Reviews

Great game with lots of interesting strategy. The only downside to the game is the setup. It has good game-play and is easy to learn.

Mice and Mystics is one of a new wave of board games borrowing progression-based play from what was traditionally Role-Playing Game's domain. If you're only planning on playing once, you should probably look for a different game. But if you have the time to play this a few times in succession, or plan to come back and play it regularly, the way you can grow your characters and follow the story makes this an incredible experience. This is probably the lightest of the bunch (others that do progression well are the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Myth, and Descent), so playing this is a great way to try progression out and see if it's a mechanic you'll like or not. This is also a good game to introduce kids to a dungeon-crawl type of game. It's very simple, story-driven, and has some cutsie characters, items and events, but there's still enough of a game here for players of all ages to enjoy.

You might not be familiar with the designer Michael Menzel, but chances are you've come across his work before. He's been the illustrator for lots of well-known games, but this is his first foray into game design, and it's very well done. As is to be expected, the artwork for this game is gorgeous, but past that, there's a solid game underneath.

The story progresses the game, and as you play, your game play progresses the story. This can be a little bit of a problem. If you progress the story too quickly, you can force it to its conclusion before you're ready. So there's a little bit of a puzzle aspect to this. You need to figure out what exactly you need to do (and NOT do) in order to keep pace with the story events.

The theme is pretty standard fantasy adventure, with four different archetypes players can choose between, most being pretty different. As you play, you can grow your character's attributes, equip items, etc. The game comes with 5 scenarios that all tie together, but there are a lot of other scenarios available both from the publisher and fans available online, so there can be a lot of replay-ability in here.

One of the biggest pros to this game is the ease of learning it. There's an introductory scenario that comes with an excellent quick start guide which makes this a breeze to just sit down and start playing. It's pretty similar to video game tutorial levels, where you get introduced to a new concept, get to play with and get familiar with it, then shown the next steps. Before you realize it, you'll understand the game completely without ever having cracked open the rule book.

There are plenty of "filler" games out there. Games you can play while waiting for people to show up for your "main" game. These aren't the types of games you plan ahead for, go out of your way to invite people to, or tell epic stories about afterwards. But you will have fun passing the time, and this is probably my favorite game in that category. The theme is nice, but pretty loose. It mostly consists of seeing what dice your opponent rolls, resolving them, and deciding if it's worth risking what you've earned to delve deeper into the dungeon with your remaining dice. Switch sides, repeat 3 times, and see who won. Good game for what it is.