Unlocked: The Mansion of Mana (2016)

Overview

From the publisher:

You receive a mysterious letter from a distant Uncle Alfredeus "Alphie" Maleficus asking for your presence at a family meeting at his Victorian mansion. As you arrive, you discover you are not alone. Some people are family you recognize, others you don't. The door opens and you all enter. The door locks behind you. A spectral form of Alphie greets you and informs you he is stuck in an interplanar portal. He needs your help to be saved. All you have to do is make your way through his mansion to his laboratory and pull him out. He promises to share his wealth and knowledge with whomever among you can reach him first.

The Mansion of Mana is a sequential set collection, unique power, engine building light-strategic game with a modular game board. In the Mansion of Mana, each player represents a distant relative of Uncle Alphie who are attempting to earn their fortune and knowledge by helping to save him. Players navigate the mansion- collecting runic elements, playing them sequentially to acquire keys, to enter new rooms in the mansion. With each room entered, a new ability is gained allowing each player to become quicker at acquiring the runes to enter more rooms or to slow others down who would beat you to the objective of saving Uncle Alphie.

The Mansion of Mana gives players a medium to light weight strategic game in a small box. Player's seek to get through the mansion as quickly as possible while engine-building their special abilities to gain more cards, hold more cards, add more options, steal from other players, or allow them to bend the rules in their favor. The Mansion of Mana is strongly strategic with the only elements of luck in the cards available to draw from (similar to Ticket to Ride). However, every player has a hand limit, so you cannot save up your cards, but you can play them on the table, partially completed, and add to them. However, watch out! Someone could steal from your partially completed set.

Will you efficiently navigate the Mansion? or will you prey off of those who would be so careless to leave their runes in the open? Or perhaps you will Unlock the secrets of the mansion to find your way to Uncle Alphie and achieve victory!