Each of the occult investigators is represented by a beautifully illustrated card listing the amoount of damage that the investigator can sustain before dying, the amount of mental anguish that they can endure before going insane, and their combat ability (which, for all of the investigators, starts at 2). Finally, near the bottom of each card, Jacob recounts his impression of the investigator. Each player is randomly dealt such a character card and sits it down on the playing surface, sitting two six-sided dice (twelve of which are included with the game) on top of the card so that the numbers showing are the same as their character's current Life and Mind ratings. These dice are used as counters, allowing players to track the physical and mental health of their character as it deteriorates.
After the character cards have been dealt, the Encounter, Clue, Action and Item cards included with the game are shuffled together. Each player is dealt five cards from this deck, with the remaining cards forming the "terror deck" for the game. Once this is done, the Location cards are shuffled to form the "location deck" and a die is rolled to randomly determine which player takes their turn first.
On each turn in a game of The Testimony of Jacob Hollow, a player does the following things in the following order:
1. Draws cards from the terror deck until they have five cards in their hand (or six cards, if the special "Timmy" card has been played).
2. Moves their character to a new location (if they want to). Note that hwo they actually do this is never discussed in the rules which only state that a character may move to a location curently in play or to a new location by turning the top card on the location deck. Some locations include an encounter that must be resolved upon moving there (see the section of this review that deals with action resolution) or reward investigation points (again, see the section of this review that deals with action resolution).
3. Plays cards from their hand, one at a time, targetting wither themselves, their character, or other players and their characters. Any encounters or investigations are resolved as they come into play.
4. Ends their turn, discarding up to three cards from their hand if they choose to do so.
With the exception of moving characters, the play structure of the game is straight-forward and easy to understand - that said, as moving from one location to another plays a fairly important part in the game, failing to explain it clearly could pose a stumbling block for players. The logical assumption is that a player merely moves their character card to rest upon a given location card, but the sample game layout illustrated in the rule book suggests that this isn't the case. Unless this is clarified in later errata, how to move characters is left up to the imagination of the players for the time being.
Resolving actions (be they combat encounters with monsters or investigations) is handled by a process called "flipping" in which players draw cards from the horror deck. Every card in this deck has a number that ranges from 0 to 5 printed in the lower right-hand corner. A "flip" is performed by drawing the top card from the horror deck and placing it face up in the discard pile, making a note of the aforementioned number on that card. This number serves as a randomizer for whatever action is being resolved at the time. Some actions, most notably encounters and investigations, require a player to peform multiple flips, the value of which may be altered by other cards in play.
When resolving an encounter with a creature or crazed madman, a player has two choices - they may attempt to either evade or fight their opponent. Both options are, of course, resolved using the flip process. Evasion is a simple process - each encounter has the word "Evade", folllowed by a series of numbers, printed on the card. In order to successfully evade the encounter, a player flips one card and if the number on the card is the same as one of the numbers following the word "Evade" on the encounter card, the player's character successfully evades the encounter. Combat is a bit more detailed, but not much.
In combat, the player flips a card for their character or the monster (whichever has the highest Combat value, or the monster if there is a tie), then flips a card for whichever combatant wasn't flipped for first, then alternates flipping cards for both combatants until a number of cards has been flipped for each of them equal to their Combat values. The flip values for each combatant are then totalled, with the characetr successfully defeating the monster if their flip value total exceeds that of their opponent, and winning a number of Investigation Points equal to the reward rating of the encounter. If the monster or madman's flip value is higher than the player's, their character suffers damage equal to the damage rating of the encounter, subtracting that value from their character's Life or Mind rating.
Resolving an investigation is, likewise, handled using flips. To perform an investigation at a location, a player flips a card from the horror deck and if the ttoal of that card's value and the Mind rating of the character performing the investigation is greater than the investigation target number printed on the location card (located in the lower right-hand corner above the word "target"), the player gains a numebr of Investigation Points equal to the location's point value printed on the card (in the lower right-hand corner above the word "points"). If the player's flip value plus their character's Mind value don't exceed the target value of the location, the player learns nothing and gains no Investigation Points.
Up until this point, The Testimony of Jacob Hollow is a wonderfully atmospheric game, with the mehcanics honoring the premise accurately and in an entertaining manner. Playing the game is a blast - but winning the game is a disappointing experience at best. So what's the problem? Well, as mentioned earlier, the premise of the game is that Jacob Hollow is revealing the events of that horrible night in Castle Bay to a psychiatrist in haunting cinematic fashion - a premise that promises a horrible revelation. A horrible revelation that never comes.
In order for a player to win a game of The Testimony of Jacob Hollow, they must satisfy one of two conditions - they must either control the only living character at the end of a turn or begin their turn with more than ten Investigation Points. And that is where it ends. Period. There is no climactic revelation, no horrible truth to be revealed, and no connection to the game's premise (indeed, the fact that any character other than Jacob survives the Castle Bay incident directly contradicts the game's premise entirely). After all of the effort that the designers put into incorporating elements of both storytelling and roleplaying into actual play, it comes as an extreme disappointment to see such elements completely abandoned where winning the game is concerned.
Ultimately, playing a game of The Testimony of Jacob Hollow is a lot like watching a great horror movie in the theater, only to have the film break just as the exciting climax is about to be revealed. While The Testimony of Jacob Hollow has a lot of excellent features that make it worth recommending, it has one glaring flaw that trumps all of those features and shatters the illusion of reliving the Castle Bay incident that the rest of the game fosters so skillfully. This being the case, I give the game fairly high marks for presentation but not for play value - I recommend the game to people who are looking for a good example of how to fuse traditional storytelling and roleplaying elements into a card game, while warning off anybody who has considered purchasing the game to discover the horrible truth of Jacob Hollow's testimony.
The horrible truth of Jacob Hollow's testimony is that it doesn't exist.
[Addendum: After writing this review, I've discovered that the horrible truth of Jacob Hollow's testimony *does* exist - as a series of downloadable PDF fiction pieces from the publisher's web site. While well written and informative, they nonetheless fail to effect actual play of the card game and, as such, the conclusion that I came to in the review stands.]
