A Celebrated Toastie: SU&SD Newsletter #34 (April 2019)

Matt: Hello, humans!  It’s a MATTSTRAVAGANZA this week, as Quinns is kindly looking after his unwell ladywife. It’s been just over a week since we returned from Fastaval - a small Danish convention of around 1,000 people, mainly focused on  roleplaying - and it unexpectedly blew us away. Immediately upon arrival  it felt a lot like we’d crashed a lovely wedding, with everyone hugging friends they’d not seen for a year - it seemed many attendees had been  coming for decades, and yet the community was as tightly knit as it was  welcoming.

We immediately became a bit obsessed  with trying to identify what it was that truly made Fastaval *tick*, and  as a result did our best to fully immerse ourselves into the culture.  Unusually, this meant spending our first morning at a gaming festival  drinking beers at 9am and then cleaning toilets. None of this makes much  sense in a vacuum, but eventually we gleaned that the chaotic yet kind  core of the event couldn’t have bloomed easily outside of the socialist  sensibilities of Denmark.

Taking place in a school during Easter holidays rather than in a  rented commercial space has kept Fastaval's expenses low, with this then  extending into the show itself being run by factions of  volunteers. Hiring cleaners is too expensive, so a roving team of  “Dirtbusters” pay for tickets and then come just to tidy up for four  days, tramping around, listening to metal, and drinking, whilst keeping  things undeniably clean. Meanwhile, the information desk team ride  around on orange scooters, and most wear a matching orange fez.

The dirtbusters seem to be at war with the info desk - by the end  of the weekend they’ve stolen most of their scooters. Is this a dream?  It sounds like I’m recalling a dream. As you’d expect with this madness,  though, everything is slightly wonky - the only hot food available  outside of defined school canteen meal times are cheese toasties: a foodstuff so iconic that it was the star of Fastival 2019’s music video.  In the context of the structures that hold the show together, toasties  made perfect sense - what else can you make quickly, and that almost any  volunteer can cook without seriously screwing it up?

Fastaval's fuzziness was initially downright *infuriating* to a man  well weaned on (frequently disappointing) dreams of capitalist  efficiency - but it rapidly became clear that this loss of efficiency is  wholly worth the cost. Kindness and respect take the center stage, and  flat hierarchies have allowed sub-communities to creatively thrive, and  to push at the boundaries of permitted behaviour in a playful and deeply  exciting way. Also, everyone was lovely and kept buying us drinks so  we’ve shamefully just had a bit of a useless week on account of ending  up more hungover than we've been in years.

To  be real for a moment though, with you - the people who kindly support  us - Fastaval was in retrospect a trip that we needed? So much about  2019 is new and exciting, but it took the complicated reactions to our  Blood on the Clocktower review (and the conversations that followed) to  realise that both myself and Quinns were in need of a break. Fastaval  was a wonderful refresher for our brains. It was a week of laughter that  reminded us of Shut Up & Sit Down’s aspirations: to continue to  help build an industry that can find a strong identity whilst still  remaining actively inclusive. We know it’s possible - we’ve seen it! -  so now it’s back to work in trying to help make that happen.

Speaking of which, tickets for SHUX 2019 are now on sale! Expect a  lot of well-intentioned nagging about this fact in the coming months.

The  kicker though, really, is that Fastaval ended up feeling so special  that I found myself applying the Star Fleet protocol for first contact.  Despite my desires to document this phenomenon and share it widely with  the world, it was an ecosystem so uniquely special that I actively don’t  want to change it? So here we are with a mild compromise - a secret  love letter delivered to SU&SD's donors, and a promise that in the  next newsletter I’ll be back with a silly treat: an unlisted YouTube  video of me and Quinns spending a morning as Dirtbusters.

