Mysterium

My goal for the next year is going to be to play more games with my kids. I feel like we used to play games ALL THE TIME and now that my oldest is in high school our variety of games has decreased dramatically. I actually bought Mysterium for my kids a couple years ago, but at the time, I looked at the directions, was overwhelmed and gave up. Now that my youngest is 9 and better able to play more complicated games, I decided to give it another shot as a fun post-trick-or-treating Halloween activity. I’m glad I put in the effort to learn, because we had SO much fun. We’ve played a few times since then and I feel pretty confident this is one I will be keeping to play with my children even when they are adults.

Mysterium Details

Product: Mysterium
Company: Asmodee
Website: https://store.asmodee.com/products/mysterium
Recommended Age Range: Box says 10 and up. I think younger kids can play too since there isn’t any reading in the gameplay, but the directions are a bit complicated.
Price Range: ~$45
Amazon Product Page (Affiliate Link)

Review

I’m going to start by saying that if you are easily overwhelmed by game directions and you haven’t played Dixit, play Dixit first. This game reminds us of Dixit which is one of our favorites, but Dixit is MUCH easier to learn how to play. If I hadn’t tried this game once before and given up, I probably wouldn’t have put in the 30 minutes or so it took to learn how to play this game. I was determined though. I watched a couple YouTube videos (I found this one them most helpful) and then it still took me like 15 to 20 minutes to set up the game the first time by looking at the directions.

The main premise is that there is a murder and one player is the ghost of the murder victim. The ghost has to send “visions” to the other players to help them figure out who the murderer is. The vision cards are a lot like the Dixit cards in that they are beautiful and totally random. The “ghost” has to make a connection between a random card and what they are trying to get you to notice and you have to just guess when connection they are making. For example, when I was the ghost, I was trying to direct my fifteen year old to a man who had half white hair and half black hair, so I was giving him vision after vision of black and white cards. He however, kept noticing different things about the subject of the cards and picked every character before the person I was directing him to.

Not only is this game really fun, but I feel like it is so good for kid’s creativity and flexible thinking skills. In a world where most video games and activities that kids participate in are very structured and cut and dry, it is so refreshing to be able to have fun in a way that encourages your brain to think divergently and make random associations. Now that we know how to play, I can definitely see this as one we will be playing for many years to come.

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