The Board Game The Mystery of Leonardo

The diaries of Leonardo da Vinci are several thousand yellowed pages scattered across collections around the world. These papers are covered with the intricate mirror handwriting of da Vinci and numerous drawings, sketches, and sketches - from the famous Vitruvian... man to fantastic mechanisms. Perhaps these small drawings not only reflect the tireless work of Leonardo's mind but also contain the key to solving one of the mysteries that abound around the personality of the great Florentine.

"The Mystery of Leonardo" is a tabletop card puzzle game in which participants explore Leonardo da Vinci's notes in search of hidden patterns. By discovering a sequence of three identical symbols, a player receives the corresponding key. The goal of the game is to collect seven different keys: the one who does this first will unlock the mystery of Leonardo and become the winner.

The game deck consists of cards with fragments of da Vinci's diary entries. Each card depicts two different symbol drawings: horseman, halberd, profile, seagull, cat, etc. There are a total of twelve such symbols. At the beginning of the game, the deck is shuffled, and participants take ten cards from it. Without looking at their cards, each player places five of them on the table in front of themselves in the shape of a cross. This "cross" is the player's personal working space, where they will arrange rows of identical symbols. The remaining five cards are kept in hand by the participants.

At the beginning of their turn, a player must replace one of the cards in front of them. They choose one of the five positions in their "cross", place a new card from their hand there, and pass the previously placed card to the left neighbor. That player must place it in their own "cross" in the same position it occupied with the opponent, discarding their old card from there. Then the player whose turn it is checks if they successfully acquired another key. To do this, they must collect a vertical or horizontal line of three identical symbols on their table.

If the card replacement creates such a line, the player takes the corresponding key - a token with the same symbol. Since each card depicts two symbols, with a particularly successful move, one can take two keys at once. If the same symbol is present on all five cards in their "cross", the participant receives any one token of their choice.

All keys held by a player must be different: they cannot receive any token again, even if they recreate the required line. Finally, at the end of their turn, a player draws one card from the deck and passes the right to act clockwise. As soon as any participant receives their seventh key, the game immediately ends, and they are declared the winner.

"The Mystery of Leonardo" is a board game for those who enjoy simple intellectual entertainment. It somewhat resembles "tic-tac-toe", only on a constantly changing board. Moreover, there is no winning strategy - on the contrary, the whole game consists of a series of small but significant tactical decisions. And solving "The Mystery of Leonardo" is most interesting with three or four players, and if two game sets are combined, up to eight participants can engage in this exciting activity.
 Game duration: 30-50 minutes
Number of players: 2-4