BGR Guest Review – Mysterium

I’ve heard Mysterium described as a mix between Dixit and Clue, and I think that’s an accurate description of its meat and potatoes.  However, you’ll have to figure the vegetables out first before you get to dash off and start solving mysteries.

The first task?  Decide who gets to be the ghost.  Pro tip: don’t choose the weird guy that tells all the jokes that nobody understands.  The ghost will have access to all of the information in the game—including the final solution.  It’s important to make sure that the ghost is well-acquainted with the rules, since table talk is generally a no-no.

The rest of the players select their psychic characters, who are all the same (mechanically speaking), and get to work.

During setup, three different tableaus of psychic cards are placed—one for suspects, one for locations, and one for the objects.  A number of cards of each type (scaled to the number of players) are displayed in their respective tableaus for all players to see.  For example, in a four player game at medium difficulty, six cards of each type will be laid out.  The ghost has a matching set of these cards, and secretly assigns one of each type at random to each player.

Mysterium is played in two different phases.  In the first phase, the players have seven rounds to correctly guess their own unique lineup of suspect/location/object—a single perspective of the night of the murder.  The ghost’s job is to steer the players to guess correctly using the surreally-illustrated vision cards.  Ideally, the art on these cards will help the ghost communicate an unspoken associative clue to the individual player.

Once each non-ghost player has received their vision cards from the ghost, they are free to use table talk and make their guesses.  After all guesses have been made and finalized using the intuition tokens, players have the length of a sixty second sand timer to spend their clairvoyance tokens, voting either in support or against the other players’ choices.  Correct use of clairvoyance tokens here allows players to climb the clairvoyance track, which I’ll come back around to in a moment.

At the end of the sand timer, the ghost reveals which guesses were correct or incorrect.  Players that hit their target collect the psychic card representing their correct guess, tuck it into their character’s sleeve, and advance their intuition token to the next tableau.  Players that guessed incorrectly keep the vision cards they were given, but remain at the same tableau and do not advance.  All correct clairvoyance tokens are scored on the clairvoyance track, and all of the played tokens—correct and incorrect alike—are discarded.  Don’t worry, they refresh at the beginning of the fourth round.

Repeat this process until either all players have guessed their suspect, location, and object, or until the end of the seventh round.  If the seventh round ends and any players haven’t completed their trio of psychic cards, the game ends in defeat.  However, if all players do manage to finish in time, then play proceeds to the second phase.

The players’ sets of psychic cards are taken from their character sleeves and arranged on the table.  Each player’s trio is assigned a number.  These are the perspectives on the night of the murder—now, it is up to the players to determine which lineup contains the true culprit.

The ghost draws a fresh hand of vision cards, and then secretly designates a lineup of his choice as the true culprit’s.  The ghost places a tile face down on the table that corresponds with that chosen lineup, and picks three vision cards from his or her hand that will lead the players, as a group, to the true culprit.

Remember those clairvoyance points?  The higher your clairvoyance, the more of those three cards you get to see before you have to cast your final vote.  Non-ghost players are welcome to use table talk to try and interpret this final vision before casting their votes.  The lineup with the most votes is accused, and the ghost reveals the answer.  If the psychics got it right, they win the game!  Otherwise, everybody loses, and the poor sad ghost must wander the corporeal realm for an eternity of torment.

No pressure.

Who doesn’t want to get together on a Saturday night with a few of their best pals, have a séance, and solve a murder from the late 19^th century?

Mysterium is a rich, flavorful, and overall very fun experience.  When I play, I feel like I’m at trivia night—sure, we’re all in this together, but sometimes there’s a fun debate on which answer our team turns in.  On top of that, matching the surreal art in the vision cards with the more concretely-illustrated psychic cards is like a delightful supernatural version of I Spy.  You can look at the cards ten times, and then pick out a new detail on the eleventh.  Winning feels awesome, defeat feels crushing, and I’ve never played a game where I didn’t have a great time I was eager to repeat.

That said, this is a game that can trip and stumble.  It’s a game that takes a certain creativity and spirit to play, and that’s not a quality that everyone has.  Certain people find the game frustrating, and certain people as ghosts can be just as frustrating for all the players.  There are also, legitimately, some times where the ghost just doesn’t have the cards on hand to give a meaningful clue.  This can be a tad frustrating, but that’s why there are seven rounds of guessing instead of three.

Overall, Mysterium’s biggest strength lies in how fun it is to play.  This game captures the energetic team dynamic found in the best cooperative games, but not at the expense of the individual.  It blends a creative exercise together with a haunted house mystery, and keeps me coming back to the table for more.

The box says Mysterium lasts for exactly 42 minutes.  Whether this is an excellent Hitchhiker’s Guide reference, or a very strangely specific measurement, it’s more or less accurate.  Most games I’ve played have lasted just shy of an hour, with 5-10 minutes for setup.

Mysterium’s length feels perfectly proportionate to its weight and depth, and there’s little to no downtime.

Mysterium, at its core, is quite simple.  While I personally don’t consider it to be a party game because of its thematic feel, the learning curve is very similar.  I feel like I can give non-ghost newcomers everything they need to know before the game starts in the space of a single breath: “Bob here is the ghost, and we are all psychics trying to solve the mystery of his murder.  He’s going to give us picture clues as visions, and it’s up to us to make associations, pick up on what he’s trying to get each of us to guess, and solve our individual lineup of suspect, location, and object before the end of the seventh round.”  Done.  Let’s start playing.

