Opening Statement

I received this game for Christmas from my mother-in-law to be and was somewhat skeptical about this game. I decided to watch the DVD that came with the game and when I watched the sample game on the DVD the rules became clearer and I could see that this game could be fun.


Components


The Board

The board itself is pretty to look at and is about 17"x17" but is mostly filled up with large spaces that your pieces will hop around on.

The Pieces

The 6 pieces that will represent up to 6 players on the board are mini replications of the Louvre pyramid and these are terrible. They come in the following translucent colours: yellow, red, orange, black, blue, and green. Only the yellow is easily distinguishable from the rest. Some players might be able to tell red and orange apart when held up to a light but when the pieces are placed on the board telling them apart is almost impossible. The same problem occurs with black and blue, black and red, and because orange and red are so close in colour black and orange. Also because of the pyramid shape the pieces can be difficult to pick up and move for players with larger hands.

The "Box"

My version of "The Da Vinci Code Board Game" came shipped in a tin and I can't say I'm fond of tins. The lid pops off quite easily and the 250 cards and all the little "goodie" pieces can and will go everywhere, and for me this has happened and I'm still looking for a single peice.

The Goodie Pieces

Here you get the Sidebar decoder, the Cryptex decoder, the Mirror decoder. I'm not going to describe how they are used but needless to say they are what this game is about. If you weren't able to decode something in this game you really wouldn't be able to call this the Da Vinci Code Boardgame. The important part is that they do work.

The Cards

The cards while they contain a lot of information and look nice, feel like they are printed on cheap quality card stock but that shouldn't be a problem because the cards won't get much use. The lack of use of the cards isn't because the game isn't fun and you won't want to play it but rather the nature of the game and the fact you can't use the cards more than once (I'll go into more depth later). They are also numbered between 0-199 or 0-249 if you have the extra five mysteries included in your version.

The Notepad

Here is where you’ll keep track of the code you’re breaking as well as jot notes about the information revealed to you as you play the game. Every player requires his or her own notepad sheet.

The Rulebook

The rulebook contains the necessary questions for the second phase of the game (more on this later) as well as a list of what cards to use for each mystery. If you want to understand the rules of the game the sample mystery on the DVD does a better job. The rulebook doesn’t do a good job of explaining the intricacies of the rules and what to do in certain situations.

The DVD

Watch it before you even crack the rulebook. It will explain the game far better than the rulebook. It also presents an awesome movie trailer for “The Da Vinci Code”

Set Up

The set-up for this game for the first time definitely involves watching the 15 minute or so DVD and popping out the “goodie pieces.” Subsequent plays will take either 2 minutes if your cards are in order and 5 minutes if you have to sort through your cards.

If you’re playing with 2-4 players you’re going to use the cards 0-3, 6-9, and the 10 cards in whatever mystery you’re solving. For example if you’re doing the mystery that involves the 50’s get the cards 50-59. If you’re playing with 5 or 6 players then you’ll use the cards 0-11 and again the 10 cards in whatever mystery you’re solving. You then place the cards in the appropriate piles, according to their design on their back in either the Rosslyn Chapel, Temple Church, Westminster Abbey, L’Eglise de Saint-Sulpice. If you’ve seen the DVD this is very easy. Note: Make sure you shuffle all the piles.

Place your pyramid piece on one of the starting spots (there are 3 in the Louvre Gallery and 3 in the Louvre Library). The rulebook doesn’t explain who starts where or even how the starting spots are chosen. For the first play it really doesn’t matter where you start so don’t sweat over it.



Gameplay

The gameplay is simple enough. You roll a dice move your pyramid the number of spots equal to what you roll on the die. If at the end of your movement you’re at Rosslyn Chapel, Temple Church, Westminster Abbey, L’Eglise de Saint-Sulpice you draw the top card from the pile. These cards are either a mystery card, a taxi card, or a depository card. The next player then takes his turn. If you end up at either the Louvre Gallery or the Louvre Library you draw all the cards and look at all of them for 30 seconds (a 30 second egg timer is included with this game). Watching the DVD will explain when to go to each.

