This is a personal, largely spoiler free (or spoiler-vague) review of The Colour Out of Space custom scenario by Joe Ehret for Arkham Horror the Card Game.
The Colour Out of Space is a standalone scenario based on the Lovecraft novel of the same name. While it has a lot of potential, and some very clever ideas, it unfortunately squanders most of them with badly worded rules, uninteresting encounter cards, and confusing, badly balanced gameplay.
There's a lot of potentially neat ideas in the scenario - allies and investigators who are defeated get replaced with enemy cards. There's a persistent enemy who might keep showing up, stronger than before - or become much stronger if you don't beat him down. There's another set of encounter cards that get attached to locations, and follow you around like Hunter enemies, forcing you to draw them when they enter your location. All of these are very cool, and have promise - unfortunately, the rest of the scenario doesn't live up to them.
Most strikingly is the mechanics feel unfinished and badly edited. There are obvious typographical errors - missing action designations, or references to the wrong card name - and even a third separate encounter deck that never seems to be referenced at any point in the scenario. You're given a test to gain clues at a point where there's no place to even use clues anymore, and many of the encounter cards are checking if your horror is equal to an exact amount compared to your sanity, rather than greater or less than.
Even getting past all of this, the scenario just doesn't play well. The encounter cards end up being far too swingy - if the enemies spawn at a bad time, they can accumulate heavily, but many of the encounter cards feel like they may as well be blank. What originally feels like the scenario presenting multiple paths to completion is in fact an annoying "gotcha", where picking the wrong choice means losing out on an important way forward. Even in the locations, some act as just stark punishments in what feel like arbitrary ways for stumbling into them.
Two additional important notes also need to be made here if you plan on playing the scenario - the first is that there is an encounter card that requires another investigator to remove it from your threat area - and depending on when it comes out, it may be outright scenario ending for a solo play - or it may do nothing at all. There's that swinginess, again. The second is that one resolution adds a Tablet token to the chaos bag. As part of a campaign, this may end up screwing with important details or checks - I wouldn't assume this is compatible with whatever campaign you're running.
With a 19 XP party, I found The Colour Out of Space more frustrating than challenging. Knowing what the scenario asks of you, and the specific steps needed to defeat it, I'm sure I could do so - I'm not sure it would be fun, however, and would instead just a straightforward, straight-line path to making a number of investigation checks and being done with it. And that might be one of the scenario's worst sins - besides the fighting of random enemies in the encounter deck, the best way to accomplish anything is just to test a high Intellect against the straightforward challenges.
Unfortunately, I have to recommend giving The Colour Out of Space a pass. While it has the hint of clever ideas, the implementation just feels lifeless.
Rewards
Scenario Cost: 1 XP
Potential XP Gain: 2 (locations) +1 (Samuel Glarde) +1 (The Strange Meteor) +2 (The Colour Out of Space or Riotous Townsfolk) +1 (successful resolution) = 7 XP or 6 XP after costs