The clairvoyance tokens might require another breath or two, but they can be explained during the course of the game, and honestly have a small enough impact that it’s not the end of the world if you have absolutely no idea what to do with them.

Taking the role of the ghost is a bit trickier, as he or she should really be intimately acquainted with all of Mysterium’s machinery.  If your ghost is new to his or her position, you may need to set aside several minutes to make sure the rules are crystal clear.  Make sure your explanation is good, too, because the integrity of the mystery could be damaged if the ghost has to ask an awkward question halfway through the game.

Overall, even from the ghost’s perspective, Mysterium is very easy to learn and teach, about on par with most party games.

The interaction between players here is cooperative, so this isn’t exactly Chess.

Mysterium feels like a team-building exercise that everyone is really into.  Everyone has their own job, but you’re all very motivated to see each other succeed.  The psychics all have access to the same information and cards, so every guess is a group effort.

This isn’t to say that the guessing is run by mob mentality.  Quarterbacking—a term that more or less explains itself if you’ve ever played a game of Pandemic with a friend that thinks he’s Tom Brady—is almost a non-issue.  If you don’t agree with your neighbor’s choice, you’re welcome to bet against it with your clairvoyance token.  You’re not all hands trying to steer the same ship to shore; you’re all swimmers floating down the same river.

If you’ve got an itch that only Twilight Imperium can scratch, Mysterium might not be the game for you.

Mysterium’s cooperative nature and subjective association puzzles put it right on the verge of a party game.  In fact, I’ve heard it referred to as such on more than one occasion, and I can’t really think of a good argument to prove it otherwise.

The decision matrix in Mysterium is fairly narrow.  You guess one of the options—maybe you’re wrong, maybe you’re right.  If someone’s wrong too many times, everyone loses.

Being the ghost requires a bit more strategy.  Knowing which clues to give out, and when, takes actual finesse.  Sequencing matters, as you get to draw up to seven cards in between clues, and you even have a limited number of raven tokens that are used to discard cards from your hand, then immediately draw back to a fresh hand of seven.  Saving cards and planning ahead can have a big impact.

I don’t fully agree that Mysterium deserves a label as a party game, but if I had to explain why, I’d say it’s because Mysterium’s strategic depth isn’t concrete.  It requires a subjective creativity that is a strategy all its own.

Luck has very little impact on a game of Mysterium.  There are no dice, and all mechanics are controlled by choices rather than randomness.

The exception is the ghost’s vision cards.  Sometimes, you just have the perfect card for a situation.  Sometimes, you have a hand full of nothin’, and any clue you give will be a stretch.  Even so, the raven tokens mitigate this to a degree by allowing the ghost to discard and draw a fresh hand.

Mysterium is, by all appearances, fair–and likely functions as intended by its designers.  Victory is typically hard-won, and the threat of a team defeat is very real.  This tension works beautifully in the first phase.

The second phase involves arranging each player’s psychic cards on the table, and the ghost trying to lead the players to pick the true culprit from the lineup.  I found this mechanic to be a bit jarring after the fluidity of the first phase.  Packing up the tableaus and making this new display felt a lot like we were saying, “Good job with that.  Now let’s all do something different!”

As a result, losing the game in that second phase can feel a lot like a slap in the face.  It’s entirely possible to perform absolutely perfectly in the first phase, nail every single guess…and then lose the game on the spot because of one missed signal in sudden death.

While this is far from a fatal flaw, and hardly dampens this game’s appeal, I think it could have been designed a bit better.

And please, make sure the ghost isn’t terrible.  Terrible ghosts make for terrible games.

Mysterium touts itself as a game for 2-7 players. I’ve played with 2, 3, 5, and all 7, and had exactly the same great time in each of those groups.

There are some variant rules for 2 and 3 players. For example, the clairvoyance tokens simply aren’t used, and players have access to all of the vision cards in the second phase. These variants felt fine, and I didn’t feel like the game lost any of its value with a lower player count.

While it seems like things could get hectic with 7 people, the table tends to sort itself out. People split off into little mini-teams and help each other out.

The poor ghost, however, may end up feeling a bit more frazzled having to come up with six different clues each round. It ain’t easy being dead.

I’ve never played a game of Mysterium where I didn’t want to immediately play again.

This isn’t to say that Mysterium will never get old.  There are a finite number of vision cards, and a finite number of psychic cards.  Playing with the same people will eventually wear the game out.  You’ll find there’s a meta-effect, where remembering remarkable clues from previous games will help players better interpret their visions.

The urge to play ad nauseam will be real.  It’s that addictive kind of fun.  But about Mysterium, I’ll say this:

It’s best treated like a decent wine: sipped, and not with every meal.

A BGG video from Essen 2015 revealed that the designers have an expansion ready for production. However, it just looks like they’re adding more psychic and vision cards. Whether or not the expansion will implement any mechanical updates remains to be seen.

Mysterium is listed at $35-$45 online (where it’s listed at all).  Judging by its components and the experience it evokes, I found that price to be reasonable.

You might want to pick up your copy sooner rather than later, because the game has been selling out like crazy everywhere.