Mysterium, the murder mystery and deduction game, has been ported to digital format. You must decipher pictures that give you clues about the suspects. Guess right and you’ll solve the case.

Mysterium App Description:

Mysterium is set in a town where there have been some mysterious murders. The police are befuddled with no leads. It seems as though something supernatural is at work.

You play as either the deceased’s ghost or one of the psychics called in to help solve the case. Each psychic has a specific suspect, location and murder weapon they must guess. The ghost player has cards with pictures on them. They give each psychic a card that should help them guess their specific suspect. After the psychic guesses their suspect, they are given cards to help guess them guess the location of the crime. And then finally they do the same with the murder weapon.

Each round you get one guess and the clock moves forward one hour. If you run out of time you lose. Since different psychics will be correct on different rounds some could be trying to guess different things.

If you guess the suspect, location and murder weapon before the time is up, you must guess which psychic actually has the right information. This again is done by the ghost giving the entire group cards that pertain to the murderer. Guess right and you win, but if you are incorrect you lose.

Quick Review of the Mysterium App:

Mysterium is a good digital port of the analog board game. I do not own the board game but have played it a few times. The cooperative nature of the game definitely lends itself to table talk and collaboration.

The app looks great and everything is very intuitive and easy to navigate. The tutorial is well done and you will find yourself playing the game within minutes.

Whether you’ll Mysterium in either form probably depends on your game group and the types of games you like to play. If you enjoy Dixit this game is a close relative. Some groups may feel you are just randomly guessing when trying to interpret the ghost’s clues. Especially when the ghost is the app.

Also online play might depend on the people you are playing with. If you know them or they are willing to share their thought process then the app can mimic the original game play well. But if not you might feel isolated or not feel like part of a team.

I do wish there was a pass-n-play mode of this app. It would be easier to keep the spirit of the board game. And no asynchronous mode means losing your game if you close the app. So be aware of these things.

If you like the Mysterium board game and have a group of friends you can play with online, this is worth getting. It is a well done implementation of a fun board game. You can play across different systems including iOS, Android, or Steam.