Libellud LIBOB01EN Obscurio, Mixed Colours
Libellud LIBOB01EN Obscurio, Mixed Colours
| Dimensions: | 28.6 x 28.6 x 7.62 cm; 1.4 Kilograms |
| Model: | LOBO01 |
| Colour: | Mixed Colours |
| Pack Quantity: | 1 |
| Batteries Required: | No |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Age: | 10 years and up |
| Assembly: | No |
| Dimensions: | 28.6 x 28.6 x 7.62 cm; 1.4 Kilograms |
| Quantity: | 1 |
We are big fans of Mysterium, so Obscurio was a great find. It has some similar aspects, and has some fun twists to it. For those who may not be as abstract thinkers, this one may be a little simpler than Mysterium. Definitely a great group game.
On game night, this is one of my go to games! It’s relatively easy to learn once you’re going (watch a how to video – it may help instead of reading the whole manual )
Muy sencillo de aprender y muy fcil de dominar, pueden jugarlo tanto adolescentes, nios y abuelos, muy divertido para varias partidas. El tiempo entre partidas vara mucho, quiza entre los 20 minutos y un poco mas de una hora.
The main thing that struck me with this game was all the little bits and pieces were such great quality – sturdy, well designed, and just really cool. The whole concept is great. Would highly recommend for any fans of Dixit, Mysterium etc.
I’m giving this game 4 stars because it does what it intends to do well – offer a better gaming experience to some serious gamers who might want a somewhat meatier version of Mysterium. However, I don’t personally prefer the game. It absolutely does not replace Mysterium for me.
The theme of Obscurio is by its very nature more appealing to serious gamers, especially those who like fantasy, and as a result will make more sense to them than to family gamers. I’m actually not a family gamer, but I’m forced to play with less serious gamers and I tend to be very picky about fantasy themes. I just simply do not relate to the idea of wizards in a library stealing a book with a sorcerer attempting to stop them. And because I can’t relate to it, I’m not going to be able to teach it to my non-gamer friends. In Mysterium I’m telling people, “This person has died and its spirit is trying to tell these ghost hunters how it happened.” Versus Obscurio, “You’re a wizard who’s broken into this library to steal the Grimoire and a sorcerer is trying to stop you and one of you is on the side of the sorcerer.” I can’t sell it and my friends aren’t going to buy it anyway. My biggest gripe is thus the chosen theme. Some will and do love it, but for me it just ruined the whole experience as well as any chance I might have to bring it to the table.
Obscurio has received a lot of reave reviews from serious gamers both here and on sites like boardgamegeek. If you found your experiences with Mysterium wanting then check this one out.
If don’t already consider yourself a serious gamer then think twice about buying Obscurio. The better choice for family gamers is Mysterium.
That is just a brief overview of the game – there is a lot more going on here. But that is the bare bones of the mechanics. This game is the spiritual successor to Mysterium, a game I played once or twice about a year or so ago. I liked Mysterium, but so many people had talked it up for me that I found it kind of a let down. However, I really enjoyed Obscurio. I have played as both the Grimoire and a team member (traitor), and I enjoyed it immensely both times. Because of both the hidden traitor and hidden information systems going on here, you and your friends will be laughing constantly. The accusations will fly, and it’s great fun trying to convince the others that you are innocent (especially when you are not!). The role of the Grimoire is likewise fun. You can’t talk, you can only use your best judgement and hope that the team members pick up the vibe you’re laying down. All told, my friends and I had a ball with this game, and I would highly recommend it for a casual game night with friends and family.
The Discriminating Game
This game appears to be made by the same people who brought us “Shadows: Amsterdam”. I have a review on that product here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1BZ9XQDWR196B/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07FWTM6FW
The basic play of this game goes like this:
* 1 player acts as the narrator – (s)he knows the correct answer and will provide clues, hoping to help the other players guess correctly
* 1 player is the traitor and tries to obscure the clues given by the narrator. With the exception of the narrator (who isn’t allowed to say anything about it), none of the other players know who the traitor is–they all think (s)he is “one of us”.
* Everyone else is trying to use the clues from the narrator to figure out which picture to guess based on the clues
Here’s how it works:
1) The narrator draws a card from the deck (and keeps it secret). This card will be “the correct answer” later.
