This is a personal, largely spoiler free (or spoiler-vague) review of the Darkham Horror fan-made campaign by Frostmaze for Arkham Horror the Card Game.
Based on the Darkest Dungeon videogame, in Darkham Horror investigators must delve into the deep dungeon underneath their ancestor's estate, and confront the otherworldly horrors within. The campaign evokes the flavor of the videogame well, featuring art from the game and scenarios based around dungeon delving. It's a particuarly difficult campaign - with some of its enemies and treacheries being especially scary - but has a variety of unique scenarios that reward anyone brave enough to take up the challenge.
The story of Darkham Horror closely follows that of the videogame - it doesn't attempt to incorporate the Arkham Horror universe in any way, instead just treating itself as its own thing. It does play around with the setting of the game well - spreading around locations and characters, rather than just focusing on the singular dungeon. There's not really a story here, so much as a setting and mood descriptions - but those work well enough, focusing the campaign entirely on the gameplay. Those who don't know the videogame might not finding it as compelling, but it doesn't feel like the campaign is leaving anything out, keeping in mind the videogame also had a slow rolling out of backstory.
And the gameplay is what you should be here for. Darkham Horror scenarios are mean but fun - each of them provides a different experience, and it's notable how the campaign does so well with having the same motifs repeat but with very different results and feelings. There's just enough changed each time for it to feel exciting and engaging. The campaign however very much wants to put its boot on your neck - particularly during its many "do all your can" scenarios, knowing you're free to resign if it gets too much - and that punishment will be that much more deserved if you stumble near the end. There are boss enemies with fiendishly high stats, and treacheries who's difficulty grows over the course of a scenario to be unbearable. It's absolutely a campaign for people who want to be challenged - you won't find much narrative here beyond that which you make yourself, from your own attempts and struggles with the dungeon - just like in the videogame.
Darkham Horror is more interested in using current mechanics than introducing new ones - the closest thing to a new keyword is the "light level", which generally decreases over the course of a scenario, steadily making things harder. It also brings back a supply system, similiar to The Forgotten Age, but with some major changes - the biggest being the supplies only effect your next scenario and you get to see what they do as you're buying them, as they're all assets that start in play. This is an improvement in many ways over The Forgotten Age, but still suffers a bit from a lack of choices - it's too easy to purchase everything, and you need torches, so that's not really much of a choice. While Darkham doesn't introduce any real new mechanics, it does repeat certain ones to build familiarity. There's lots of scenarios with grid-like set-ups with randomized locations to represent dungeon crawling (and never using this mechanic when you're not - so it always feels like a dungeon crawl when it's happening), and good use is made of the encounter sets, each of which are strongly tied together with their mechanics, so you can feel them in play.
The campaign puts its best foot forward - the early scenarios quickly introduce the intent of the campaign, setting a tone and mood that carries throughout. There's a mini plot thread leading up to scenario 3 that feels wonderful when it's accomplished, and scenario 4 is a good halfway climax, appropriately difficult and frantic for it's story. Unfortunately, the campaign doesn't continue as strong - the balance on scenario 7 ends up feeling a bit too swingy, as it has a unique mechanic to it that can defeat an investigator - and there way to avoid it is a little too random, with one of the encounter cards unique to the scenario potentially speeding it up in devastating ways. Luckily at least the scenario doesn't kill your investigator or make them insane. The final scenario also ends up feeling a bit too long - it's trying to replicate a multi-stage boss fight, but ends up feeling a bit too repetetive for its own good.
While difficult, Darkham Horror isn't overly complex. Most of what it introduces are fairly straightforward, although occasioanlly you do need to stop and reassess what a scenario is asking for - usually in the scenarios that don't involve dungeon crawling. What can become difficult to track are the number of encounter cards that give constant negative stat bonuses - Darkham stacks these, hard, and throws them at players constantly. They're often tricky to remove or give benefits for not removing them right away, and the sheer number of them can be a bit onerous.
Darkham Horror also comes with its own set of player cards and five investigators, largely themed around adding weaknesses to your deck or drawing weaknesses. Of the investigators, three of them are extremely gimmicky, and two of them are solid but a bit dull - with the Jester essentially having Dirty Fighting always on (and was released before Dirty Fighting was a card) and potentially problematic with that card. The rest of the player cards are almost entirely on the weak end, with too many relying on weaknesses or shuffling in bonded weaknesses that aren't worth the benefit to their cost. It's a disappointing set of cards, but they're not needed to play the campaign.
Overall, Darkham Horror is a fun, difficult campaign that fans of the Darkest Dungeon videogame are sure to love that provides a challenge for experienced players of Arkham Horror..
More on Darkham Horror:
Darkham Horror: Spoiler-Light Review