Mice and Mystics is a beautifully-produced board game that creates a relatively all-ages-friendly dungeon crawl RPG experience without need for a dungeon master. “My kids went absolutely bananas over this game in a way I haven’t seen before,” says Jon Seagull
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I've got this. It's good, but I may have had unrealistic expectations of it.
Mechanically, it's a fairly traditional dungeon-crawler boardgame. Combat's a bit boring and you do it ALL THE TIME. The theming is great, though, and the physical components are beautiful. The character development and loot are good.
It's quite story-based, and the prose is purple as all fuck. I find myself cutting it down brutally when reading passages to the kids.
It's quite hard. Or maybe we just suck at it.
I'd question the 'all-ages' descriptor (although I've just seen the game itself say 8+, which is probably bang on). Robin's 5 and plays Dungeon and Ravenloft without many problems, but he struggles with this. Partly because of the difficulty and partly because of the slightly more fiddly mechanics (rolling a bunch of dice, counting faces, then checking it against another bunch of dice. It's more involved than a roll against a target number). I'd say the prose is an obstacle to younger kids, too. Something more punchy, simple and direct would be easier to swallow. For him and me. 🙂
I like this game, I definitely want to play more, but I think I'll wait until he's a bit older. I thought it'd be a slam-dunk, but it wasn't quite.