Mystic Messenger guide: essential things you need to know to win Zen, Yoosung, Jaehee, Jumin, 707, V and Ray's hearts
Mystic Messenger is the most hardcore game about texting cuties you will ever play. The heart of Mystic Messenger’s gameplay is reading and responding to instant messages: although you’ll also receive phone calls and SMS texts, instant messages (and occasional visual novel segments) are the really essential part. Which IM chats you participate in, and the responses you make, shape which character route you’ll experience.
Here’s the thing, though: the IM comes in real time, on its own schedule. Mystic Messenger isn’t a game you’re supposed to play on the bus, when you feel like it – you’re supposed to pick up the phone and action notifications when they come in (or choose to ignore them) - just like in real life.
Don’t worry, though; although the IMs pop up at all hours of the day and night, you are not required to action every single IM. Around 50% participation is the minimum requirement to advance and secure a particular ending in the base game – although that rises to 75% if you stick with the game as far as the Another Story DLC, so be prepared!
And if all that sounds like quite a lot, fear not, because we're here with a comprehensive guide to get you started playing Mystic Messenger.
On this page:
- How to play Mystic Messenger
- Mystic Messenger recommended playing order
- Mystic Messenger heart colour key
- The best way to begin Mystic Messenger
- Why are emails important in Mystic Messenger?
- Understanding Mystic Messenger's user interface
- Mystic Messenger currencies
- How to save and load in Mystic Messenger
- Mystic Messenger tips for beginners
How to play Mystic Messenger
Mystic Messenger is a free-to-play mobile otome dating sim that combines visual novel elements with found phone gameplay. It was initially released in 2016 by South Korean studio Cheritz, and even though the main story wrapped up in 2018, it remains both popular among players and actively supported by its developers.
The unique selling point of Mystic Messenger compared to other, similar games is that the story plays out in real-time. A playthrough of Mystic Messenger takes place over 11 real-world days, during which you’ll swap messages of various kinds with a number of different characters, including seven who can be romanced.
The first four days are always the same, but the game splits into multiple routes (one for each love interest) once you hit Day 5. Each route then has multiple endings: Bad Ends (fail states), one Normal End, and one Good End.
On your first playthrough it’s fun to experience Mystic Messenger organically – answering the beeps on your phone when you can, ignoring the ones you can’t, going with your gut on choices, and just rolling with whatever happens. Make sure you focus on the character you like, though! If you fail to catch anyone’s interest by Day 5, you’ll finish early with a bad end.
On subsequent playthroughs, or if you’re determined to min/max right from the start, you can consult our spoiler-free Mystic Messenger chat times schedule, or our spoiler-filled individual walkthroughs for each of the romanceable characters. Either way, you can refer to these guides if you want to set yourself reminders to check in when an important chat is due to unlock.
Here's a full list of our Mystic Messenger walkthrough topics with their own pages:
- Mystic Messenger email guide
- Mystic Messenger chat schedules (no spoilers!)
- Mystic Messenger Zen route walkthrough
- Mystic Messenger Yoosung route walkthrough
- Mystic Messenger Jaehee route walkthrough
- Mystic Messenger Jumin route walkthrough
- Mystic Messenger 707 route walkthrough
- Mystic Messenger V route walkthrough
- Mystic Messenger Ray route walkthrough
Mystic Messenger recommended playing order
There are seven love interests in Mystic Messenger across three main story modes: Casual Story, Deep Story, and Another Story. You can access Casual Story as soon as you download the game, but Deep Story costs 80 HG (Hourglasses, more on currency below) to unlock, while Another Story will set you back 300 HG.
Three character routes are available in Casual Story: Zen, Yoosung, and Jaehee. Two more are available in Deep Story: Jumin and 707. Another Story adds the final two routes for V and Ray. All character routes are exclusive to their respective story modes, and you cannot access anyone's routes from the other two modes.
As with many visual novels, the story of Mystic Messenger is multi-layered and only fully revealed after multiple playthroughs. The easier routes give a shallow glimpse of the full story, while the more difficult ones reveal a whole new world of intrigue.
If you want to see every ending and uncover the whole story, it’s worth playing Mystic Messenger in the following narrative sequence:
- Zen route (Casual Story)
- Yoosung route (Casual Story)
- Jaehee route (Casual Story)
- Jumin route (Deep Story)
- 707 route (Deep Story)
- After Endings (Secret Folders)
- V route (Another Story)
- Ray route (Another Story)
Begin by playing the Casual Story three times, beginning with Zen's route, then Yoosung's, and finally Jaehee's, ensuring you see everyone's Good End.