Our next big video review is Gugong - a delightful game about corruption and gifts that speeds along  wonderfully and looks a real treat, and in the near future you’ll also  be seeing some changes to Shut Up & Sit Down that - as “word people”  - we think you’ll enjoy. The website is currently being quietly  revamped to load more quickly and break less frequently, and when this  is done you’ll be seeing more written pieces, starting with a new column  from our excellent new staff writer Ava Foxfort.

It’s honestly amazing just how much time gets soaked up by the  gigantic sponge that is “running a small business" - it’s like a black  hole that creeps up on you. We’ve been lining up our chickens for SHUX  '19, and I’ve been fiddling with tons of behind-the-scenes tasks -  including finalising and producing a small run of T-shirts (pictured  above) that will be available to buy at the UK Games Expo, and hopefully  elsewhere later in the year. It’s a very different style of thing to  what we’d usually put out, but I think artist Tom Humberstone has really knocked it out of the park - it’s a ridiculous and cool  design that I personally love, and hope others enjoy too. If you can’t  personally make it to UKGE, now’s the time to find a buddy who’s willing  to pick you one up.

On the next podcast you can expect some chat about the games we  played during Fastaval, including an unfinished version of Midlife  Crisis - the fascinating, ambitious Fog of Love sequel that doesn’t quite hang together just yet but features some deeply exciting mechanics. We  also had a chance to try the new Flamme Rouge campaign expansion, in  addition to an early version of another racing game by Asger Harding  Granerud, which features - you won’t believe this - “cars”. Early  impressions suggest that it’s a bit bloody good, so do keep an ear out.

Next month we’ll aim to leap back into the fray with a newsletter  more densely packed with teasing nibbles of what we’ve been playing - in  the meantime, thank you once again for supporting what we do. We hope  that your April was as invigorating as ours was.

What are we music? 🎶

Matt: My latest obsession is the wonderful Mitski - a melancholic & terrifyingly thirsty rock musician who appears to  have written at least 4 incredible songs about wanting someone to give  her a kiss. I didn't realise it was possible to become sad and lonely  via musical osmosis, but there’s something so candid and raw about her  songs that’s impossible not to feel like you’re there with her,  half-trapped in the life of a stranger. It’s also worth noting that her  songs are - technically speaking - “flat-out rad”. A stranger on Twitter  who I’d love to attribute but can’t recall the name of summed up her  latest album with a sharp brutally that I’m simply going to borrow: Be  The Cowboy is the album that Father John Misty wishes he had the range  for. Woof. The best track to start with is Nobody, a real gem.

What are we watching?! 📺

Matt:  I’m watching Game of Thrones and I’m not really going to say anything  about it at all because I unusually respect the idea of not turning any  and all avenues of communication and expression into a pipeline for  sharing memes about things I have seen. But gosh, I love it. I really  love it. It couldn’t be more different a thing to the show it was at the  very beginning, and I’d never argue against the suggestion that the  shape it takes now is inherently dumb - but what a magnificent flavour of dumb.

What are we videogames! 🎮

Matt: I had a reasonably nice time chewing through Lost Frontier on my android mobiletelephone - a game cut neatly from the template of  Advance Wars that offers a pleasing Weird West cowboy spin. It’s far  from a clone - bringing a bunch of its own fun ideas to the table - but  lacks the rock-solid level and scenario design that elevated Advance  Wars to god-tier levels. I’ve also been enjoying Steamworld Quest - a deck-building fantasy RPG with awful writing that is undoubtedly  the weakest Steamworld title that Image & Form have put out to date,  but that’s hardly a damning statement to make when everything else  they’ve touched has been pure flipping gold. If you’ve yet to play it  I’m increasingly convinced that Steamworld Heist is a genuine classic.

Quinns:  Thanks so much for donating, everybody, and thanks to Matt for covering  for me on the newsletter this month as I tend my wife's sweaty brow.

Remember, if you have any feedback on how the site is run, you can reach me at contact@shutupandsitdown.com. I can't promise to reply to your email, but I still read everything that comes my way.

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