Mystery Cards

These cards are what give you encoded information. You may need to use either the Cryptex, Side or Mirror decoder to decode the information. You may also need to head to either the Louvre Gallery or Library in order to get your answers. They may also contain information you’ll be questioned on later on in the game. You get to look at this card until your next turn or someone else lands at the same location where you drew your card.
These Mystery cards contain all the fun parts of the game. They give you the riddles, the puns, the clues that make you think you can figure out the answer if only you can make it to the Louvre Gallery and look at a specific painting or decipher a code at the Louvre Library..

Taxi Cards

These cards are played instead of rolling and let you move anywhere on the board. These cards are useful but because of the metro (subway) spaces on the board you can pretty much get anywhere you need to just by rolling a 5 or a 6 for movement. But sometimes it’s necessary to ensure you get exactly where you want. Note 1: If you have a taxi card in your hand at the end of the game you lose 5 points. If you have 2 you lose 10 points, etc. Note 2: Once you play a Taxi card you return it to the bottom of the appropriate pile.

Depository Cards

These cards allow you on your turn, instead of rolling and moving as per usual, to choose a player, roll a die, and if the result of the die matches one of the 3 different numbers (between 1 and 6) on everyone’s depository code on their notepad you get to take a peak at that players notepad (with their codebox at the top filled in so you can’t actually see what they have filled in). Like others on boardgamegeeks have mentioned, it takes a turn to move to the location and then draw the depository card. It takes another turn to play the card and then you have a 50% chance (I won’t get into the statistics) of looking at another players notes and a 50% chance of wasting your turn. Well not exactly wasting your turn. Like Taxi cards, each depository card in your possession at the end of the game loses you 5 points. Note: Once you play a depository card you place it under the appropriate pile.
If you manage to actually peak at someone’s notes it is almost impossible to discern anything of value because players don’t keep excellent legible notes. They usually write their notes up in their own impossible to crack code.
Also nowhere in the rules does it mention how long you can peak at their notes. Do you get to peak until your next turn? In which case the player wouldn’t have a sheet for the next round, or is a peak just a fraction of a second. In fact, nothing in the rulebook says you ever have to give the player his or her sheet back!

Louvre Gallery & Louvre Library cards

These cards will contain either artwork or ciphers, respectively; that you will need to decipher or decode information you obtained from mystery cards in either the Rosslyn Chapel, Temple Church, Westminster Abbey, L’Eglise de Saint-Sulpice. Basically if you need information on a piece of artwork go to the Gallery, if you need information on a code or a cipher go to the Library. Again the DVD does an excellent job of explaining how to use these cards. Note: You only get 30 seconds to look at these cards so sometimes it’s useful to simply find your card and then spend the next turn to obtain the information.

Gameplay Continued – It’s Flaws

Ok so you’re going around getting your information, hailing some taxis and breaking into other people’s accounts and stealing their information. What could go wrong? Well several things.

The first thing that can go wrong is that with 5 or 6 players there are 6 Taxi cards and 6 depository cards and only 10 mystery cards. So most of the time the top card will not be a mystery card. With 2-4 players the ratios are somewhat better as 4 Taxi and 4 Depository cards and still the 10 mystery cards. I consider this poor ratio a flaw simply because the Mystery cards contain all the fun and flavour in the game. After you draw and use a single Depository card you won’t be tempted to draw another. An astute player won’t draw another simply because all the cards have numbers on them so you’ll be able to figure out which are the taxis, which are the depository codes and which are the mystery cards.

