Arkham Noir
Crank up the moody jazz and pour yourself a drink. Arkham Noir is on the table. Does the game provide an engaging puzzle in a small package? Does it capture the mood of tension and creeping dread?
It’s late. Dark outside. Rain shifts from a drizzle to a downpour. The light is dim as I stare at notes. My sound system trickles out an intricate, moody jazz piece. A dull headache that won’t go away. I shift nervously in my chair and pour myself another glass of scotch. Neat, of course. Damn. The bottle is empty. One last drink before I run out of time. Or sanity. Or both. This is it. My last shot at cracking this case. It was Ephraim Waite, wasn’t it? It has to be I can’t take it if it’s another dead end. Wait. What’s that scratching at the wall? And the sax goes on…
I have recently become a sucker for tight, fast solo board games of a puzzling nature. Epic runs of Mage Knight, Paperback Adventures or Imperium are among my favourite solo board game experiences. But damn it if real life doesn’t limit the opportunities to set up and play those beasts.
Enter that (for me) new breed of svelte packages of fun: Sprawlopolis, Maquis, Ugly Dragon’s Inn, Rove, Kinfire: Delve, Tetrarchia. What do they have in common? Fast to set up and quick to play. Fun decision-making. A theme that speaks to me. Varying levels of crunchiness. Ok - that last bit is actually what sets them apart.
Each one of these tiny solo games has a place in my collection because they offer something different. Rove’s spatial puzzle makes my brain burn as I try and fail to solve it. Ugly Dragon’s Inn laughs at the idea of player agency as the best laid plans can - and often will - falter at the mercy of the card draw. But its silly setting makes the 15-20 minutes spent on it fun nonetheless.
The last addition in this section of my board game collection, Arkham Noir (all three boxes), sits at the lighter end of the spectrum in terms of crunchiness. The core gameplay loop revolves around managing a queue of “clue cards” representing “leads” in the player’s investigation. On each turn, the player has to do something with the left-most lead card: Play it to an open case, draw it to hand, or discard it to either play a card from hand, “solve” an open case, or pass. In order to play a clue card to an open case, the clue has to match the symbols (“investigative techniques”) of the previously placed card in the sequence. Once matched, the case can be solved when its sequence of clues contains at least five unique “clue types”. Solving murders is important, but even more significant is for the solution of each file to contain at least one “puzzle” icon, as this will contribute to realizing the “big picture” of the series of macabre murders plaguing the city of Arkham.
All of this is complicated by the fact that certain card effects ask the player to make a “stability check” (I dub it “sanity check”). Accumulate five cards in the “stability area”, and the player’s investigator loses their mind/nerve and the game is over. Similarly, discarding some cards will cause the “time penalty area” to grow bigger. Accumulate five time penalty cards, and another murder takes place. Run out of “victim cards” and the game is over; your investigator was too slow.
Mechanically, Arkham Noir is a card-based puzzle about hand management and symbol matching. The challenge is to solve cases without wasting time, without losing your sanity, and while building up ‘the big picture.’ Get five cards in the Big Picture area, and you win. There are further elements that make the gameplay more intricate: some cards have other conditionals on top of matching the previous clue card’s “investigative technique” symbol. And some card effects allow the player to draw cards from e.g. the “stability area” or the “time penalty area”. This opens the door to clever combos - or to sweat-inducing choices between the lesser of two lurking evils. The general gameplay is tense, the execution of well-timed combos feels satisfying, and the game does not outstay its welcome. My first game took 45 minutes. The second took 35. It’s a brilliant little bite-sized puzzle experience that does not feel punishing at default difficulty, but the designers have provided a number of variables that can be tweaked to make the game easier or harder.
So from among my fast-playing solo games, it provides interesting decisions to make, but without ever feeling too demanding or leading to analysis paralysis. It’s straightforward. Nothing will blow your mind. Mechanically speaking.
Yet thematically, it might be the best of my tiny, short games at evoking its theme. The film noir detective tropes on the one hand. Explicit references to three1 of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories about unnatural and cosmic horror. Just like H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, Arkham Noir is eerie. It’s disturbing. It’s dark. And just like in Lovecraft’s tales, these atmospheric features linger on even after the often pedestrian plot is forgotten. In the game, most of this is achieved through the stunningly appropriate card art by the game’s designer, Yves Tourigny, and the general art direction of this tiny game (it consists of 64 normal-sized cards). The art is not beautiful like that of Mihajlo Dimitrievski in e.g. the Imperium series. Nor is it unintentionally ugly like that of various DVG Games productions. Instead, Arkham Noir’s cards are evocative of strangeness, lurking danger and unfathomable eeriness. Just like the short stories that inspired it.
