Mysterium weekend
I took my brand-new copy of Tajemnicze Domostwo, also known as Mysterium, to gaming on Saturday afternoon, and much to my surprise, it got played three times in a row! According to Google translator, the Polish translates to “Mysterious Property.”
I had purchased the game at BGG Con after playing a game in the Portal Games booth. A worker had billed the game as a cross between Dixit and Clue. I was intrigued and sat down to play a game. After playing it and seeing the beautiful, mysterious artwork, I immediately purchased it. Good thing, too, as I had bought one of the last few copies at the convention!
Mysterium is a cooperative game for 2-7 players. A mansion is haunted by the ghost of a previous owner. The man was wrongfully charged with murder and now, as a ghost, is trying to show a team of investigator psychics who really committed the murder. The ghost is talking to the psychics through their dreams, and they have seven days to solve the mystery.
The ghost sets up a dream from his ghost deck for each psychic, which consists of a weapon, location and suspect. He then finds the same items in the investigator deck, plus adds 4 more cards for each category, and then deals them face up on the table. This is for a game of normal difficulty. The number of cards vary by the total playing and the difficulty level chosen.
The ghost then draws 7 cards from his dream deck and gives each investigator a card that works as a “clue” so that he or she can pick the correct item. The ghost cannot speak or give non-verbal clues to investigators. Investigators then place their token on their guess and the ghost tells them if they are correct. Investigators individually move from weapon to location to suspect. They have 7 “days” to correctly select their suspect.
If all investigators pick their suspects correctly before 7 rounds are up, they all then have one final dream. The ghost picks 3 dream cards that represent one investigator’s dream — one for the weapon, location and suspect. If the majority of investigators pick the correct dream, they win! Also, if 7 days pass and not all the investigators are able to identify their suspect, they all lose.
Like I said, I brought this to Saturday gaming and wasn’t sure if people would be receptive to it. Clue isn’t exactly a game that’s ever played there, but every once in a while Dixit makes it to a table. A group of folks wanted to play after hearing buzz about the game, so six of us started playing. I was the ghost the first time around, and even though we lost, everybody wanted to play again.
The ghost role passed to two more folks, and in the end we all agreed, being ghost is fun but there’s so much pressure! You can’t speak at all, and you’re limited by the dream cards in your hand. You hope that people will understand your “clue,” whether it be color, shape, similarity or some story that your teammates will understand. Sometimes an investigator would pick correctly and then talk themselves out of their pick, and then pick something else … and there’s nothing the ghost can do about it!
The games included a lot of “What does that mean?” and “Man, these locations are hard to figure out!” We also did a lot of Scooby-Doo type of scary noises — “OoooOOOoooHH!!” Fun times were had by all during our three games. I’m so glad I purchased this game!