By now you should have earned enough HG to unlock Deep Story, so play that twice, first following Jumin's route and then 707's. This will lead you through the gradually unfolding story that is Mystic Messenger's base game.
Once you've seen every Good End up to and including 707's, farm HG in order to unlock the After Endings in the two Secret folders.
Last of all, unlock and play Another Story twice, first following V's route before finally finishing up with Ray's. Another Story answers many of the questions you'll have after experiencing the rest of the game, and so will spoil a lot from the earlier routes if you play it out-of-sequence, despite being a prequel to the other two modes.
Mystic Messenger heart colour key
Take note of the Hearts earned while playing as they indicate an increase in a character’s affection for you, which in turn affects which route and ending you're on track to see in your current playthrough. Making perceptive answers during chats and optional content will reward you with a colour-coded heart icon whizzing about on screen after your reply.
Breaking hearts, on the other hand, indicate that you just made a choice that lowered a character’s affection for you. Luckily this won't detract from your Heart total in terms of currency (see below), but too many broken hearts with your chosen paramour definitely put you at risk of seeing a bad ending.
Hearts are colour-coded to show which character you've wooed with your honeyed words. Here’s the key:
- Zen: White/Grey
- Yoosung: Green
- Jaehee: Yellow
- Jumin: Dark Blue/Purple
- 707: Bright Red
- V: Mint Blue/Green
- Ray: Magenta
Straightforwardly, a heart gives you +1 affection from the character indicated, while a broken heart denotes -1 affection (despite looking much bigger and more dramatic on-screen).
Your current heart total with each character isn't visible to you anywhere, but you'd better believe that the game is tracking those tallies under-the-hood!
The best way to begin Mystic Messenger
Start a new Mystic Messenger playthrough as early in the day as you can. While we refer to the Prologue as "Day 0" in most of our guides for the sake of clarity, you actually roll into Day 1 content as soon as the prologue's over, so if it's later on you’ll miss a bunch of content from earlier in the day. Ideally you should begin a new game around midday in order to secure a good ending, and just after midnight if you want to see every single possible chat. (But luckily, you don’t actually need a very high completion stat on Day 1 to get a good ending.)
Your answers during the initial Day 0 chat with Unknown do not matter, although you can unlock bad ends here if you're really determined. Once Unknown connects you to the Mystic Messenger chat app, you have the opportunity to earn Hearts and raise affection by chatting with the characters briefly. (See each character's individual route walkthrough pages for more information.)
Once this initial Prologue chat is complete, you’ll be dropped right into Day 1. Check the chat app immediately to see if there is an unactioned chat available. The Mystic Messenger chat schedule will help you out there; check the system time in the top left of the app to see where you’re at, as it doesn’t always accurately track your action geographic timezone.
Why are emails important in Mystic Messenger?
Apart from instant messenger (IM) chats, emails are the most important part of Mystic Messenger. To get a good ending in a Mystic Messenger playthrough, you need to have received a minimum of 10 confirmed RSVPs for the party via email.
You are only able to invite guests to the party after the topic has been broached in a chat, after which you’ll receive an email from the intended guest. Opportunities to do this begin on the second day. Always ask about secondary characters and hint that you’d like them to attend.
To get the guest to commit to the party, you’ll need to make three correct replies to their emails. Correct replies are marked in green, while incorrect responses appear in orange. If you get all three replies right, you'll receive a confirmation email, which will then mark the thread "completed" in silver. Getting two out of three correct replies results in a red "completed" message, and a chance the guest may attend the party.
Guests will not attend unless you open the final confirmation email, which you can use to your advantage if you're out to collect every ending without having to replay the whole game every single time.
Emails have a slow turnaround so you should reply to any you receive as soon as you possibly can, in order to increase your chances of completing the correspondence chain before the end of the game. Don’t worry if it seems to be taking a while; you’ll often get multiple confirmation emails on the day of the party itself.
There are almost no negative consequences to inviting guests your love interests dislike, so invite everyone you can. Only one character (Jaehee) ever takes exception to your invitations, and even then if you've been playing diligently it shouldn't be enough to knock you off track.
Understanding Mystic Messenger's user interface
When playing Mystic Messenger, available chats (IM) and visual novel segments are marked in green.
