Mysterium Board Game Review:

In Mysterium, you are a physic investigating a murder. But without physical evidence, you must rely on the victim’s ghost. Who will give you visions to help you discover his killer. as you come up with your theory, you will also be helping your other paranormal investigators gather their clues. Before you all compare each of your hypotheses in a climactic resolution.

Setup

• First, decide who will be the ghost. This person takes a seat behind the screen. The rest of the players are psychics and will sit in front of the screen.
• Give each Physic a sleeve and their matching clairvoyancy 
• tokens.
• Place your clairvoyancy tracker on the first space of the clairvoyancy 
• track.
• Gather the intuition pawns matching the players’ colors, and place them on the character progress board.
• Set the clock board to the first space.
• Place the suspects, places, and items in the center of the table.
• Find the ghost cards matching the suspect, places, and items cards. Then shuffle each of the 3 decks separately, inserting one per player into the screen and setting the rest aside.
• Give the ghost the vision deck, the culprit tokens, and the ghost tokens.
• Place the crows on top of the screen.

How to Play

At the start of the round, the ghost uses the screen to find the appropriate clue. The columns show you the player’s color. The rows show the categories of suspect, location, and item. For example, the red players suspect is the old clockmaker, while blue’s item is the statue.

As the ghost, it’s your goal to communicate to each player, helping them find their 3 cards from top to bottom throughout the game. You will use visions to communicate with the players. To make a vision look at your hand of 7 vision cards. Select any number of cards from your hand, and hand them to any physic that did not receive cards this round. Try to give vision cards similar to the card you are trying to get them to guess. Then slide the player’s token to touch the base of the screen. This will remind you that you gave that physic cards this round. Refill your hand to 7 cards and repeat this process until all psychics have received at least 1 card. During this process, you may remove a crow from your screen to discard any number of cards from your hand and draw back up to 7.

When a physic receives their vision cards, they may start looking to see what the vision might mean. Other physics may help, but the final decision is down to whoever received the vision. Once you believe you know what card the ghost is trying to tell you about. Place your intuition pawn on it.

Once all players have placed their intuition pawns, each player may guess whether the other players were correct or not. To do this, they may place a clairvoyancy token next to that player’s intuition pawn. If you think they are correct, place a checkmark. If you think they are wrong, place an X.

Once everyone has placed their clairvoyancy tokens, the ghost reveals whether each player is right or wrong.

If the player is correct: Each physic that placed a check mark clairvoyancy token moves one space forward on the clairvoyancy track. Discard all clairvoyancy tokens. Move your intuition pawn to the next progress board. Take the card and place it in your character sleeve. Discard your vision cards. The ghost moves your token back from the screen to remind themselves to give you new cards in the next round.

If a player is incorrect: Each player who placed an X clairvoyancy token moves one space forward on the clairvoyancy track. Discard all clairvoyancy tokens. Move your intuition pawn back to your current progress board. Keep your vision cards for reference next round. The ghost moves your token back from the screen to remind themselves to give you new cards during the next round.
At the start of round 4, give each player their clairvoyancy tokens back from the discard.

Once a player has found all 3 clues, move your intuition pawn to the final progress board. Move along the clairvoyancy track 1 time for each turn remaining on the clock. You may still place clairvoyancy tokens and help other physics on their turns. Still, you may not receive any visions or place your intuition token for the rest of the phase. Once all players have found their clues move on to phase 2
To start phase 2, each player empties their sleeve and lines up their suspect, location, and item. Flip over the ghost tokens to reveal numbers to place under each player’s set of cards.

The ghost then picks one of the players’ sets of 3 and places a culprit token with that number on the final progress board. Then the ghost creates one final vision. This vision must use 3 cards, and the first card must represent the suspect. The second and third cards each relate to the location and item. Shuffle these three cards and place them face down.

Then going from left to right on the clairvoyancy track resolve all actions. If you pass a space with a card on it, flip one of the vision cards face up. If you pass a player’s token, they must guess which set of cards the vision relates to. For this clue, they may not communicate with the other physics. Once they have decided, they place the clairvoyancy token with the guessed number in their sleeve. This process continues until everyone has guessed. Then reveal all the guesses. Everyone wins if most players guess the same number as the culprit token. Otherwise, the case goes unsolved, and the murderer gets away.

Pros

The art and components of this game are Stunning. Its art has so much detail and nuances. Everything is clear what it means and easy to reference throughout the game.

Mysterium is excellent at getting people to discuss what a vision might mean. Each player makes different connections as they focus on a different part of the image.

Cons

Mysterium can be slow at times. While this is expected in most games, Mysterium feels especially slow because there are few things to think about between turns. Leaving it up to the players to make their own fun while the ghost thinks.

Mysterium may be too easy for some groups, but it is also too hard for others. You may need to tweak rules to fit the difficulty you are looking for.

The rulebook is needlessly complex, yet not clear enough. Making a more straightforward game seem like a heavy game.

Accessibility

Color Blind: Color blind psychics may have trouble receiving clues related to color. Other physics may team up to help the color blind psychic, but it may be best to avoid color based clues. The color blind player may find it extremely difficult to tell which players are which on the screen. I would recommend the color blind player not be the ghost.

Reading: no reading is required outside of the numbers 1-6.

Children: Mysterium focuses on a murder mystery whose lead suspect is a ghost. And the ghost gives visions about their death to the paranormal investigators.

Who would love this game?

Mysterium is great at parties, or any other gathering with a large number of people. Mysterium gives several slow points making it perfect for side conversations throughout the game.

Final Thoughts

Mysterium is an excellent take on the genre of “interpreting an abstract card.” If you are looking for a strategic game that will encourage you to be thinking about your next move constantly, in that case, Mysterium may not be for you. But if you want a game that encourages cooperation while being approachable to a wide variety of players, Mysterium might be the game for you.

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