When Mystery Express was announced by Day's of Wonder I was immediately intrigued and it became the main game I sought out at Origins 2010. It has since become one of our families gaming staples, supplanting Clue as our mystery board-game of choice.

In Mystery Express, you are a detective on the Orient Express attempting to solve a murder (should sound familiar). Mystery Express is a bit like Clue, in that you are trying to solve a mystery, the solution of which is contained on cards which have been removed from the game. There are five ingredients to each mystery: Time, Modus-operandi (how was the murder done), Motive (why did they do it), Suspect (who-dun-it) and Location (which train car was the murder committed on). Here is where the similarity to Clue ends. For one thing, there are two of every card, only one of which has been removed. For another thing, you get to choose the methods of your investigation using a variety of card-exposing choices. Each turn (there are 5 turns in each game) each player has a certain number of “hours” to spend in investigating and each method of investigation burns a certain number of hours so that you have to carefully manage your choices from turn to turn.

Game play is mildly-complex and there is a one-game learning curve. After the initial game, subsequent games go fairly smoothly taking about an hour to finish. Unlike Clue, it is rare that any investigator completely solves the mystery. The winner is the person with the most correct assumptions and generally you are forced to make an educated guess on two of the five missing cards. Despite this, the game is fun, especially in subsequent games after your first. It can be played by 3-5 players but is probably best with the full 5. Our 10 year old daughter plays it but it is probably not for players much younger than that.

Game components are well done. The game includes plastic investigator busts, a solid plastic whistle and traveling bag, game cards, deduction sheets and “telegram” sheets. The cards hold up well and the plastic pieces are quite nice. I do wish they would have provided a greater number of “Telegram” papers, but post-it-notes make a decent substitute for this particular game item after you run out of them.

I suspect the game is not for everyone. But its a solid 4+ star game and one that will certainly appeal to those that like interactive games, logic puzzles and deduction. I am certainly glad to have added it to our game library and it is a game that will see a lot of use in the years to come.