Those you can no longer participate in for free are marked with an hourglass, and must be viewed in full or unlocked and participated in before proceeding to the next.
Completed chats and visual novel segments (those you participated in or viewed) are marked in orange.
Locked chats are greyed out, and can't be viewed until you've reviewed or participated in all chats and visual novel segments that occur before them.
Each chat is available until the next one pops up - usually at least 40 mins, but often several hours. If you just can’t make an important chat for some reason (such as being asleep – sensible), or you’re playing organically and really want to connect with a particular character, you can pay to unlock missed chats with hourglasses, or even unlock a full day's worth of chats at once.
Mystic Messenger currencies
Like most F2P mobile games, Mystic Messenger is monetised through an in-game store where you can exchange real money for currencies that can then be spent purchasing extras. While there are a few places where the game tries to nickel-and-dime you, it's honestly not the worst example of mobile monetisation out there. Many of the additional purchases available are full story DLC packs, which honestly is fair enough in a free game; and if you're a really enthusiastic player you'll likely collect enough free currencies to see the whole story without resorting to optional microtransactions anyway.
Hourglasses (HG) are the premium currency of Mystic Messenger, and can be purchased using Hearts (see below) or with real-world cash. HG is also used to unlock Deep Story and Another Story modes, make unscheduled calls (more on that later), and purchase bonus episodes. But you really don’t need to buy them to have a good time, since if you play through the game unlocking all endings, you'll earn enough to purchase all the story extras you fancy without opening your IRL wallet.
Hearts are the more F2P-friendly currency in Mystic Messenger. You can trade in Hearts for HG from the in-game store at a rate of 100:1 (and this will not affect your story progress or affection levels). It feels stingy at first, and of course it is meant to encourage you to spend some real cash on the game, but you should soon find that those Hearts start to rack up quite nicely.
Of course, Hearts are more than just mere currency, since earning them also affects which character's route you end up on and which ending you get.
How to save and load in Mystic Messenger
Always save your game manually before exiting the app, since the autosave can be a little buggy.
You can reload a save if you want to rollback a choice or because you missed a stack of chats, but it’ll cost you 5 HG a pop. This is to prevent heart farming, apparently, but also cuts down on save scumming. Resuming your game by pressing “original story” when you start the app up is free, though.
If you do want to reload a save, make sure to load your save as soon as possible after it was made (or 24 hours later; see below), because your game will pick up according to your system clock - so any chats that popped up in the interim will be missed.
If you resume your game after ignoring it for several hours, you'll miss a stack of chats – which can have disastrous consequences for your chances of securing a Good End. Rather than pay to unlock every missed chat, you can spend just 5HG to reload a save no less than 24 hours and one minute after you made it and resume right where you left off.
For example, let’s say it’s morning on a Tuesday in the real world, and you’re playing Day 2 in Mystic Messenger. You save your game at 9:00am and close the app. For some reason, you’re not able to play again for most of the day. If you load your save at 11:00pm on Tuesday, you’ll have missed loads of chats. But if you don’t load your save until 9:01 on Wednesday, you’ll find yourself picking up where you left off – as if the missed 24 hours of real world time never happened.
Altering your system clock or using saves to try and cheat the system can result in an account ban. Don’t do it.
Mystic Messenger tips for beginners
- Story branches begin on Day 4 and are indicated by a padlock sign. If you've made good choices, the game will continue; if not you'll skid off into a Bad End. Making a manual back-up save after each successfully navigated story branch will allow you to go back and explore bad ends, if you like.
- Calls and text messages have no effect on routes or ending. They merely provide extra colour and perspective on the characters. Enjoy them when they occur, but don’t worry about missing them. You can earn extra Hearts in messages, but they only add to your currency total – not affect your endings.
- After achieving one ending you’ll unlock an Extras menu where you can replay viewed content. Subsequent playthroughs will add to this collection.
- If you really dig Mystic Messenger, try not to spend your HG on calls and missed chats – you’ll want them to purchase After Endings (epilogues) after viewing a character’s good ending. They cost 20 HG per character. Don’t forget you’ll want 80 HG for Deep and 300 HG for Another Story modes, too!
- Switch on push notifications. Silence your phone when you go to bed. Do not miss sleep for Mystic Messenger.
Ready to have a go? Good luck! Whether you choose to pursue Zen, Yoosung, Jaehee, Jumin, 707, V or all of them in turn, there's a lengthy adventure ahead of you.