Mirror Mansion Combines Memorization and Reflection Science
It’s been a while now in our house since we’ve found a board game that works well for both our 9-year-old son and our 6-year-old daughter. They both have different interests, different skill levels, and different attention spans. It can honestly be pretty tricky to balance out all of those things, but I think Mirror Mansion has truly done it. And that’s what made it an easy choice for our Game of the Month!
Disclosure: Mirror Mansion was provided to us by the publisher with no expectation of this article or being named Game of the Month. All thoughts and opinions are our own.
Mirror Mansion comes from publisher SimplyFun - a name that I think is very familiar to gameschoolers, but perhaps not to the general public. That’s because you don’t typically see their games in stores - either online or in your friendly local game store. Where you’ll see them often instead is places like Instagram, where people are showing off pictures of their games for their direct sales business. But you can also find them on their own website.
SimplyFun is a direct selling company, also known as a multi-level marketing company (and we personally aren’t involved in selling the games) - much like the Usborne Books of the family board game world. But the similarities between SimplyFun and Usborne Books actually don’t end there. They also both make genuinely great educational content to be used in the home or classroom - and it turns out they both actually make quite high quality products.
I think it’s also fair to say that we were surprised by that quality. I suppose it’s hard to know what to expect from any MLM company that encourages you to host parties and sell things to your friends and family. I know that can leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths, but I will say that one great difference about SimplyFun is that they don’t require their sellers to purchase and maintain their own stock. And regardless of what you or I think about the business structure, the important thing here is the quality of the product.
Our Experience with Mirror Mansion
Mirror Mansion is actually the first game by the company that we’ve ever played. And I was surprised to learn that it was developed by Inka and Markus Brand, who have made some of our other favorite family games - such as The Enchanted Tower. It turns out SimplyFun makes a habit of working with truly notable designers of great kids games!
And as I mentioned before, SimplyFun does a wonderful job focusing on life skills and educational opportunities that gameschoolers like us love. Mirror Mansion is a memory game first and foremost, and my kids absolutely love memory games. And they’re really good at them too, and they always embarrass me pretty completely.
The other major educational feature of Mirror Mansion is perhaps a bit obvious, because you can see it in the name. You get to play with mirrors and reflections on every turn - sometimes bouncing reflections off as many as 4 mirrors at a time. It reminded my son and I of a ThinkFun game called Laser Maze that we love, and it didn’t take us long to realize that this combination of memory and puzzle-solving in Mirror Mansion is something we’d love too.
It’s also a game for 4 players, which is of course perfect for us, and it’s recommended for ages 6 and up, which is exactly the age of our daughter. And her memory is already better than mine is, so she just needed to learn how reflections can bounce from mirror to mirror to be a full-fledged participant in this game - and not just a teammate like we often do with other games.
How to Play Mirror Mansion
Mirror Mansion is set in a spooky old house full of treasures (things like tiaras, rubies, and fancy goblets), and you know how much we like anything with even a tinge of spookiness! The treasures are on tabs that are inserted into the game board where you can’t see them, and they run all along the edge. Throughout the game, it’s your job to keep track of which treasure is where.
You can start the game by looking at each treasure as they are inserted into the game board, but afterwards you may only get reminded about the location of one treasure per turn. It’s a very tricky memory challenge just keeping track of all the treasures, but remembering everything isn’t your only task - because you also have to move the mirrors to reflect certain treasures out of the window.
There is only one open window along the edge of the mansion, and it’s your job to move and place the mirrors on the inside so that the reflection of the treasure you’re searching for is the one that shows up when you look through the open window. You’re only allowed to move 3 mirrors on your turn, so it can be a very fun little puzzle to solve every turn - bouncing the reflection from mirror to mirror. But of course it all depends on knowing where the correct treasure is to begin with!
On your turn you swap the open window with one treasure, you roll the dice, you move the kids through the mansion, and then you search for the treasure you land on. At that point you can move the 3 mirrors, peek through the window, and see if you found the right treasure.
The final twist to the game is that everyone gets to secretly vote if they think you’re right. If they vote correctly, they can earn a treasure as well. I think this is a wonderful way to keep everyone involved in the game when it isn’t their turn, which can be a make-or-break factor for us. But, of course, in a memory game like Mirror Mansion, you better be paying attention on everyone’s turn anyway, because keeping track of the placement of the treasures is vital.
More Ways to Play Mirror Mansion
I always love to talk about options that games provide to make it easier or more difficult, and Mirror Mansion has some ideas for you. One side of the board actually features illustrations of rays of light that can be used as a guide for how the mirrors will reflect in a certain direction. I like this feature a lot for our youngest, and also like the fact that we can flip the board over when we don’t need it anymore.
The game also comes with a “blocker piece” that can be used as a way to make things harder for your opponents. During your opponents turn, right before they move the mirrors, you can place the blocker in the board somewhere to basically get in the way of the mirrors and the reflections. My son and I tried this mode one time and decided we don’t need it. The game is hard enough just remembering where everything is - let alone with someone trying to sabotage you!
Mirror Mansion is a competitive game, which doesn’t always go over terribly well in our house, depending on how everyone’s moods are. The normal way to play is that the first one to earn so many treasures is the winner. But, as usual, I find myself pondering if it’s possible to turn the game into a cooperative game, and I think I have an idea for you.
I think it would be quite easy to approach the game cooperatively and give your team something like a 3 strikes and your out rule. You could experiment with taking turns where you don’t talk to each other, or taking turns where you talk and plan openly. But the point will be to try to earn 10 jewels as a team before you get 3 strikes. And in our family, I’m definitely the one that would benefit from the extra collaboration the most.
We’ve been playing family board games with our kids for a long time now, but without a doubt I’ve noticed that it’s become trickier lately to please everyone. Maybe it’s just the ages of 9 and 6 that are tricky to balance - needing something not too challenging and not too easy. But Mirror Mansion has done it for us. It’s one of those family games with a gimmick that really captures the imaginations of the kids - and just as fun and challenging for us parents.
You can find Mirror Mansion from a SimplyFun dealer or straight from the SimplyFun website.
What’s your favorite memory board game? Have you ever played a board game with mirrors before? Let us know in the comments!
