Mysterium and Potion Explosion Digital reviews

Mysterium board game — Mysterium has gone digital!

Earlier this week we shared our review of the fun cooperative deduction board game, Mysterium. And back in December we shared our review of the fun family board game, Potion Explosion.

Today we’re happy to share our reviews of the recently released digital implementation of both games!

And if you’re quick to jump on it, Mysterium digital and Potion Explosion digital are both on sale for the next 4 days!

Mysterium digital

Since our recent review of the Mysterium board game covers how to play, we won’t dive into that here.

Let’s just say that the digital version plays out just the same as the board game. One player is the ghost giving visionary clues. And the rest of the players are the psychics trying to interpret those clues to guess a character, location, and object.

Mysterium digital board game — It can be tough playing as the ghost and giving visions to the psychics.

The artwork of the “cards” is exactly the same as the actual board game. And since we’re fans of the evocative cards, it goes without saying that we love the visuals in the digital version too.

Outside of the cards, we also like the whole visual presentation of the digital version. The interface is very easy to work with as either the ghost or the psychics.

There are a couple different modes of play in Mysterium Digital. We highly recommend starting with Story mode because the first few scenarios are like tutorials to help you get familiar with the interface and flow of play.

The first Story scenario has you play as a psychic and teaches how to make guesses. The next scenario still has you as a psychic but introduces the clairvoyance tokens and voting on other psychics’ guesses. The following scenario introduces you to the role of ghost and helps you work through giving out vision cards to the psychics. It’s all very well done and there’s no guarantee that you’ll win the intro games even with the coaching.

There are also plenty of other scenarios in Story mode to play once you’ve gone through the first few tutorial scenarios.

The other game mode is simply labeled “Play” on the main screen and it includes the options of Quick Play, Online, Blitz, and Solo.

Quick Play lets you jump into any multiplayer game as quickly as possible.
Online lets you play a custom game with other online players.
Blitz mode lets you play as a psychic with shorter but challenging games.
Solo is like playing Story mode but with the configurations you choose.

We’ve heard some bad things about player behavior during online play, but we haven’t experienced any bad behavior. Of course, bad player behavior is a possibility in any online game when you don’t personally know the other players.

One of the cool things about multiplayer games is the ability to use telepathy.

Since the game is cooperative, it’s in your best interest to help other players along. So the game includes an active Chat window so psychics can “talk” to each other along the way. But the telepathy is different. It actually lets you point to certain aspects on cards to show other players what you think are key elements of the vision and other cards that the ghost is trying to convey.

It’s a handy tool and brings the game close to the original board game where players can always point to different parts of the cards in front of them.

Asmodee Digital did a fantastic job bringing Mysterium to life on digital platforms.

Although we still prefer the physical version to play as a family and with friends, but having the digital version also lets me play whenever I’m in the mood and just can’t rustle up other local players.

Potion Explosion digital

Like Mysterium, Asmodee Digital did a fantastic job bringing Potion Explosion to life in digital form. While it’s hard to compete with the tactile experience of the original with the awesome marble dispenser, the digital game is still fun to play.

The best part about playing it in is digital form is that you can play it in places where the physical board game just doesn’t make sense — like on an airplane (where I last played Potion Explosion digital).

If you’d first like to see how to play Potion Explosion, check out our full review of the board game.

Potion Explosion digital can be played either Offline or Online.

When playing Offline, you can choose to play against AI opponents of varying difficulty levels or against other human opponents. We enjoy the pass-n-play nature of playing against other human opponents. But we also enjoy the challenge of going up against tough AI opponents as well.

So far we haven’t taken a spin at the Online version since each time we’ve gone in, we haven’t come across other players online at the same time.

I guess I need to get some friends living in other parts of the world to get online at the same time to make a go of it.

We really like the fun art style of the Potion Explosion app. And the interface is very easy to understand. Tap on the orbs and they fly to your beakers and subsequent explosions take care of themselves. It’s also easy to simply drag them to the potions you’re working on.

The tutorial in the game is also very well done and makes diving into the game very simple.

Before you know it, you’ll be a potions master.