Revealing our Secret: SU&SD Newsletter #37
Added 2022-06-22 10:10:21 +0000 UTC
Quinns finishes a game of Teotihuacan with *one* tile left to place on the temple.
Quinns: Hello everybody, and thank you so much for supporting Shut Up & Sit Down for another month. A month where I *tell all*.
Of the thousands of new board games that come out each year, we see the job of SU&SD as one of curation. We provide exhaustive reviews of just 40 games, with perhaps another 80 covered on the podcast. But this has had an unexpected result. Publishers who want coverage sometimes wish they knew the secret formula of what games we might cover, as if we were the evasive masocts of a fast food franchise and they were hunting us with a big net. After all, if they can reliably figure out how to get their games picked, that could be serious business for them. We’ve never been able to corroborate this, but we’ve heard that even a negative SU&SD review of a board game will sometimes increase sales.
So in this newsletter, I want to save the publishers some stress and lay it all bare! Let me tell you how we choose to cover the games that we do. Obviously we like to cover fantastic games, but what if I was to tell you that there are little subcategories within that?
First, sometimes we find a game that hasn’t received the attention that we think it deserves, and is at risk of being discounted into oblivion. We’re especially likely to take an interest in a game that doesn’t seem to be selling if the game is from a new designer, a new artist, a new publisher, or ideally all three, because if we can help new talent to get settled in the industry we can all enjoy a higher standard of games!
A good example of this sort of review is Combo Fighter (pictured below), which intern Ben and I are currently working on a script for. So far, this game has only enjoyed a small Kickstarter campaign and a quiet retail release, and I think it deserves a lot more.
Sometimes we cover a game because it just gets stuck in the head of someone on our team. Board games are mysterious things that employ elements of tactility, psychology, emotion and storytelling, and while we like to spend our reviews trying to explain how they work, sometimes we just get obsessed. If we simply can’t stop thinking about a design, we don’t fight the impulse to play it and finally tell people about it. By following our hearts, we can be happier and more productive. Matt’s review of Silk is a good example of this. It was a small game that he couldn’t ultimately recommend, but he kept coming back to it. Why? We may never know.
Sometimes, though, we cover a game because we reckon that if we really ace the video, the YouTube algorithm will show it to strangers and it’ll help us to capture a ton of new subs. Examples of this sort of video review would be Fallout, Dune, Game of Thrones, or anything else with a big license attached. Obviously these reviews are still useful in their own right, but would I have bought a wetsuit for the Dune review if I wasn’t doing everything I could to catch new viewers? Maybe not. The fact is, sometimes at SU&SD we have to be pragmatic. If an unusually high number of people want to hear about a particular game, then we want to be the first search result on YouTube.
Ben: Do you like mountain? Do you like rolling dice? High Risk has one of these two things in abundance. Each turn you roll dice to move your mountain climbers, and can reroll any number of times. BUT! If you roll all danger symbols one of your climbers falls off. You might be wondering what the additional mechanics or twists are...and so were we when we played it. It seems like the sort of dice game that a mountain-themed casino might have.And sometimes, *sometimes*, we get nudged towards covering a game because the video starts writing itself. If any publishers are reading this, then this is something you can honestly do to get more coverage on SU&SD. Games like Food Chain Magnate, Fog of Love or Lords of Vegas that pair an accessible theme with absurd mechanics so fit the accessible yet absurd house style of SU&SD that we'll start excitedly brainstorming all of the things that we could do in the script, which makes coverage more likely. So take extra care when theming your games! It doesn't have to be silly, either. Captain Sonar is a great example of a game that's still serious, but with a high concept that's so evocative and unusual that I could have real fun with the review.So there’s a little peek into our process. Now, let’s move on to some impressions of some boxes that we’ve been poking through this month. Ben, take it away.
Yokai plays like a more complex variant of pairs, except you are not only playing against your own memory but the memory of 1-3 other people. You have to group up 4 different Japanese Yokai (roughly translated to spirits or ghosts) so they are linked to their matching cards. The catch is you can’t communicate with each other, making it feel like the most passive aggressive game of solitaire imaginable. If you found The Mind fun but too abstract this might be worth a look.
Matt: I’ve been up to my shins in board games this month, which serves me right for not tidying my house. Firstly, let’s mention the Barenpark expansion - what a delicious 3D treat! It doesn’t dramatically alter the game, but certainly finds new ways to tickle my brain. Mostly though, as with the expansion for A Feast For Odin, it simply reminds me that the original game is a pure and gorgeous JOY.