2) (S)He then draws 2 more cards from the deck and tries to identify aspects of the 2 new cards that most resemble the first. (S)He uses the pointers to point to the aspects identified. The goal is to help the other players guess “the correct answer” from #1, above. Everyone gets to see the 2 cards and which aspect in each has been identified.
3) The traitor has access to 8 cards. After looking at the clues in #2, (s)he picks 2 cards that are going to mislead the others. His/her goal is to try and make everyone else guess wrong.
4) The correct answer from #1 and the 2 diversions from #3 and 3 more random cards from the deck are laid out on the board and all the non-narrator players (including the traitor) choose which one they think is “the correct answer”. As long as at least 1 player gets it right, you move on to the next room. For every wrong guess, you loose a token. Each “room” is just a way of keeping track of how many correct guesses there have been–everything else is identical.
5) You have to make it through a certain number (6?) of rooms without running out of tokens to win the game. If you do that, everyone but the traitor “wins” together. If you don’t, then the traitor wins.
To make it more challenging, there are handicaps that come into play during the turn that can do things like obscure the pictures you are looking at, or otherwise limit the amount of information you have to work with before you choose or give the traitor more information to make his dastardly plans more effective. The longer the team takes to choose, the more of these handicaps will be introduced in the next turn.
Figuring out how to play the game in the first place took a bit of time, but once I understood it, it was easy to get going and bring others along. There *is* 1 handicap I still don’t understand, though, so some better instructions may be in order. What would be the best is if there was a video on YouTube that explained the rules. That would be an awesome supplement to the rule book.
I like that there is no reading or math required, nor do you need a vast understanding of literature or other culture, so little kids can do it almost as well as adults. That makes it a good family game. It also appears to scale pretty well for small and large groups, although so far I’ve only done small groups.
Unlike Shadows: Amsterdam, there is no problem with people looking closely and trying to really evaluate the details in the pictures–nothing is really given away there, so that’s an improvement.
An interesting aspect of the game is that it is everyone vs. the traitor. In some ways, that’s cool–sort of a cooperative experience where you all win or lose together (except the traitor). There isn’t really any direct competition going on–like in Risk where you deliberately attack another player or in so many other games where 1 player can “pick on” another they deem a threat. Again, that makes this a good family game so you don’t have 2 siblings who have it out for each other focusing on revenge and what-not.
I think it’s a fun game and I’m excited to try it with a larger group.
First off the rules say 2-8 people can play, but I think you really need 5-6 for it to work best. This is an entirely visual game. In Obscurio one person is the Grimoire, the clue giver of the game. The rest of the players are trying to escape the library they are trapped in. Only one person in the group is a hidden traitor trying to prevent the others from escaping. The heart of the game lies in visual interpretation. There is a large deck of cards each with an imaginative and surreal illustration on it. There are many details and meanings within a single card. The library room has six exits, and each exit will have a picture card associated with it. Only one of these cards is the correct exit, the others are all false exits. To get you to choose the correct exit and picture card, the Grimoire will have two randomly chosen picture cards to work with. Using two small pointer arrow tokens the Grimoire will try to highlight certain details that they think relate to the correct exit’s picture card. Players will discuss among themselves which of the six doors is correct. They may not agree. And to make it difficult the traitor will have secretly chosen some of the picture cards for the exits. There are other obstacles that will come into play and a players must succeed within a certain number of rounds. If you like the idea of trying to interpret what someone is thinking and trying to communicate using pictures only then this might work for you. Mysterium is a similar game. You also have to like the idea of the traitor player. If not, you could try altering the rules and playing without. The design of the game is beautiful and well made. It really helps to have five or six people since one person will be the Grimoire, and one will be the traitor. This is a niche game that won’t appeal to everyone, but for the visually inspired give it a try.
This is an excellent game – very thoughtfully made and with very high quality components. The artwork is beautiful, the player tokens are solid and well-made, and having elements like the magnetized clue board (grimoire) makes playing a lot easier and speaks to the fact that they didn’t skimp.
