mysterium on Steam for Windows users. The game allows for up to seven players, making this an excellent choice for our team.
In Mysterium, one player is the ghost trying to send visions to the psychics (all other players) to nail down who the murderer is. Who did it, in what room, and what weapon did they use? The catch? The ghost can’t speak and can only send players visual art cards to convey which person is a suspect. With highly abstract artwork, you can see how it may be challenging to get all psychics to guess correctly.
It's time to turn on the recommended soundtrack and begin our review!
Mechanics & Categories: Deduction, Family, Party, Card, Horror, Cooperation, Voting, Creative-thinking
SPOOKY REALISM
Like many other Libellud games, the artwork is their main feature. All of the vision cards follow a similar abstract painting style, almost as if you could interchange cards between games. The artwork in Mysterium does have essential features that assist in determining the culprit, but if you want to challenge yourself, go ahead and try the Dixit cards.
Aside from the dream-like, abstract art cards, the rest of the game showcases very high-quality, realistic graphic design. Since the theme is mystery in a haunted manor at night, the colors are more subdued, with only dim light sources to highlight features in the cards. Illuminated windows, flickering candles, moonlight forests, you get the idea.
Everything, from cards to the turn-based clock, feels dark, spooky, and ominous. The grandfather clock face is broken past seven o'clock, expressing the manor’s antiquity. The progress boards depict stained glass windows, showing how classic and regal the manor is.
The character cards look like a sleuth’s desk: an old film photograph of the suspect with evidence items scattered over the table. The locations vary across rooms in the manor and outdoor locations across the estate, with similar themes noticed across them. The weapons, lying on contrasting colored velvet backdrops, are illuminated dismally, portraying the doom laid upon the ghost. Every attention to detail was paid to each aspect of the game’s art, which makes it a beauty to play.
CHILLING ADVENTURE
Why is the ghost haunting this manor? How did they become a ghost in the first place? Who visited this manor, and what motives did they have? One detective wants to find out on the night of Samhain (Halloween).
What better way to spend an October evening than playing a game about ghosts and seances? The ghost cannot speak but may only knock twice for yes and once for no. Feeling like an actual seance yet? Strange visions are sent to you through the ghost to set them free from their torment.
You can only amplify your experience with chilling ambiance music from their soundtrack or music of your choosing. Some may call this a game, but to others, it’s more of an experience. Don’t expect a complex strategy, but instead, enjoy the vibes and work with your friends and family to uncover the truth!
DETECTIVE-GRADE COMPONENTS
What excites me when unboxing a new game aside from excellent components? An insert that has a place for everything. Putting away games can be a puzzle in itself to fit everything nicely, so this insert design was phenomenal. Not only is there a location for all parts, but there is embossed iconography to indicate which slots and areas the components go. Mysterium takes a decent amount of time to set up, so having these accessible locations to grab things makes that flow much smoother.
Now, onto the components. All cards except the vision cards have an excellent air cushion finish that makes them more durable than your usual printing. The cards are also in varying sizes. To make gameplay more straightforward, the characters and locations are nice and large for psychics to analyze and determine what the ghost is trying to communicate through visions.
Each psychic also has a lovely character cardstock pouch to hold their correctly guessed suspects, as well as a vibrant, translucent crystal ball to indicate their guesses along the way. There are also cardboard clairvoyance pointer tokens with a similar air cushion finish.
Lastly, the ghost has a personal visor shield with plastic pouches to delegate suspects to every psychic in the game. This gives off the D&D vibe of being a dungeon master and keeping your secrets.
FAMILY FUN COOP
Cooperative games might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but this one is a bit less strategic. There is no need to worry for power gamers to overtake how turns should play out. Players can work together to try and understand the ghost’s vague clues through abstract artwork.
“This guy looks like a soldier, and that character does, so maybe mine is that guy?”
“Wait, there’s also a ship in there, so that could be my location!”
There are only two minutes for everyone to make their guesses, so the more brains in a room, the harder this becomes. That being said, though the recommended age is 10+, aside from the “murder theme,” this can easily be played with younger kids. It should be fun to see how your kids interpret the art visions and match that with a character, location, or weapon (again, the weapon theme might be too much, so discretion is advised).
Final Comments
Mysterium is a lot more fun when paired with music. It really sets the tone for mystery and scratches the creativity itch more than others. If you are a gamer who only likes strategy, Mysterium might not be for you. But if you want a chance to get non-gamers together to play a game and are okay with some light-thinking fun, check this out!
We needed a lighter-weight game for Halloween, and this was perfect. For a whole evening of fun, aside from the extended setup period, this should be a relatively quick game, so you can move on and play other festive games for the evening!
I don’t see us getting this to the table every night unless you have someone in love with creative thinking games. However, I think with larger groups, this will come out much more frequently. Having different players take on the role of the ghost will also drive people to play this more often.
If you are on the fence, I say go for it. You can get Mysterium for a fair price on Amazon, and if you really don’t enjoy it, you can probably sell it quite quickly. It appears many people adore this game when looking at some threads on Board Game Geek, so odds are, if you are at all interested, especially in the mystery theme, this game will be fun for you, too!
Similar To: Dixit, Code Names, Obscurio, The Mind, Clue
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Publisher: Libellud
Game(s) Pictured: Mysterium
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