The added noir detective flair also helps. Placing cards onto the ‘open case’ rows felt like pinning photos on a board and searching for the red threads between them. That, in turn, generated a narrative in my mind as I worked through the puzzle. An example below:
How and why did Edgard Pickman Derby die? When investigating his lodgings, I heard an eerie scratching inside the walls. This led me to a sealed area in his loft. Its odd non-Euclidian shapes made me dizzy and I clutched my pistol tightly inside my trench coat. Prying open the loft, I found a scattering of cryptic papers. The imagery made little sense to me, yet sweat trickled down my forehead and my heart rate increased. […] I spent some nights in my office, trying to decipher the damned scrawlings. At last, I realized they indicated a location. Here. In Arkham. Stepping out into the spring shower, I went to the place and found the entrance to a dark tunnel of some sort. Searching it, pistol clutched as tightly as my torch, I found nothing of interest. Yet on the way back to my office, I had the distinct feeling of being followed even if I saw no one. […]
A few drinks and much head-scratching later, I was startled by a call. To my office. Picking up, I heard only weird, discomforting sounds that meant nothing to me yet raised the hairs on my back. At a dead end, I devoted some time on my other open case, until I decided to head back to the tunnel and have a closer look. How could I have missed this? Or had it appeared only now? A knife of grotesque design. Had another murder taken place in this damned hole? I decided to stake out the area close to the tunnel entrance. Some good old, boring surveillance. […]
At last, something happened. A shape - I could not say whether human or animal - exited the tunnels and headed up an alley. I followed! As closely as I could yet not too close to be noticed. The shape turned the corner. I felt my heart in my throat as I increased my pace. Turning the corner, I saw ‘it.’ I will never forget the sight. Yet if you asked me to describe it now, I would be lost for words. A slight sense of panic ensued. Yet in its clutches was the unmistakable head of Edgar Pickman Derby. I made no attempt to fight this Unnamable shape. I turned and fled, grateful to have escaped with both my life - and my mind. Who had summoned this horrific thing? Would it kill again? I have to get to the bottom of it before it’s too late. I just need a few more pieces to figure this one out…to understand the bigger picture…
Some reviewers find fault with such attempts at over-selling Arkham Noir’s theme. They consider it plastered on top of a relatively simple card puzzle experience. “As far as the narrative goes, I didn't feel any sense of uncovering hidden truths that would have been better left buried which personally I think is essential to the story of a Lovecraft investigation.” writes J Ford. And I do not doubt that many people feel like J Ford. Yet it is also quite obvious that Arkham Noir attempts to be neither Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective nor Arkham Horror: The Cash Grab The Card Game. If we are to find a game that captures the true feeling of Lovecraft’s stories, I have not experienced anything better than the Call of Cthulhu: Role Playing Game. Such an endeavour requires a lot of investment - mostly in terms of preparation and time.
What Arkham Noir attempts to deliver is instead a relatively light card-based brain teaser that costs 15 euros, can be set up in three minutes, played in 30-40 minutes and packed away in 2. Oh - and did I mention that the box is tiny? And that the set up area is delineated by wonderfully useful yet still thematically designed reference cards?
And sometimes, the mechanics, the card text, and the card art truly come together to create narrative sparks if not a fully-fledged narrative. One great example from my most recent game:
I needed to solve one last case to have all the pieces to understand the Big Picture and save the day. I could feel it. But the things I had seen. The things I had done to get this far. They were weighing on me more and more with every damned minute [My Stability was at 4; one more and I’d lose]. The whisky didn’t help any more. I could not get that disgusting spiky figure out of my head - out of my nightmares. I felt an odd and repulsive draw to do what Ephraim Waite had asked me to do with his hard, penetrating stare and his soft, almost unnatural voice. The strain was too much. I would crack before I cracked the case of Frank Elwood. What to do? Leafing through the old diary of the Polish kid’s mum, I got it! The priest! She had written how he had helped her cope with the loss of her son to “the horror”. Father Iwanicki. I had seen him. He had wanted to talk, but I had dismissed him! I am not a religious man, but I am on the edge. This is worth a shot! [I played the “Old Diary” card to one of my open cases, and its effect allows me to draw a card from the discard pile. I drew Father Iwanicki because I remembered that his card effect allows me to draw a useful “puzzle” card from my Stability Area, thus both giving me a card and reducing the mental strain on my investigator.] Thank God! I do not know how he did it, but speaking with Father Iwanicki truly calmed me down. He helped me find some inner peace in the midst of all this terrible turmoil. And having calmed down, it was all so clear all of a sudden. Ephraim Waite. He had manipulated me. Had me chasing red herrings. And in fact so much of the evidence points to him and no one else. It’s time I pay the bastard one more visit. I check the barrel of my revolver and head out…
So for those of us who do like to role-play even when it is not called for, the emerging narrative borne of mechanical flow and suggestive art, there is much to extract from this low-price and speedy little game. And yes - that does require some effort and the (un)conscious triggering of one’s imagination. But I would not ask for more given the price and size of the package.
For those who are only interested in the strength of the gameplay challenge itself and where narrative and art is secondary or completely unimportant, I would suggest looking elsewhere. Rove and Sprawlopolis and games of that ilk are probably more fitting. Me? I am happy to put on some eerie jazz, pour myself a glass and have another go with Arkham Noir. Whenever I have an hour to spare. That’s all it takes to enjoy this tiny package of card-based puzzles and evocative horror.
The stories referenced by the card art and names in the first box of Arkham Noir are: “The Dreams of the Witch House” (1933), “The Thing on the Doorstep” (1933), and “The Unnamable” (1923). I read them after playing the game, and I do love games that make me reach out for books for a deeper immersion or understanding. Imperium had the same effect with my delving into areas of history and archaeology I might not otherwise have looked for.