What’s perhaps most impressive about the game is how you can ratchet up or down the complexity depending on the style of game you want to play and how many people you have. At its very simplest, two people can play together in a relaxed ‘spot it’ style visual clues game. Then you can add the ‘traps’ to add hurdles, add the timer to make it faster and more pressurized, and add players to add debate on the clues which changes the whole feel. And then if you have 4+ players you can add the ‘traitor’ element (akin to a mafia or werewolf mechanism where the traitor does things while everyone else’s eyes are closed) to make it even more complex and intense. That ability to easily add or remove each of those elements gives this game a remarkable versatility.
It’s pretty easy to play for the first time just by following the instructions, sets up very fast, and has a fast learning curve. Definitely the kind of game you can learn and then easily add friends to when they come over without having to do a whole ‘practice game’ for hours just so people learn how to play.
Does well with kids maybe 6+, especially if you tone down some of the complexity elements and focus on the visual clues.
Overall, a great game to have around, especially for when there are guests over. And it plays with up to 8 players which is a lot!
Adding the traitor made it more exciting, but a bit boring while waiting for the traitor to finish his/her part.
Overall, I totally recommend 🙂
BGG rating: 7.3(so far…I can see this going up as more people get their hands on this game)
BGG Weight: 2.29 (meaning it has some complexity, but not too terrible difficult to learn for most casual gamers)
Game supports 2-8 players, but we found 4 is the minimum (so traitor can stay hidden a bit longer).
We found this to be approx. 45-minutes play time, per game
Recommended 8+, as it isn’t too complex and themeing/elements/art of the game are family friendly
GAMEPLAY:
1 player is the Grimoire trying to escape the library.
Other players are the wizards trying to help the Grimoire, but one is a traitor working against the rest of the wizards.
The Grimoire only can communicate to the wizards with pictures…abstract art/pictures/clues similar to Dixit.
Six different doors will hold pictures and so will the Grimoire itself. The Grimoire will use butterfly tokens to point to aspects of the Grimoire’s pictures as clues to the real doors/pictures that the wizards need to pick from the six doors.
The traitor gets to pick clue cards to throw off the other pictures.
If the wizards collectively pick the same room, then the progress marker is moved forward, getting closer to the Grimoire escaping.
There are trap tokens and the traitor that are trying to make the wizards lose the Grimoire tokens.
The Grimoire escapes or the Grimoire tokens are used up (each wizard who picks the incorrect door, per round uses up one token per incorrect wizard) and remains trapped in the library (traitor wins).
There is one event at the end where the wizards vote on who is the traitor, and for each false accusation, then two tokens are removed. When the traitor is clearly identified and the Grimoire hasn’t escaped yet, then we continue playing with some limitations on the revealed traitor.
The game is easy to learn…a little player aid with the steps may help speed up learning. After a few games this will no longer be needed.
There is a timer that does help control the time of the rounds and limits the discussions. I like this feature so things don’t go on endlessly.
COMPONENTS:
Great artwork and abstract enough that there is plenty of freedom to use the same pictures for many different options.
The Grimoire board is magnetic!! Thus your butterfly pointers aren’t sliding on to cardboard (thinking of the terrible character card sliders from Betrayal at House on the Hill) but stick and allow easy removal.
DOWNTIME:
I didn’t find a lot of downtime.
Most of the time I’m trying to process why this person said this or said that in relation to the clues/pictures; or why did the Grimoire player point to that one object on the clue image and which door could they be referring to since there is more than one option. I’m entertained even if it isn’t my turn to share or decide anything.
LUCK vs. STRATEGY:
Very light luck, when drawing a random trap from the draw bag. The rest of the game is about communicating through pictures amidst the traitor’s efforts and the traps.
Unlike some other games that you have to make LEAPS of deduction, the pointing to clues with the Grimoire’s butterfly tokens is HUGE in helping guide the process, which is balanced by the traitor and traps. Without this the traitor and traps would win every time.
REPLAYABILITY:
Plenty of pictures (I think more than 80 in the base box) so lots of variety.
Similar to Deception Murder in Hong Kong you may see some of the same clues/pictures/objects, but the combination picked and used by the clue giver (Grimoire in this game or Forensic Scientist in Deception) can be different every game.
OVERALL:
A great deduction game that relies on strategy and communication versus luck.
Still lots of creativity and room for intepretation with the abstract art.
This is a definite addition to our collection of 400+ games.