Last Message mixes Mysterium with a drawing game as you doodle to solve crime

Upcoming board game Last Message looks to combine the silent clue-giving of co-op hit Mysterium with the creativity of a drawing game as one player tries to solve a crime using doodles.

In designers Lee Ju-Hwa and Giung Kim’s inventive party game, one player is the victim of a crime - the exact nature is left undefined, although the title hints at a potentially deadly encounter - who must draw clues in the space of 30 seconds for the rest of the group to help them identify the culprit. As with Mysterium’s ghost player, they cannot speak, relying on their drawings to communicate to their teammates for them.

However, another player represents the guilty individual, and has the opportunity to erase parts of the victim’s drawings from the wipeable board’s three-by-three grid before the rest of the group see them, restricting the communication between the silent victim and the would-be detectives.

Last Message comes with six different crime scenes on foldout sheets, rendered with busy Dixit-meets-Where’s Wally? crowds by Treasure Island artist Vincent Dutrait and Slide Quest illustrator Stéphane Escapa, giving the searching players plenty of suspects to consider with each obfuscated clue.

The upcoming board game plays in approximately 15 minutes with between three and eight people, and comes from King of Tokyo, Bunny Kingdom and Decrypto publisher Iello. It’s planned for release later this summer, with Iello’s website listing a shipping date of August 12th and price of $24.99.