Mysterium A Murder Mystery Game

Mysterium is a co-op murder mystery solving game. Where one person plays a murdered ghost who can communicate with the other players only through a series of visions in the form of cards with images. The other players, who take the role of psychic mediums, must interpret these cards to identify a suspect, location, and murder weapon. A game for two to seven players this game is a frequent at our game nights. Often a person might be excited to take of the role of the ghost, but be warned it is trickier than it seems. The ghost also cannot communicate with the rest of the player so it can feel like sometimes you are not a part of the game. I personally still really enjoy the game and plan on buying the expansion for it.

To solve the crime, the ghost must first recall (with the aid of the mediums) all of the suspects present on the night of the murder. A number of suspect, location and murder weapon cards are placed on the table, and the ghost randomly assigns one of each of these in secret to a medium. This is done by using the screen giving to the ghost player, who then slides cards into plastic pockets under each matching color.

Each turn, the ghost hands one vision cards face up to each medium, refilling their hand to seven each time they share vision cards. These vision cards present dreamlike images to the mediums, with each other medium having the ability to help interpret the vision cards received. Once the ghost has handed cards to the final medium, they start a two-minute sand timer. Once a medium has placed their token on a suspect, they may also place clairvoyance tokens on the guesses made by other mediums to show whether they agree or disagree with those guesses. Those token determine what medium will be the deciding vote in the event of a tie.

The ghost player has a dungeon master like screen with slots for cards that keep them on track during the game. No other player can see the screen, so a lot of the set up relies on the Ghost player. The set up phase normally takes us about ten minutes to complete.

After time runs out, the ghost reveals to each medium whether the guesses were correct. Mediums who guessed correctly move their crystal ball token up to the next platform, while those who didn't keep their vision cards and receive new ones next hour corresponding to the same suspect. Once a medium has correctly guessed the suspect, location and weapon, they move their token to the clock and receive one clairvoyance point for each hour remaining on the clock. They can still use their remaining clairvoyance tokens to score additional points.

If any of the mediums fail to make it to the clock in time, the ghost cannot remembers who killed them and they mystery remains. If they have all succeeded, then the ghost has recovered enough of its memory to identify the culprit, and we move on to the next phase.

Mediums then group their suspect, location and weapon cards on the table and place a number by each group. The ghost then selects one group, places the matching culprit number face down on the clock, picks three vision cards — one for the suspect, one for the location, and one for the weapon — then shuffles these cards. Players then see up to three cards based on their level achieved; Once all mediums have cast their votes they are handed to the ghost player.

If a majority of the mediums have identified the proper suspect, then the killer has been identified and the ghost can now rest peacefully.

With a complexity rating of 1.92/5 on Boardgamegeeks this game is a simple but fun play.

Photos from Boardgamegeeks as well as information about the game. Information also from

Wikipedia.