The UKGE Roundup Episode!: SU&SD Newsletter #82

­

Present Tom: I can explain! I promise!

This newsletter is comically late. It’s been through a time vortex and has popped out the other end all greasy and weird. I wrote all this immediately after UKGE, but then two things happened in quick succession that propelled this newsletter into the far future. Firstly; I committed 900% of my brain to making about an hour and a half of pure uncut review for Arcs. It got a bit silly. I think the results have been well worth it - but goodness me, if it didn’t cost basically the entire rest of the site to get it together.

The second reason is that we initially delayed this newsletter because of an exciting announcement! An exciting announcement that we, well, messed up the dates on. As such, that announcement will be ALL OVER the next newsletter… but I’ve excised it from this one. Matt’s going to write a whole load of words on that particular project, and I wouldn’t want to crowd that with my UKGE ramblings.

So! That’s why things got a bit weird. On with the (much delayed) show!

­

Past Tom: We’re back! From the UK Games Expo! Primed and ready for a traditionally late newsletter experience!

Present Tom: My word, if only I knew. This is so traditionally late that it’s become unconventionally late. What’s wrong with me?

Past Tom: I think through a combination of pre-emptive lozenges and a Sunday where I holed up in the hotel bar, I’ve managed to swerve the dreaded con-crud for the first time… ever? As such, I’ve had quite a relaxing Monday so far; perusing the chunky stack of games I’ve hauled back home, pinging emails to publishers of games I couldn’t drag back with me, and typing out this very newsletter. Let’s have a little look back at the games we peeped.

This UKGE, more than any in the past, was a very tricky place to get review copies for the site. Usually, our typical game plan of shuffling over to a booth and sheepishly requesting a copy of whatever we’d just demoed works a good proportion of the time, and we trundle away with sagging suitcases and a long list of new reviews. Not so, this time around!

Some of this is just because we’re now a big enough fish that the review copies have been sent in advance, taking the necessity of a booth visit out of the equation. A bigger part of it might just be that distributors now have booths instead of publishers (in some cases) and they don’t have the necessary permission to hand over a fresh shiny boxes to reviewers. 

An even bigger part, though, is just the long-term impact of the industry shift towards Kickstarter. If this list was everything we played at Expo, it’d proportionally be 90% games that ‘just aren’t available’ and are instead somewhere along the Kickstarter journey. Expo became, for us, a great window into next year’s expo - when those games are more likely to be tangible products than exciting investments.

Still, that didn’t stop those games being bloody exciting. 

­

‘Deep Regrets’ looks absolutely fabulous. It’s a game heavily inspired by Dredge, in which players become fishermen trying to make a quick buck from a deeply haunted body of water. You’ll pull up increasingly odd fish, with each one nudging your ‘madness meter’ just a little bit higher until you’re so far gone that you can’t sell regular fish any more - you’re fully off (in?) the deep end. Every bit of art oozes so much character, and I hope the game ends up matching the talent on show in the drawings.

­

­

‘Fame & Fable’ looked similarly stunning with its deeply striking colour palette and chunky little monsters. I honestly couldn’t tell you what the game is here - the press preview area was absolutely deafening for someone who struggles to hear at the best of times - but I’m desperate to find out after being well and truly sucked in by that box cover. Woof! The board game industry is so prone to safe bets in art design that it’s a breath of fresh air when you see something that pops as much as this does.

­

­

‘Spokes’ was similarly bright and immediate - a “velodrome cycling abstract race game” that we got taught in all of two minutes and played in about fifteen. Players lay coloured sticks of wood (think a ‘Catan Road’) into the track in front of them in order to build routes that’ll sling them forwards in the race - but you’re limited as to what routes you can take by what track you’ve got on your personal player board. Someone might spend a turn establishing a strong blue route that zips them halfway around the track, only to completely biff it when they realise they’re out of blue pieces that’ll capitalise on that hard work. After a peppy first game, I really want to see how this plays at different counts - our six player game felt a little too busy for my tastes, and I’d be really interested to see how crunchy it gets at three players when there’s comparatively so little changing in the board from turn to turn. It’s a while off, but we’ll certainly cover it fully when its Kickstarter delivers.

