How Mysterious

Board games often share mechanisms with one another. "It's just like [that], but with this little twist" is a common and easy way to explain many games. That's hardly a criticism; sometimes that little twist is the secret sauce that makes a truly great experience. Sometimes, though, it's truly remarkable what ingredients go into the blender of creativity.

For example: imagine Dixit crossed with Clue. As a co-op game. I couldn't have. But Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko did. And thus, we get Mysterium.

Mysterium casts one player as a "ghost" trying to help all the other players solve their murder by communicating with them from beyond the grave via cryptic visions. Three groups of illustrated cards are placed face-up in groupings before the players: suspects, locations, and weapons. (There's always at least one more than the number of "mentalists"; the difficulty ramps up -- a lot -- the more you use.) Behind a secret screen, the ghost has one card from each grouping assigned to each of the players, and must guide each player to their cards one by one.

The guidance is accomplished through another Dixit-style deck of strange, dream-like illustrations that nonsensically combine random imagery. The ghost can't give verbal clues. They just take hand out their cards to each player, giving everyone cards that are somehow meant to lead the players each to their own suspect, then location, then weapon. You have to be ready to make intuitive leaps and go on instinct, because the "perfect clue" is pretty much never there.

If all players successfully identify their three cards in seven rounds or less, then a final round ascertains which player's accumulated cluster is the actual solution to the mystery. The whole group wins if the players get that correct.

It's hard to imagine having playtested this game without the final components in hand. So much of what makes it tick is the random collages that are each of the ghost's clue cards. (Maybe they tested with a Dixit deck before commissioning the final artwork?) It's delightfully frustrating, in the most fun way, to try to derive the ghost's meaning from imprecise clues. Group discussion can be both an ally and an enemy. I've played as a mentalist and have had fun. I've played as the ghost and have had fun discovering that it's way harder than it looks.

The whole affair is intriguingly clever, the experience quite entertaining. Hell, it feels part "escape room" too, so long as I'm comparing it to other things. And the rulebook even offers up some suggestions for extra atmosphere, like playing spooky music or literally forbidding the ghost from speaking for the duration of the game.

I'm usually willing to play a game of Dixit with a group, even though it's hardly a personal favorite. But there's something in the extra elements, added challenge, and teamwork of Mysterium that I find much more compelling. I'd give it a B+. I hope it has some staying power in my gaming group.