An overview of the mysteries

Wouldn't the secrets of the murders be easier if we could talk to the victims?

Well, thanks to your team of psychics to solve crime in the board game Mysterium, you can now. Hopefully this ghost will remember what’s going on ... Read the full review of the Mysterium board games below.

secret

Mystery board game: A horrible crime was committed on the ground ...
Cooperative board game: one player takes on the role ...
Explaining the vision to solve the mystery: each player explores ...

A brief overview of Mysterium

Mysterium is a co-operative Murder mystery game for two to seven players set in a sinister mansion from the 1920s in rural Scotland. One actor takes on the role of a disordered ghost who was inexplicably murdered thirty years ago. Others are a team of incompetent clairvoyants from all over the world who have come together to find out who it is.

A ghost who cannot speak communicates with psychics through a series of visual clues about the identity of the killer, the murder weapon, and where it occurred.

You need to use your powers of deduction and side thinking to unravel the mystery that lay unsolved for three decades and finally allow the spirit to rest.

Variations and extensions

Secrets and lies

Along with many new suspects and location maps, Secrets & Lies also mixes gaming with the introduction of cards with stories that replace objects. This means that in addition to the killer and the location, psychics must now recognize the motive for the murder. This turns out to be a bit more complicated.

Mysterium: Secrets and lies

This is an extension of the game MYSTERIUM BOARD: You will need ...
MYSTERY COMMITTEE GAME: Re-illuminate the strange events that lead ...
BRAND NEW CARDS ADD MORE CHALLENGES: The expansion includes 18 new ...

Hidden signs

Hidden Signs is a direct extension to the base game adding new suspects, locations and items. With a total of 78 new cards, this is a great way to increase the repeatability of the original and it pays to invest if you are a regular player.

Mystery: hidden signs

This is an extension of the game MYSTERIUM BOARD: You will need ...
MYSTERY COMMITTEE GAME: New information has arrived in the case ...
BRAND NEW CARDS ADD MORE CHALLENGES: The extension adds 78 brand new ...

Unpacking Mysterium

The dark, terrifying box of Mysterium is in itself a hint of the mysterious mystery we find inside. You will get:

6 intuitive tokens
6 sleeves
6 clairvoyance level markers
36 clairvoyant tokens
1 hour
4 progress boards
1-character progress bar
1 location progress bar
1 subject progress board
1 epilogue progression board
54 psychic cards
54 ghost cards
1 game screen
6 perfume tokens
84 visual cards
6 culprit tokens
3 crow marks

As a Briton I had a bit of a dot when I sat down to read the rules noting that this secret is set in the mansion of the Earl of Warwick in Warwick, Scotland.

Only, Warwick is not in Scotland . It is a very famous rural district in England. Surely the greater mystery unfolding here is the mystery of the mansion being teleported?

Unfortunately, this will have to wait another day (maybe an extension?). Today we are tackling the puzzle of a murdered servant, which, despite some lazy geographical errors, is a very well-written mysterious murder scenario.

Beautifully presented in the style of a private investigator’s notes - full of newspaper clippings and suspicious profiles dirty with coffee - the policy brilliantly pulls you on stage.

Components and artwork are also top quality. The 3D cardboard clock used to measure game time could easily be just a mark on the board, so thank you for the extra effort. And the ghost screen is really useful for the ghost because it has organized cards of each player and is big enough to easily hide things.

My favorite part, though, is the card illustration. It's wonderful. Each of the encouraging, caricatured suspicious cards, all the way to spooky, rare location scenes, is exciting and perfectly fits the theme. And to be clear, even though it’s a great family game , it’s still a very big horror game. More expulsion than Scooby-Doo.

How to play Mysterium

Setup

For starters, the actors choose their roles. One will be a ghost, while all the others will choose a psychic character (Conrad MacDowell, Alphonse de Belcour, Alma Salvador, Ardhashir, Madam Wang or Jessalyn Smith).

Depending on the difficulty of the game the players want to play, and how many players there are, they place between four and nine characters, the location, and the object of the card face up in the middle.

The ghost then takes the appropriate deck cards , and randomly assigns one type of card to each player. These are the cards that these players need to recognize.

Your goal

The object of the game is to find out who killed the ghost and how he did it.

To do this, your team of psychics has connected with the ghost sessions and must obtain information from them to first identify the character, location, and items assigned to them.

However, the spirit can only convey a hint with visions (maps) and not everything is so clear about the events that have developed themselves ...

The first phase - the reconstruction of events

Choosing visual cards

The first phase takes place in seven turns, each representing an hour of the session. This is an opportunity for all players to try to guess their assigned character, location and object in that order. If someone cancels before time runs out, the game is lost.

To do this, the ghost will choose one of their seven visual cards at each turn to give to the player as a hint. They then repeat the process for all players and change the visible cards in their hands during the course.

When everyone gets a visual card, turn the timer over. They all discuss together what they think the hint refers to before placing their individual chips with a crystal ball on the character / location / object they think they are guided by.

