As someone who collects board games, it’s normal for me to have an unwrapped board game waiting to be played. My brother gave me Mysterium two years ago as a birthday present, and until last weekend, I never opened it. I was determined to finally open this game, especially because it’s going to be Fall / Halloween season soon. Mysterium is one of my favorite games I have ever played, and as someone who’s a big fan of Clue, Mysterium adds a supernatural element to the classic game.

Mysterium is a collaborative game, meaning all players will win or lose. Mysterium is set in the 1920s, with the characters playing as psychics performing a seance. One of the characters will play as the ghost who will display visions to relay to the psychics who killed him at this mansion twenty years before. The objective of the game is for the psychics to guess correctly what the ghost is trying to say in seven in-game hours. The ghost wants the psychics to guess correctly, so the murder can be solved. If the psychics don’t guess correctly within the seven in-game hours, everyone loses as their spiritual connection to the ghost is severed.

This is where the inspiration for Codenames comes in. The ghost has vision cards that the ghost will play in front of psychics to try and get the psychics to guess the correct person, location, or object. In all the games our group played, I was always in the psychic role. The toughest part is trying to put the pictures together to then make a correct guess. Both roles, whether they be the psychic or the ghost, are challenging for different reasons.

One of the major highlights of playing Mysterium is the art. The art on the vision cards was ethereal and mysterious. Each card fits into the setting of the game. The vision cards had so many artistic details to them that I wasn’t sure what was important on the card. Another highlight was the level of detail in the components of the game. On the front page of the rules, each psychic character has their own back story, which I loved. I changed characters throughout our playthroughs to have someone different to play as.

In our three total games, our group only won one game. In Mysterium, there are three different difficulties. Our group played on easy, and that still was tough. I like playing tougher, collaborative board games because when our group wins on a greater difficulty, it’s so satisfying. In future gameplay, I want to try playing on the medium or the hard difficulty.

Mysterium was a blast to play! Everyone in our group had a fun time learning the game, setting it up, and making the guesses. Being a fan of both Codenames and Clue, I felt Mysterium embodied both.