Tajemnicze Domostwo, “Mysterious Mansion”

Tajemnicze Domostwo, “Mysterious Mansion”

The link

Tajemnicze Domostwo on Board Game Geek

Publisher Website (in Polish)

 

What it is

Tajemnicze Domostwo, which roughly translates to “Mysterious Mansion”, is a Polish murder mystery board game (it’s also known as “Mysterium” in English speaking countries). In this cooperative game the ghost of a murdered person and a team of investigators try to solve the murder.

The players try to find the murder weapon, the murder location and the murderer from a set of possibilities, which are dealt on the table in the form of cards with highly detailed artwork. The central game mechanic is that the ghost (one of the players!) sends “dreams” to the investigators, which are also cards with elaborate, often surreal artwork. It’s up to the players to find connections between the dreams each player is dealt and the cards n the table, and thereby find the correct answers. Player discussion is encouraged, but the ghost player has to remain silent.

The game is nominally in Polish, but the only non-decorative text is the rules manual. Luckily, the rules aren’t very complicated: rules in English can be found here on boardgamegeek (you need to make a free account to download). You can probably find copies floating around the internet as well.

 

What it means to me

Please browse the image section of either link: the artwork is gorgeous. The makers of the game have gone all out to find detailed artwork with many aspects that can be used for free association (apparently, they rejected 50-75% of art submissions for “not being detailed enough”). There are so many details you can key off of, and the game is set up on such a way that the ghost’s options are really restricted: the ghost will have to improvise and make strange suggestions.

You receive a card showing a sunny wheat field as a suggestion for the murder weapon. What does this suggest?

• The hedge trimmer, which is used in fields
• The gun, which also has yellow as a dominant color
• The dinner fork, which is food related
• The fireplace poker, whose long, thin shape mirrors the shape of the wheat plants

It’s up to you and your fellow investigators in a giant game of “what is my silent friend thinking”. And that friend might just be thinking “I really need to get rid of this stupid field card and I’ll give that player a better hint later”.

Because the goal of the game is to bridge a communication barrier, Tajemnicze Domostwo is one of the few cooperative board games that isn’t more tempting to play on your own. Many cooperative board games suffer if one player is really good, because there’s a strong temptation to boss the other players around for the sake of game efficiency. That’s really not an option in Tajemnicze Domostwo. The game mechanics also make sure you don’t play similar games often. In fact, repeated sessions become part of your playgroup’s own story: if two cards were associated in the last session, is the ghost hinting at that suggestion? Or are we reading too much into this?

I heartily recommend Tajemnicze Domostwo if you like board games, pretty art, or second-guessing your friends. It’s available via many online stores (do a google search, the name is pretty unique), and apparently there’s talk of an English language re-release as well.