At the same time, players can bet on whether they feel their teammates have made the right decision by using clairvoyance tokens ‘✔’ and ‘✖’.

Results

The Spirit now tells people if they have made the right choice. In this case, the psychic moves up and will have to guess the next component in the next turn. Those who have placed the clairvoyance token correctly ('✔' or '✖') move their marker up the clairvoyance track (this will take effect later)

Psychologists who have guessed the wrong map need to try again next time, but with the added benefit of information already gathered.

Guessing all three components

Once someone guesses all three components (character, location, and object), their investigation is complete for now. They move the clairvoyance mark along the track every remaining hour, and then they can only help their fellow clairvoyants until the end of the phase.

If the seventh hour ends and someone hasn’t fixed all the components, the game is lost.

The second phase - the reconstruction of events

At this stage, players must vote on which combination of cards is the right course of events.

First, the ghost chooses three visible maps, one relating to each component of the murder. Mix them and place face down.

The voting process now begins. The ghost turns the first hint - remember, no one knows what component of murder this refers to. Then, anyone whose clairvoyant signifier stands in the first stage of the song must secretly vote for the combination he or she believes to be true.

The next card is then revealed, with everyone in the second tier being able to vote, and so on until all three are revealed.

When all the votes have been cast, they are revealed and the combination that received the most votes is considered a suspicious case. The spirit then reveals which combination is right. If the clairvoyants made the right decision, they win! If not, you will be left with one unhappy spirit.

Your first game of secrets

Mysterium is a very simple game, with most of the action being a visual card discussion among the players. But while the spirit has nothing to do at the moment, they need to be vigilant and use this time to inform about the following hints.

Is the team stuck in the previous hints because of the wrong things? Place them straight with the following.

If you are playing with a larger group , you may even want to write.

It is important that, as with any such game, it is very important that the spirit does not betray anything with words or facial expressions. No matter what crazy findings someone may have come up with, keep your hands and eyebrows out of your hands and eyebrows well and truly on your dissatisfied stations. Otherwise, you run the risk of destroying the integrity of the game.

Advantages disadvantages

Advantages:

An in-depth topic
Encourages group discussion
It works just as well with a large group as a small one

Weaknesses:

Repeatability is limited due to repetitive visual cards
Some mechanics didn’t quite make sense within the topic

Mysterium is a brilliant, impressive whodunnit game for groups of all ages and sizes. The design and artwork of characters, locations, and objects draws you to the point that you can almost smell the smoke-soaked upholstery. It won’t be long until your entire team exaggerates with their psychics (though it may be easy with characters who don’t have English as their first language ...).

Ghost

The role of the ghost is by far the most fun. I liked the inner arguing of the hints I gave and thinking about what each element of the cards could tell different people. And then there’s the truly perverse - albeit annoying - joy of having to sit in silence as your friends descend through a pointless black hole with no complete hope of returning. But it’s all part of the fun and can create a great story later.

It reminded me of Code Names in that sense, where real juicy fun and strategy actually comes from knowing. However, unlike code names, it will take some time before anyone else can turn.

Psyche

But this does not mean that psychic roles are not pleasant either. So. And the element of collaborative discussion fits perfectly when your team brings together your psychic thoughts to figure out what the hell was going on all these years ago. There’s little room for an alpha player to take over, but after all, every psychic has their own choices.

Repeatability?

The area where the Mysterium may fall may be repeated. While the culprit will change each time, the hints of the card are soon recognized, and for a group of regular players, this could make it easier. So, as an option for those who often play with the same group, this may not be the strongest candidate for long-term use.

Questionable mechanics

Lastly, although I think the design and story of the theme are fantastically presented, I had a small problem with how some mechanics got into the game. For example, I didn’t understand why in the first phase the ghost would give hints at multiple separate scenarios when only one could be true. Indecisive, a lot?

It’s also completely unexplained why players suddenly can’t talk to each other in the final stage. Would you certainly discuss something so monumental as a team before the vote?

I guess I can forgive some unrealistic aspects. It's still fun. And this is, after all, a ghost story ...

TL; DR

Mysterium is a deductible cooperation game in which players take on the role of psychics who solve crimes and the spirit of the victim. Among them, they need to find out who committed this act about thirty years ago.

The gameplay mostly focuses on the ghost and gives visual clues about the identity, location, and manner of the murder. The players then discuss the meanings of hints to try to solve the crime.

It is a wonderfully presented mystery murder scenario and the actors will easily get caught up in the remarkable theme.

Conclusion: a verdict?

Mysterium is a great team experience, especially for larger groups of six or seven who want something deeper than a fun game .

Fans of hidden identity games such as Avalon , Werewolf or Secret Hitler will like to focus on group discussion rather than sharing or gambling . However, a good combination of card strategies is still available to make it slightly more structured.

A standout feature for me, however, is the appealing theme. The components and mechanics combine perfectly to capture the imagination of all the players, and it was really fun to take on a person of a mixed band of psychics solving secrets.

If you’re a fan of mystery murder stories, you’ll have a lot of fun choosing it. And one day you will earn credit.

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