Halloween with Asmodee – Obscurio

Ready for some spooky adventures with friends? As we move closer to Halloween we have been looking at a ton of Halloween-type games that Asmodee sent over. Today, we are doing a deep dive into Obscurio, a fantastic title that will not only give you those Halloween thrills, but also something you can get to the table at any time during the year. Let’s check it out!

How to Play

In Obscurio, you either take the role of the escapee or one of the wizards. The ultimate goal here is to escape the haunted library without getting hurt. The escapee will need to get out, and the wizards will help him or her do that. But of course there needs to be a catch. One of the wizards is actually not there to help, and will do everything possible to hinder an escape plan.

Like with Mysterium, the person escaping is not permitted to speak to the wizards, but can only use pictures and clues. There is a familiar theme here with the games we have been looking at, and it’s actually a game mechanic I like a lot – the more you actually know the person / people you are playing with, the better you will do.

Obscurio is more difficult than it appears, however. The board has six room, 3 on each side of the board, and all of these rooms will have pictures as well. Using pictures and clue tokens in the wizards book will help the players know where to go. If the Wizards can correctly guess the right exit room from the clues provided, and reach the 6th room, they win the game.

Careful, though – you can run out of time! Still seems to easy? OK, let’s mix in trap tokens, which are drawn at the beginning of each turn. And these trap tokens can do a variety of things, such as showing the traitor wizard which room is the room needed to escape, thus allowing the wizard to work hard in convincing others not to go there. Still to easy? Ok let’s add another layer.

After providing clues that will hopefully provide folks the information they need to find the exit, the traitor will be able to choose one or two cards from a pre-determined display to hopefully confuse players. Yup, things get crazy!

Is there more? Of course – there will be accusation phases where you try to discover who the traitor is, and much more! But I don’t want to spoil it all!

Is It Worth It

Listen, I won’t hide the fact that I love games where someone is a traitor and no one else knows. And I think Obscurio does a great job with this mechanic. The only issue I had was there is a lot for the traitor to do while others have their eyes closed, and often it wasn’t hard to hear who was actively doing things. Still, we learned ways to use hang signals to reduce noise, and after doing that, the games became much more enjoyable.

And while this doesn’t have a direct Halloween theme, it still fits the season nicely, both in the colours used on the board and the mysterious aspect of the game. But if you are looking for a fun game you can play all year long, Obscurio is that game. We highly recommend this one!