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Hemlock Isle calls; an isolated and mysterious island left unmarked and undocumented by all - but soon you and your surveying group from the Miskatonic University seek to change that. Dr. Rosa Marquez, Bertie Musgrave and a ragtag group of investigators have finally been permitted to explore and document the island, letting the world know of what sorts of flora, fauna and civilisation flourishes there independently. Despite the excitement, something seems to keep digging deeper into your mind, a question you’ll soon learn the answer to…
Is Everything Really as it Seems?
The Feast of Hemlock Vale is Arkham Horror: The Card Game’s ninth Campaign Expansion, and with it comes a terrifying amount of new ideas and interesting twists on the formula. Before heading too deep into this review, I want to make sure that you, the reader, are fully aware that this will be a review almost completely lacking in spoilers. I will, however, mention basic mechanisms and changes - which may be something people want to save learning for their first sessions.
If everything previously written is no barrier to your curious mind, then fear not (or fear so); this review will detail all the interesting and disgustingly horrifying new ideas that the Feast of Hemlock Vale brings to the table, along with my own personal thoughts and opinions on their implementations and just how well everything works. So read on, dear reader, for surely nothing evil can lurk in mere, digitally-inked words…
The New and the Scary.
The first and biggest change in The Feast of Hemlock Vale is the structure. Usually, campaigns of Arkham Horror: The Card Game are split into around eight scenarios, with the players progressing through each of them one at a time in their pre-set order of play. This structure has been played with a bit, such as in The Scarlet Keys; but The Feast for Hemlock Vale toys with it in a different way yet again - by giving the investigators an odd equivalent to a “hub world”. Hemlock Vale is a persistent location you will begin playing in, and will be returning to after every scenario - and as the game is structured in 3 days and 3 nights of play; this means that events will change each time you visit Hemlock Vale between scenarios.
While the investigators reside in Hemlock Vale, they can explore the location and interact with the plethora of characters that exist there. The first interesting mechanism introduced to keep Hemlock Vale fresh is the Codex; the titular twin of a very similar mechanism introduced to Arkham fans in the Arkham Horror 3rd Edition board game. In the campaign guide, there are numerical entries that you are only allowed to read when instructed. These entries are linked directly to the day and the time, meaning every time you read them as the game progresses, conversations and events will change dramatically. This may sound rather static, but the way it is implemented keeps everything fresh and allows the campaign to have even more branching narratives to exist within.
Not only does Hemlock Vale provide the investigators means to explore, converse and increase their reputation with different characters in the story, but it also allows them to choose their own paths forward; and due to the day / time structure; the order in which they choose to play each scenario will drastically change where the story goes every time they play. This mechanism not only increases replayability, but it also gives the players a lot more agency. There are so many places to explore… Where will you go next?
The Mysterious, the Questionable, and the Beautiful.
Though I won’t be going through any new mechanisms of specific scenarios, due to my promises against spoilers, I will write a little bit about the fact that each scenario utilises rather interesting ideas when it comes to core mechanisms. There are a lot of very dynamic goals in each scenario that haven’t been seen before in Arkham Horror, and they work! …For the most part, anyways. The issue with experimenting with the formula so much is that things really need to be made clear in the guide, and certain scenarios are pretty questionable when it comes to explaining how the new mechanisms work, and this is pretty important due to these mechanisms being the very core of each scenario - not just a little subsystem within them. Some systems also have potential chances of locking players out of goals, which may be an idea for extra replayability, but it can feel quite frustrating when you know something within reach is physically impossible to accomplish in this particular run.
Despite the criticisms, I can’t help but truly feel like this is a big step for Arkham Horror: The Card Game’s game design. This new structure is amazing, and makes for an incredibly sandbox-esque narrative experience with minimal fiddliness (though setting the same locations up and down repeatedly may be a little annoying - you can just keep it set up if you have a big table or two). The story is very well told, and lovecraft fans will draw a lot of early conclusions and ideas which will certainly excite throughout! Importantly; the Codex system has helped to minimise the waffling that the modern scenario guides have introduced as of late. The splitting of static narrative into smaller emergent chunks means that you don’t have to sit still and read two pages of story to your friends while they impatiently wait to play. It’s a big improvement. This is one of my favourite campaigns so far, and I’m eager to play it again already.
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