­

­

‘Ironwood’ was maybe my favourite single booth-based demo of the show, and it’s the game I took back home with me that I’m most keen to properly play. It’s an exclusively two-player asymmetric ‘troops on a map game’ that cribs heavily from Root, but relies on fleshing out two factions rather than only outlining four. One player, The Ironclad, builds chunky ‘Forges’ and sends out a drill to tear resources from the earth - travelling across predefined routes carved into the board. The Woodwalkers, in contrast, exist in the spaces between those routes - springing ambushes on the Ironclad’s supply lines and recovering totems from the forest. It’s the kind of game that’s so immediately textured that we were playing for little more than 10 minutes before beginning to roleplay as our sides; approaching the puzzle and our opponent in almost ideological ways. A card-driven action system that relies on three permanent options buoyed by fresh opportunities drawn each round does great work to make your opponent feel knowable… but still spontaneously quite dangerous. It’s good, and I Can’t wait to get it to the table again.

­

Present Tom: I got it to the table again! It was pretty darn delightful. Myself and Matt talked about it on the podcast, and it might well be a game we revisit in video quite soon…

­

Past Tom: NOW. There was one real highlight of the show, for me, and it swallowed up my entire Friday evening. I got a chance to play The Old King’s Crown - a game that I’d seen being demoed at UKGE the year prior but had myself been too busy to sit down to. This time around, with a design-final copy in front of me, I got a chance to sink in a little bit. It’s a very special game indeed.

This’ll likely be reviewed later down the line, I’m fairly sure, and I’m already worried about how I’m going to describe it without relying on a million buzzwords that don’t quite capture the feeling. Each round, players use a small hand of cards pulled from a slim, personalised deck to effectively ‘bid’ on control of three chunky regions in the middle of the table; placing a chunky wager that they’ll ‘For Sure’ take one in particular each round. Winning a region gets you some points, as well as stealing some points if someone else bet that they’d take it, too. Winning a region also gets you an effect, though - maybe just extra points, maybe the chance to pull cards from the discard pile, maybe the opportunity to play some extra political games on the side. As far as the very core of Old King’s Crown is concerned, that’s kind of ‘it’ - fundamentally you’re playing a game of making bets and getting paid.

But it’s everything around that core that makes it dance. Each round starts with players doing a separate auction for special powers that vary wildly in their abilities, but are consistently potent and game-breaking. Actually using those cards, though, requires the owner to lock a potentially powerful card out of their deck… is the reward worth it? Players can upgrade their deck with extra characters pulled from a pool of possible upgrades, giving them access to flavoursome asymmetry and narrative direction - or they could instead specialise in court politics that’ll pay dividends gradually over the course of the game. The game encourages a sort of anti-deckbuilding mentality throughout all of this - where reshuffling reduces your hand size - and so you’re routinely offered tantalising chances to return cards to your hand - power at the cost of being known.

That all sounds very dry and mechanical - rest assured that our game was anything but. Playing as a rebellious upstart faction, I bumbled my way through the opening rounds before hatching a plan to throw an entire round in order to dominate explosively in another. I seeded the court with loyal followers who, at the right moment, sprung forward and enabled a crushing victory across the whole span of the board - each region falling in turn for a thrice the payout I’d usually expect. It was carnage. The game is full of what the solo designer (and illustrator!) continually referred to as ‘real “piece of shi*t” moves’ and I couldn’t agree more - this thing is meticulously barbed and nasty.

­

I’ve got a huge stack of games that I didn’t play, and had an equal number waiting for me at home when I returned. ‘Undaunted 2200: Callisto’ is shaking up the Undaunted formula with space, mechs, and elevation! I’m keen to give it a go as soon as humanly possible; such is my love for that fantastic series. I’m really excited to play ‘Septima’ - a witchcraft eurogame that we covered in a SHUX Preview, but never requested a final copy of after a great spark of initial interest. I’ve got a copy of 'Kronologic: Paris 1920' coming in the post and I'm exceedingly excited for it after the designers' previous game, 'Turing Machine', impressed but didn't fully capture. This game taking some of that crunchy deduction and applying it to a less (literally) mechanical theme should find an audience in my partner, who just loves a good puzzle. Finally, ‘Leviathan Wilds’ was waiting for me when I got back and I’m immediately impressed with its production choices - it’s a boss-battling co-op that cribs from Shadow of the Colossus heavily. Players clamber up great beasties and chisel corrupting crystals from their gigantic limbs, trying to weave between attacks and maintaining their grip for as long as possible. It looks evocative and co-operative - you’ll know if it delivers as soon as I do.

