Mysterium Park Review: Carnival Culprit!
Intent: Inspire you to try playing Mysterium Park
Have you ever dreamed of communicating with ghosts? In Mysterium Park, you learn that the past director has been missing for quite some time and now you only have six nights to uncover the truth! Mysterium Park designed by Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko, illustrated by Xavier Collette and M81 Studio and published by Libellud is cooperative thematic deduction game for 2-6 players in which you work together to figure out who indeed was responsible for the murder of the past director. Will you have enough time to solve the mystery, or will the trail go cold as the carnival leaves town?
Overview
In Mysterium Park, one player will take the role of a ghost of the former director who recently went missing. The rest of the team will be psychics, communicating with the ghost to find out what really happened in Mysterium Park. The psychics are initially presented with suspects, and must use their supernatural abilities to communicate with the ghost, obtaining illustrated visions and narrowing down the murder suspects to three. The game then proceeds to the second round, in which the suspects must narrow down the locations where the murder took place. If the psychics are successful in narrowing down both the suspects and locations in under six nights (rounds), they have the opportunity to communicate with the ghost one more time and receive one last vision to figure out who indeed committed the murder and where. This game is neat as the ghost can only communicate in illustrated cards, hoping to sway individuals to specific clues in order to succeed. Will your ghost direct you to the truth, or will the visions be too obscure for your psychics to understand?
First Game Impression
We have played Mysterium before, it is one of the first games in our collection, which propelled us into the hobby. We adore Mysterium and were ecstatic to learn a new standalone Mysterium game will be available to us.
Mysterium Park certainly did not disappoint, playing the first game was a thrill! The artwork in this game is jaw-dropping. When we first opened the box, we spent half an hour looking through all the incredible illustrations before jumping into the first game. The setup was smooth, quick and before you know it, we were psychics immersed in the carnival scene.
We did initially play with three players, which is a lower player count, but it did not hinder the game anyway whatsoever. We unfortunately struggled and failed in solving the mystery in the six nights, but with how quickly the game went, we were ready to dive back in and ensure justice was served in Mysterium Park.
One thing I immediately noticed is that the locations are all areas within the Mysterium Park, which certainly makes it trickier to give clues and interpret them, as there are just so many commonalities. We will have to see how this plays out moving forward.
Thoughts After Seven Games
I can tell this is a game that will hit our table many times moving forward! It’s so easy to explain, set up, and jump into. The games are so quick, which means more individuals can have the opportunity to be the ghost, which was a barrier for us in the original Mysterium. The game surprisingly is not easy, we’ve lost more games than we won, but the wins felt much better because of that.
Again, the illustrations are out of this world, the suspects all have so much personalities and the knick-knacks surrounding them paints an incredible and immersive experience. The locations allow you to get a good understanding of the carnival and really push you and your friends to dive in and experience the spooky atmosphere at a safe distance.
Even though I was initially concerned with the commonality of the locations, after seven games I see the differences and prefer that the locations are all part of one story. I also thoroughly enjoy the cooperative nature of this game, although you can support and guide the people around you, the decision, ultimately is left to them, certainly no quarterbacking here (when one player takes over the entire cooperative game).
Cannot wait to continue exploring the world of Mysterium Park and being a friendly local support psychic.
MERIT Report Card
Overall Letter Grade: B+
Strengths: Illustrations and artwork. I could sit on the couch and just admire the artwork in this game as a pastime. The game is incredibly accessible, easy to introduce and quick to play. The experience really does stick with individuals allowing you to reel them into the vast land of board games. The theme is fantastic and consistent, providing an immersive experience.
Areas of Improvement: More character and location cards would improve the game immensely. The length of the game makes winning slightly anti-climatic. We won? Shall we play again? Although the answer is usually yes, I do wish it was a bit more rewarding to win.
Memorability: B
How often do I think about the game? The game certainly leaves an impression after it’s played. It’s fascinating to see and relate to the connections people make to artwork and to share the understanding by guessing correctly with the clues given. Although the game is quite intriguing, I don’t often think about it when I’m not playing it.
How often is the game brought up by the individuals I play with? A noticeable amount, everyone we exposed this game to has brought it up and is wanting to play again, the ease of setup and playtime is definitely a big factor here, it’s a great game to start off or end off a game night.
How many memories can be built from this game? I’ll say not a significant amount. Although the theme and illustrations are fantastic, the only real big moments of the game are guessing clues correctly under pressure of the limited rounds. This is unfortunately one of the drawbacks of having a shorter more accessible game is that winning doesn’t feel as grand as it does in Mysterium.
