Mysterium

Rezension

Mysterium
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
13th 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 13th 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!
 
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