Mysterium

Why Mysterium.

Mysterium is a cooperative deduction game where one player is a ghost who cannot speak and everyone else is a psychic trying to solve a murder. The ghost knows which suspect, location, and weapon belong to each medium and can only communicate by handing out surreal dream cards, Dixit-style illustrations full of odd details. Each round the mediums study their visions and place a marker on the suspect they think the ghost means; the ghost confirms or denies with a silent nod. Everyone has seven rounds to identify all three of their answers before a final vote picks the true culprit.

The game lives on the ghost's agony. You want to point a medium at the butcher, and the only vision card you hold that hints at knives also has a prominent clock on it, and the mediums have been fixated on clocks all game. Watching the table debate a card you handed over, knowing they are wrong and being unable to say so, is the central pleasure, and it is funny in a way most cooperative games are not. The ghost role suits a patient player who enjoys the art; the medium roles suit everyone.

It seats seven, which makes it a strong pick for holiday gatherings, and it plays fine with mixed ages because reading pictures needs no gaming background. It is at its weakest at two, where the ghost has too little to work with. If your group loves Dixit and wants it to be a team effort, this is the box; if the group wants harder deduction, it will feel loose.

No paid placement. No sponsorship. We chose it on merit. The Amazon link funds the lights - if you'd rather buy direct from a local game store, find one via BoardGameGeek.