Education : B+
There are not many games that allow you to connect with someone through a common understanding of visual presentation. This game does a marvelous job at pushing you to put yourself in the the shoes of the ghost and wondering why this specific illustration was given to you. It gives you an insight of how some individuals think, which I think is remarkable.
You get to notice who notices color or who focuses on the details within the picture. These concepts can be shifted to real world situations. For example, when arranging your furniture and decorating your living room your partner may be focused on the specific details, while you may not like the feel or the arrangement of the whole setting. Both of you can make the comment “This doesn’t feel right.” Understanding how we perceive our surroundings is an extremely interesting element of this game.
This game also gives great practice for self-determination. You can be pressured by everyone at the table but if you’re confident your clue correlates to the spooky clown, you can make the decision, rise above peer pressure and accept the consequences of your action. Although a small choice, this can begin to create habits of confidence and give you the tools to persevere in many difficult situations in life.
Replayability: B
There are sixty plot cards, which allow for a large number of variabilities of which spot on the board the real suspects and locations end up. There are also twenty location cards and twenty character cards, which allow for a fair bit of variability as well, but we definitely noticed that the locations and characters repeat quite often, which is alright because the likelihood of you getting the same character or location is fairly low.
Replayability was definitely thought about when designing this game, the designers have done a great job at ensuring that the likelihood of playing the exact same game is near impossible. The game although does feel the same after a while. I do wish there were more character cards and location cards. After shuffling, seeing the same characters and locations doesn’t feel as exciting, especially if you end up having to guess the same character again.
It is a different game each time, and I’m excited to see what the Mysterium world will have in store moving forward.
Imagination: B+
You are thrown into Mysterium Park and it is a magical experience! You get to know the various parts of the park through the location cards and get to meet all sorts of personalities with the character cards. The most immersive experience happens when clues are given and your team begins to speculate about the various characters and locations. He’s diving into a book, but he has puppet strings, well this guy could be a puppet master? That guy? He looks like a magician, what are you talking about?
The components are wonderful and really add to the theme. I love that the round tracker is a lightbulb and as it moves down, the light gets a little dimmer, narrowing your chances of success. I also love that one of the nine characters is a witness and if you guess them you get to guess again! You really feel that interaction, “No, no, it wasn’t me, in fact that mime looks sus!”
Beyond that, I love the nostalgia. I’ve been to a carnival when I was younger and was fascinated by all that was around me. This game allows you to visit the carnival, and although you may not enjoy every show and ride usually offered, you get to be a psychic talking to ghosts, how cool is that? I look forward to my experience at Mysterium Park each and every!
Target: A-
From my understanding, the target for this game is those who love Mysterium and also an entry way for individuals to the Mysterium universe. The game seeks to draw you in to become a psychic and start communicating with ghosts, solving all the mysteries out there. It definitely is successful with both of these targets, as a Mysterium fanatic, I loved my experience with Mysterium Park! The immersion and theme definitely surprised me but in a good way.
For those who’ve never played Mysterium, this game is a perfect entry way! It is extremely accessible with easy set up, no reading necessary, family friendly and quick to play. It hits many of the accessibility marks and draws a larger base into playing games, which you know we love. This game is a fantastic gateway game to introduce your loved ones to board games, and I would highly encourage you to pick it up and share the love of the hobby.
Those who love beautiful games and illustrations are also a great target, I cannot stop talking about how wonderous the presentation is in this game.
Tylor’s Stars ⭐⭐⭐
I came into this game with very high expectations since I love bringing Mysterium to the table whenever we get the chance. When I try to hook people into playing Mysterium, I usually say it gives me Codenames vibe but I think Mysterium Park is more in line with Codenames than Mysterium. In saying that, this game is great and provides a smaller group the chance to play a game similar to Mysterium. The art is absolutely fantastic; I am honestly mindblown by the creativity that has gone into the characters, the clues and all the other cards.
I am only giving this one 3 stars though because when it comes down to it I would much rather be playing the original Mysterium. I did find that because players are looking at 9 cards for people and places every time on the board that there was a lot of repeats but it is kind of mitigated by the numerous clues and the players thought paths. This was something I felt I didn’t have to worry about in Mysterium since number of visable cards differ and there felt like more variability. Overall, I think for me the short comings of this game simple come back to preference; it isn’t a bad game, I just have other games I would choose over it.
Final Thoughts: The game is incredibly accessible, easy to introduce and quick to play. If you want to get together with your friends and communicate with ghosts in hopes of solving a mystery, this game is certainly for you. If not, check it out anyway, the artwork is phenomenal, and the educational aspects are great. You’re bound to appreciate Mysterium Park. Let those around you interpret your interpretation of clues and enjoy many laughs as you spend six nights (rounds) solving a mystery together.
MERIT Report Card Letter Grade: B+