Squid Games: Mysterium

This past weekend, I got together with Blue Liner, Racquet Man and Young Buck for a game session.  We started with Mysterium which RM had gotten as a birthday present.  I own the game myself but have only played it a couple times.  I've had to relearn the rules every time I've played.

Mysterium is sort of a combination of Clue and Dixit.  A murder has been committed and the victim's ghost (one game player, YB in our case) tries to communicate the details - murderer, location and weapon - to psychics (the rest of the game players).  The ghost has trippy, dreamy image cards which they submit to each psychic in hopes of making connections with the more concrete image cards on the table.  Through a series of stages, the ghost leads the group to the ultimate solution - hopefully.  It's a cooperative game.  Either everyone wins or everyone loses.  We lost.

Mysterium is a fun game once you sort out the rules.  The rules are the issue.  It's all too complicated to be intuitive, thus the need to relearn for me each time.  I suppose if one played more often, one would remember better.  Maybe we should play again next time we're together.

Board Game Geek rates Mysterium 7.2/10 with a complexity rating of 1.91/5.  I might quibble with the second rating, though I suppose my objection is not complexity, exactly.  It's all quite understandable in the end.  Perhaps better written directions would clear up my issues.