MYSTIC PATHS
A word game that gets lost in the woods
Designer: Kevin Worden & Brian Leet | Publisher: R&R Games
Come, dear apprentice – venture through the Eternal Forest on a quest to prove your worth as a sorcerer! But the way is no simple matter – oh no. You must travel via a series of arcane portals which will only work when the correct magic words are spoken. Can you use your mystic intuition to divine these words and prove yourself a great magician? eme is a thorny old subject in games. Even ostensibly abstract games like Draughts have a theme of sorts, if you squint – it’s a war – but nowadays most popular commercial releases have clear, resonant subject matter, re ected in the art and the game mechanics. You’re scheming Venetian nobles, up and coming Dutch traders, pirates, dwarven farmers, apocalyptic cultists bent on world domination. Mystic Paths attempts to follow this trend by adopting a High Fantasy setting. You are apprentice wizards, testing your divinatory skills by navigating an ancient forest lled with mystic portals – or so the instruction manual informs you. You control little mage miniatures with owing robes, and the board is laid out in druidic greens and browns, edged with twisty Celtic borders and glowing mandalas. All of which sets up – not unreasonable – expectations that this will be a game of spellcasting and magic, of adventure and mystery. Which it’s not, as it turns out. What Mystic Paths is, is a – competent but unremarkable – party game about guessing words via clues. e obvious comparison is smash hit Codenames, which similarly slaps a theme – in that case, espionage – over a relatively abstract guessing game. In Mystic Paths, players navigate a grid of interconnected stepping stones with words on. You’re given a map card which shows you a secret tenstep route through the grid your mage has to follow. en, using a hand of clue cards, you have to try to give the other players hints as to which of the adjacent spaces contains your next portal. Clue cards have adjectives like ‘Edible’, ‘Short’ or ‘Tricky’. As in games like Mysterium, you don’t get to choose which you have in hand, so you’re trying to make the best out of what you have. Everyone guesses on everyone else’s clues, and depending on how fast or slow you all make it through your ten portals, you’ll get a team grade from A to F.
It’s jarring that so much e ort was put into creating this Fantasy theme, with wizards, dark woods and round marker images similar to the ve mana symbols in Magic: e Gathering, only for the word clues to be completely unrelated. It’s hard to feel immersed in a mystic quest when the secret words you must utter to open a portal are self-consciously goofy clues like ‘Hot Pockets,’ ‘Wigs’ and ‘Paul Simon.’
e magical theming feels like an afterthought – something not only unrelated to the mechanics and objectives of the game, but that actively works against them.
In Codenames, the word clues come from the same reality as spies. But it’s weird to be told you’re wizards navigating ‘the Eternal Forest’ only to be confronted with clues like ‘the Ei el Tower’ and ‘ the Proclaimers’.
e problems run deeper than mere theme quibbles. For a start, putting your piece on a space obscures the word, meaning with multiple players it’s often hard for everyone to see either the clues or exactly where each piece is. e endgame is usually anticlimactic – some players typically
nish before others, leaving the rest to limp home, until the game ends after round ve. ere’s no win/lose condition – instead the question is, will we get an A- or a B? Which isn’t a very compelling tension upon which to base a game.
Designer: Martino Chiacchiera & Michele Piccolini | Publisher: dV Giochi
What does the popular children’s book Dear Zoo, and Wonder Book have in common? ey’re both pop-up books, though thankfully the latter is a game and not inclined to send me non-domesticated animals through the post. And whilst my rst instinct when presented with Wonder Book was to wrinkle my nose a little and mutter about gimmicks in board games, actually, I’ve come away rather delighted with it.
Wonder Book takes you through the story of an ancient dragon civilisation, the portal to which is between its pages. e story is broken up into sections, which are told by overturning cards. Not only is the pop up tree itself rather impressive – it has a delightful height to it, and plenty to look at and interact with – but the back of the book itself represents your rst board where you begin to learn how to play the game. You’ll select your character, who comes with their own mini and character sheet,
before beginning your exploration. At speci c points, monsters can spawn who you’ll need to ght o using your abilities, some of which are triggered by gems that you pick up along the way. ere’s even a few bits you may not anticipate – I enjoyed the additional dragon, a separate pop up to the main book, and the mechanics it represented.
It’s a relatively simple game. Mechanics take a few moments to pick up and explain, the cards taking you through the plot do well to explain what you need to do (though combat resides in the easy to read rulebook) and though you make decisions as you play the game, I have yet to nd a decision that is speci cally detrimental to or altering of the outcome. Alongside that, there are some nice aspects from more traditional games of this style, but in a child friendly way, which also include cute aspects like prompts on the cards to let other people read them
out loud, and a generally engaging but simple plot. It feels frankly like a perfect training game for younger family members, to indoctrinate them early into the cult of the board game. I was equally pleased to nd that it succeeds in using the aspects that set it apart, namely the pop up was actually used, and not just a pointless centrepiece. Of course, it is still a gimmick. Other alternatives could have worked. But there is something lovely about having your character astride a pop-up dragon whose tail you can ick. is is a game that understands the delight in discovery, and utilises that at every step. Is it perfect? No. For one, I’m not a fan of a solo mode that’s simply ‘play two characters’, and whilst it does work, it could easily have just been adjusted. For another, whilst it’s a family game, even the younger players barely entered into any peril that would alter their decision making, it was far too easy to avoid. Finally, I can’t ignore the lack of replayability – certainly, you can try the other characters, but your outcomes will be similar – vs the £65 cost. Of course, we’ve seen it lower in other spots, and honestly given it’s a pop up book, and contains miniatures, cardboard, and those wonderful little game trays for the loose ddly bits, it’s probably priced about right for the physical components it o ers. However, when you can get much more story from something like Jaws of the Lion for much less cost, it’s a nod to the fact that whilst the story is good, it’s the gimmick you’re paying for. All that however, doesn’t take away from the sheer whimsy and fun of its existence on the tabletop, and the fact that ultimately, if you asked me if you should play it, I’d say yes, albeit, as above, a little caveated.