More urgently pressing itself into my mind is the long-awaited Black Angel (picutred below), the space-faring spiritual successor to Troyes that has many in the board game community afluster. Great news: I do not hate it! It’s definitely not a game I can truly get a measure of after just one play, but my initial taste has left me hungry for more - and I can’t wait to play some more of it tomorrow. It is HUGE and FIDDLY and VERY PURPLE, and I’m quietly hopeful that it might be very good. We’ll have more on this story as it unfolds: back to Quinns at the studio.
Quinns: I played Tournament at Camelot the other week, which I’m still thinking about. I heard it was good, but I wasn’t expecting it to be Cosmic Encounter: The Trick-Taking Game, with a huge array of weird powers and interrupts piled into a classic card game format. I’ll be playing it again for sure, I’m just not yet convinced that it’s better than other trick-taking games you can play with a normal deck of cards. But I also know that whether we cover it or not, it’s going straight into my collection. What a curio!
I also played Teotihuacan: City of Gods, one of the year’s best and brightest eurogames. I hate to say it, but I came away from it with the same cruel conclusion that we arrived at when reviewing Marco Polo, another game from designer Daniele Tascini- both games are inarguably strong and clever, but the theme and art are so underwhelming that the game feels like it’s only using some of the tools at its disposal. When you compare it to big, colourful games like Brass: Birmingham and Gugong, Teotihuacan is so grey as to feel anemic. Which is a shame, as other than that, I really enjoyed it.
However, I’m struggling to think of anything except the game I’ve got coming up this Sunday- we’re going to spend the whole day playing my advance copy of Western Empires, the new, cheaper, prettier edition of Mega Civilization (which was itself the descendant of beloved 1980 design Civilization, none of which has any relation to the Civilization videogames). It’s gonna be 9 players, 12 hours, and we’ll simulate 8,000 years of ancient history. I. Can’t. Wait.
What are we watching? 📺
Quinns: If you’re into cinematic depictions of table games, the best thing that I can say about Netflix Anime adaptation Kakegurui - Compulsive Gambler is that I watched both seasons in a single week. I’m not proud of that, but I’m not *too* ashamed, either. The series follows a hyper-sexualised main character as she makes a name for herself at an elite school that centres around gambling. On the one hand, it’s a ridiculous premise and a ridiculous show. On the other hand, the intelligence with which all of the games are treated is continually rewarding. If season 3 ever comes out, I’ll probably watch that, too.
Ava: I keep dropping references into the games news, and can’t hide that I’m slowly rewatching The Americans at the moment. I still think there’s nothing else like its combo of spy thriller and domestic drama, and it’s shockingly well executed, from start to perfectly heartbreaking finish.
What are we reading? 📙
Ava: I’m still recovering from the three types of tears I shed during Becky Chambers’ ‘The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet’, which is the type of soft, affectionate, humane sci-fi I’d forgotten how much I loved. I fell so hard for the crew of the Wayfarer, I’m kinda miffed the rest of the series doesn’t actually follow them, but I’m going to be gobbling up everything she’s got from here on out.
Quinns: I’m reading The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, an 848 page doorstop of a book that I will now do the immense disservice of describing as “A sexy Deadwood-style mystery”. In a nutshell, it’s the story of 12 beautifully written characters all trying to solve a crime in a rain-swept goldrush town in New Zealand without any kind of law enforcement. The best thing I can say about it is that I’m about half-way through and not one of those pages has felt like a chore. That said, I’d probably only recommend it to people who’ve already tried something a less aggressively literary, something like Sarah Waters, and were after some historical fiction that was a little bigger and slower.
What are we music! 🎵
Matt: I’ve been oscillating between aggro and chilled tunes in a seemingly random fashion this month, but the stand-outs albums on loop at the moment are Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest by Bill Callahan, and the self-titled album by Purple Mountains. If you’re in the mood for a loud track that’s unexpectedly uplifting, “YOU AND EVERYBODY THAT YOU LOVE WILL ONE DAY DIE” by Slime Cityis a song that can only be described as outrageously rad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haYdgklCO50
Ava: I’m still getting furiously owned by the spotify algorithm, and keep falling in love with weird little oddities. I’ve somehow developed a deep passion for seventies yacht lounge by the Alessi Brothers, Seabird being my current stave of a panic attack track of choice. Faintly more on brand, I’ve been adoring some curious electronic blurcore like Lusine’s Just a cloud.
Quinns: Thanks so much for donating, everybody. Remember, if you have any feedback on how the site is run, you can reach me at quinns@shutupandsitdown.com. I can't promise to reply to your email, but I read everything that comes my way.
