‘Mysterium Park’ is the Quick-Playing Spin-off of the Award-Winning Original
There’s been a murder at Mysterium Park! Using your psychic powers, hold a seance to interpret dreamlike visions from the deceased to learn whodunit.
Who doesn’t love a good mystery? I know I do. That’s why I’ve played a ton of Mysterium over the past few years. It’s one of my go-to party games.
But for as many times as I have played and loved Mysterium, just like I don’t think I’ll be playing Gloomhaven anymore, I think Mysterium might be getting a permanent residence on my gaming shelf. It’s going to be replaced by its slimmed-down spin-off, Mysterium Park.
Firstly, What is Mysterium?
In case you’re unfamiliar, Mysterium is a cooperative game where one player plays the ghost of the murder victim, and the remaining players are psychics. It’s up to the psychics to interpret bizarre and unusual visions granted by the ghost in order to determine the details of the murder.
The ghost can’t speak so they can only use these vision cards to try to point the psychics toward the various suspects, locations, and murder weapons. If the psychics can work together to suss out the clues and find the correct details of the murder before midnight, they win! That’s a very brief summary, but that’s the gist.
How is Mysterium Park Different?
Mysterium Park removes the need to find the murder weapon and along with some game component changes, streamlines the whole experience into a more logical flow.
Gone is the big, clunky screen from Mysterium which the ghost used to track each psychic’s unique combination. It is replaced by a far simpler (and dare I say better) Codenames-like grid system. This alone is such a relief. The setup for Mysterium was always something of a hassle, which was often a turnoff for new players.
Additionally, the psychics in Mysterium Park, aren’t finding their suspects and locations; they are eliminating the innocent. This is functionally pretty similar. But this makes the theme of the game make a lot more sense, which also aids in explaining the game to new players.
Once all the innocent people and places have been eliminated, there’s one final reading. It’s up to the psychics to hold one final seance to determine the culprit and murder location from those remaining. If they can decipher the final vision correctly, they win!
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