Last Friday, we pulled out Mystery of the Abbey to play with Leigh and Dave. We started to explain… “It’s like Clue for grown-ups.” Then Dave admitted he’d never played Clue either! But for the rest of you, that one sentence should be helpful.
Mystery of the Abbey is a deduction game by Bruno Faidutti and Serge Laget, produced by Days of Wonder. There are 24 residents of the Abbey - fathers, brothers and novices - each depicted on a separate card. At the beginning of the game, the cards are shuffled and one card is slid, face-down, under the game board. That suspect is the guilty party - he pushed Brother Adelmo off a cliff and must be punished. You need to deduce his identity.
The cards are dealt out and you use a full-color checklist to mark off the monks you have seen. You can move two spaces in the Abbey each turn, and certain rooms give you extra actions - taking cards from other players, asking questions, or drawing cards to give you extra turns or special actions. After each set of 4 turns, Mass is called and the players return to the Chapel. Cards are passed and a Mass action occurs - both of these things reveal more and more cards each round.
Eventually, one player will deduce the guilty party and make their way to the hall to make an accusation. Unlike Clue, however, in Mystery of the Abbey players also have the opportunity to make revelations throughout the game, declaring one characteristic of the murderer. (The murderer is a Fransiscan. The murderer is a Novice.) These revelations give you points, or negative points if they are incorrect, as does the accusation. The winner of the game is the person with the most points at the end, so it’s not always the person who makes the final accusation.
Personally, I love deduction games! I’ve always loved Clue, Clue: Master Detective, Alibi, 221 B Baker Street, Guess Who?, Spy Web, Mastermind - and who can forget the delightful camp of the Clue VCR games? I love to puzzle out the solution, and this game has enough flavor and interesting rules and special actions to make it distinctive. This was our first Days of Wonder game and I’m always up for another round!
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