If you’re looking for a board game that can accommodate a larger gaming group, Obscurio is the one for you! One player is the Evil Wizard and the rest are at his mercy!
Obscurio is a 2-8 player game brought to you by the same team that created Mysterium. Designed by L’Atelier, featuring stunning art from Xavier Collette and from publisher Libellud. So it’s already coming from a pretty reliable team. Needless to say, you are in for a treat.
Obscurio: $49.99
Get It For Less At Miniature Market
Welcome, thieves…
You think you can come into MY Library and take MY magical Grimoire with impunity? I paid a high price for it! Do not expect to leave the building with it unharmed! In order to leave the Library, you’ll need to dispel the illusions I placed in every room.
Oh sure, your little band of magicians can count on the help of this ungrateful Grimoire to run away. But in your impudence, you didn’t watch out for potential troubles within your ranks. One of your fellow magicians fell victim to my spells and is now scheming to destroy your little group from the inside. Soon, you’ll lose confidence in each other and end up lost forever…
Obsurio is a cooperative and asymmetrical game of images and interpretation. One player is the Grimoire and must guide their team towards the exit, room by room, by giving clues about the correct door to pass through.
The Wizards (the rest of the team) cooperate to decipher the Grimoire’s cryptic clues and find the right Image card. But there is a Traitor in their ranks! They must confuse the team with Image cards that will deceive the Wizards while trying to push the discussions in the wrong direction.
Communicate efficiently and avoid the illusions on your path to get out of the Sorcerer’s Library!
Contents:
84 Illusion Cards
1 Desk
1 Card Holder
1 Game Board
7 Loyalty Cards
7 Character Chips
7 Character Cards
4 Round Plastic Sheets
1 Progress Marker
1 Hourglass
1 Bag
14 Trap Tokens
30 Cohesion Tokens
1 Evanescent Room Tile
Ages: 10+
Players: 2-8
Game Length: 45 minutes
Escape From The Evil Wizard: Obscurio Review
A typical game of Obscurio plays in about forty minutes. I definitely consider this game to feel like a spiritual successor to Mysterium. With one interesting difference, a traitor mechanism. So much like Mysterium, all the players are working together to solve the game. One of the players is against the rest and wants to fail the challenge. This fresh new play style really makes this a better version for me.
So every round the traitor is able to see six extra door cards and pick up to two based on the Grimoire’s clues to add to the choice of exits. They don’t know the true exit but can pick what they assume to be similar false doors after seeing what the Grimoire points at on the clues.
One player will kind of act as a dungeon master or DM. Similar to the ghost role in Mysterium they cannot speak or emote at all. They are playing as the Grimoire, the magical book that the wizard players have stolen from the evil sorcerer. The grimoire player will show the players pages from their book to give clues. One improvement is that the grimoire players can use these butterfly markers to point out a specific part of the image.
This helps out so much because just as in Mysterium the card’s pictures can be overwhelming and vague. But that adds to the fun and theme honestly, so it’s not so bad. The players have to choose the right door to exit all six rooms in order to win. For every player who chooses the wrong door, the team loses a cohesion token. If all the cohesion tokens are lost the traitor wins.
Each round in Obscurio uses a sand timer to track how fast the team is moving. Each time the timer runs out it’s reset and this will add more traps to overcome. The traps make it harder to solve the rooms. One, for example, covers the clues in fog, a red lens or an extra door to choose from. These traps can definitely benefit the traitor.
Once the players lose all but the reserve cohesion tokens then accusations can be made. A vote is cast to determine who the traitor is. If the traitor is found out they are no longer able to choose doors with the group but can still pick fake rooms for the available clues. If an allied player is voted on they show they are friendly and the team loses two cohesion tokens. Then another vote is cast until the traitor is either found or the team loses.
Once the team makes it through the sixth room they and the grimoire player wins. If all the cohesion tokens are lost the traitor wins instead.
I really love this game and honestly, as much as I enjoy Mysterium, this one comes out ahead. There are just so many better mechanisms in Obscurio that make me want to play this over the former. Both games are still fantastic but if only given time for one or the other, then Obscurio will be hitting the table for sure.
I hope you get the check this one out and see for yourself. Also definitely try this when you have a larger group as it works so well at eight players. So if your playgroup tends to be large this game is perfect.
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About the Author: Christopher Guyton
When not driving forklifts for a living Chris can be found pushing cubes and chucking dice at Gamer’s Guild in Spring Lake, NC