The second flaw results from the rule that you can examine a mystery card until your next turn or until someone lands on your same spot. Well with 5 or 6 players playing it will take a while for your next turn to come around, which is good because decoding these mystery cards can sometimes take a few minutes, but because any player can move almost anywhere on the board (with the use of a taxi card or by rolling a high number on the dice and using a metro) they can land at your location and then proceed to say to you “put your card down I am at your location.” Any player will find it difficult to put the card you have seen for a whopping 3 seconds down immediately. So often the player will then “remove” the card from your hand (usually by ripping it out) to your dismay and then placing it at the bottom of that pile. The next player will often repeat this procedure etc. Players will keep track of the numbers of the cards they have seen. If the player in front of you just took a card you want to see (so you won’t be able to get it) you quickly roll the dice hoping to land at their location thus denying them the chance to gain any information. Often it is smart to head to the far side of the board away from the player who plays immediately after you. Some people I have played with enjoy the ripping the cards out of other players hands, so they might not think this is a flaw. It’s very reminiscent of playing Sorry. Roll a dice land on their spot and send them back home. With fewer players this obviously becomes less of an issue.

The third flaw results from the fact that once you have completed one of the 20 mysteries none of the players can play the same mystery again since they will know the mystery phrase and the answers to the questions. It’s a game you can play with the same play group 20 times and then ship it off to someone else, who has never played it because it will never be played by your group again!

Finishing the Game

So you’ve read some of the clues, you have filled out a few of the letters in your mystery phrase and you think you know the answer. Fill in all the letters and blanks in the mystery phrase and head to either the Louvre Library or Louvre Gallery and once you’re there announce you’re going to solve it. Although the rulebook doesn’t explain it I guess that player then looks in the rulebook for the answer. If they are correct they score 1 point for each correct space in the mystery phrase and 5 for solving it first. The rulebook doesn’t explain what happens if they are wrong, or simply spells the word incorrectly. Is the game over for them? Do they simply score the number of points for the correct letters they had? Do other people keep playing? If you plan on playing this game you’re going to need to come up with some arbitrary house rules to explain situations the rulebook doesn’t cover, especially spelling errors which I would expect to occur occasionally. That being said the mystery phrases always seem to be figured out correctly the first time. Note: The rulebook doesn’t mention it but when another player announces they have solved the mystery phrase start guessing at what it could be. You don’t get penalized for the wrong letters so you might as well guess. In the last game I played, a player announced they solved it and as we were determining if she was right 3 other players all guessed the correct mystery phrase. She scored 25 points and the other 3 players scored 20.

Answering Questions

Once the mystery phrase has been solved correctly every player is asked the 5 questions from the rulebook that are appropriate for each mystery. Each question you get correct is worth 5 points.

Deducting Taxi and Depository

Again take away 5 points for each Taxi or Depository card you have and tally your score. The maximum you can get in this game is 50 points.

Summary

The idea behind solving mysteries is fun. It was fun in The Da Vinci Code novel by Dan Brown, it was fun in the movie and it’s definitely fun in a game. However the game mechanics in The Da Vinci Code do not contribute to making the game fun. If this game were a computer program it would be extremely buggy and crash all the time. The rules just don’t explain all the situations that can arise in the game and it forces the players to create their own minor house rules just to play.

This game’s mechanics seem at odds with each other. On one hand the mechanics involved in solving the codes and the artwork require some thought while the mechanics involved on moving your pieces around the board are akin to playing Sorry with a seven year old, and require no thought at all.

I can also imagine this game with a complete new set of rules. A game where you don’t roll the dice to move and you don’t rip the cards out of players hands and where some cards (Depository cards) are far weaker than the rest. I would have preferred the game with a more Euro approach. Choosing actions such as where you’re going to visit each turn and revealing them all at once or even one at a time, something other than roll a dice and move. After a few plays of this game I will be creating my own rules that will bring this game more in line with a Euro.

As the game stands now I would rate the game according to the BGG ratings as a 6. It’s an ok game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood. Once you have played all the mysteries the game will never be played again.



Pros: Fun Theme, DVD included to explain rules, Price (currently in the $10 range).

Cons: Rules that aren’t fully explained, Poor Mystery card to Taxi/Depository card ratio, Limited number of times the game can be played by any one person/group, Game mechanics don’t seem well suited.