Finally, finally, finally,  we had an immensely productive meeting on the Sunday of the convention where we talked with Play to Z about our soon-to-be-announced project with them. I couldn’t be more excited about the outcome of that meeting; with full confidence, we’re absolutely cooking with this one. I can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on.

Thanks for reading this very rambly newsletter! June is going to be ‘the month of Arcs’, for Shut Up & Sit Down, as I embark on filming the absolutely terrifying number of words I’ve written about this truly exceptional game. I’ll have a post-mortem on that project ready by July.

Thanks for supporting the site, folks, it means the world. I f**king love board games.

­

What are we video games!  🎮

Matt: HELP MUM I’VE FALLEN BACK INTO BALATRO. My love-hate relationship with this game remains spicy, and I still can’t decide if it’s brilliant or awful or possibly both. The major patch they added a little while ago has made the difficulty variance far less wild, and broadly just made the whole game a lot easier - and I think that’s really good, actually? It means I’m playing on the higher difficulties, which is where some of the game’s actual interesting decisions start to appear. 

BUT. BUT BUT BUT: I still can't help but feel the whole game is just a fruit machine that I can't stop playing? I’m going to do my best to play something different, this month. Wish me luck!

Tom: Minishoot’ Adventures really took me by surprise! I tried it out after a friend of mine gave it a glowing recommendation, and I was continually delighted at quite how well its particular mashup of silky-smooth top-down-shooter and old school Zelda exploration meshes together. It’s a great little arcadey treat. I’ve also been chunking through Lies of P and having a wonderful time, despite the occasionally jarring tonal choices. The ‘Pinocchio Soulslike’ largely manages to hold up as one of the genre’s best, only held back by undercutting its own sombre tone with an incessantly irritating companion whose inane one-liners suck all the atmosphere out the thing. It annoys me so much! An otherwise exceptional title. ‘V Rising’ also finally came out of early access into 1.0 and I would really, really, REALLY recommend that beast to anyone who dabbles in the survival crafting sphere and wants a hit of something equal parts familiar and alien. Exceptional game with a cracking power arc in store for the player.

I’m writing this on the eve of Destiny 2’s potential last expansion, ‘The Final Shape’, and I’m saying goodbye to all my loved ones before I go and shoot a lot of guns for many hours. I really hope they stick the landing on this, if only for the selfish reason of having taken my Wednesday entirely off to play it!

Present Tom: It's real good. It’s REAL GOOD

What are we music!  🎵

Tom: I went to ‘Wide Awake’ Festival and saw Young Fathers live, and I’d thoroughly recommend anyone who likes SOUND go and do the same. What a triumphant, joyous band.

I’ve also had the song ‘Apple’ by LA Priest playing at least once every day since I first heard it - an absolutely delicious bopper that has no right to be as catchy as it is.

Matt: I’ve also been playing LA Priest on a loop this month, frankly - having only just recently clocked that they’ve released TWO new things since I last looked carefully. It feels like the only artist in the world where I’m confident that one of the instruments involved is a frog made of bubbles? Or a bubble that’s shaped like a frog? Either way there’s definitely a LOT of bubbles and/or frogs involved in the musical process. 

For maximum BUBBLES, check out Lying Has To Stop - an outrageously catchy tune that they did as part of a collaboration with Connan Mockasin.

What are we watching? 📺

Matt: I’m about to lose access to a Disney plus account, so I’ve been CHEWING THROUGH STUFF like a media monster. ‘Extraordinary’ really surprised me - an easy recommendation! Sharp British writing, ridiculous ideas, great characters - it feels a lot like a less bleak version of the incredible Misfits, give it a pop.