WE ARE DOING SOME MORE OF THE YOUTUBE CHANNEL ‘SHUT UP & SIT DOWN’: SU&SD Newsletter #81

We didn’t quite manage to get an audio version of this newsletter sorted this month, but the feedback for the format was fairly unanimously positive! We’ll shoot to sort one of those as part of the standard newsletter going forward, where it makes sense to do so. Thanks for letting us know you liked it!

Tom: We’ve been busy bees this month at Shut Up & Sit Down Towers, and so this newsletter is SHORT. It’s a slender bullet of information directed directly at your Kallax!

We’ve got some new episodes of the Top 100 ready to go out, we’re working on a lovely slate of reviews, and we’ve got some UNUSUAL videos planned too! Should be a neat couple of months.

I’ve been playing a whole bunch of Slay The Spire: The Board Game - and that'll undoubtedly be a review that makes its way to your screens imminently! It’s a review that’s come together so quickly and a real reminder that ‘strike whilst the iron is hot’ is most certainly the best way of approaching the format! Passion is a prerequisite!

Matt: And not long now until we can tell you fine folks about a couple of exciting collaborations we’ve been cooking up behind the scenes! The teasing will cease soon!

And also not long now until 2024’s first convention! UKGE is a long-time favourite of mine, and I’m hyped to be playing loads of games and seeing lots of old faces. We’ll have a stand again this year, selling a revamped version of our “TECHNICALLY DIFFICULT” T-shirt. OoooHhHh. For now though, gosh - I need to get my teeth into quite a few new games. 

Arcs, in particular, is something I really need to properly try: I like the vanilla version of the game, but the campaign sounds fascinating. I think last month's newsletter made it pretty clear that he's very VERY into it, and at the time of writing I'm pretty sure Tom is transforming pages and pages of zealous notes into a reviews script that - at this point - I'm slighting concerned will be etched into obsidian or the flesh of non-believers. Hopefully I'll love it just as much! I'm fond of my flesh!

Tom: We got to play a lovely little slate of games when I most recently nipped up to London to visit Matt. Three of them; After Us, Dobro, and Salton Sea are on the latest episode of the podcast! We’re making a dent in the absolutely heaving in-tray that I’ve accrued whilst I’ve been deep in the Arcs mines.

Matt: We’ve got a double-bill of bonus bits for you folks this week, so I’ll keep the babble to a minimum and cap things off here. Thank you so much for your support! 

What are we video games!  🎮

Pip: Hi, I have some personal news on the videogames front… Little Kitty, Big City  – the game I've been working on as narrative designer and writer – has officially launched!

It came out on May 9th AND there's a new trailer which I co-directed! 

You can watch that here: Little Kitty, Big City – Release Date Reveal – Nintendo Switch

And we also did a developer intro ON NINTENDO'S INDIEWORLD STREAM!! which I scripted!!

Tom: PIP YOU ARE SO COOL. One day I want to be a Nintendo too!

Matt: I dipped back into Slice & Dice this week, looking to kill a few minutes whilst waiting for a video render. Having not played it in a couple of years, WHOA - this solid and fascinating mobile phone game has been updated a whole bunch - I’d highly recommend it. If you’re a fan of games like Slay The Spire that saw video game wizardry doing weird stuff with cards, this is effectively the same but for DICE. Starts out nice and simple, but there’s a ton of depth and weirdness to drill into as well. On my last run, one of my starting heroes was… a shovel? Cool.

What are we music!  🎵

Tom: The latest Brittany Howard record ‘What Now’ is really fabulous and well worth a listen! ‘A LA SALA’ from Khruangbin is…. exactly what you’d expect! It’s another completely consistent and very chill time all round with zero surprises but very good vibes. English Teacher put out a brilliant debut in ‘This Could Be Texas’, which I would highly recommend if you’re into Black Country: New Road? ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’, ‘R&B’, and ‘Nearly Daffodils’ are all absolute boppers. I’ve also been loving ‘Ritual Music’ from Christopher Port whilst I film B-Roll, as it’s sort of the perfect length for filming a good chunk of footage before taking a break so I don’t hurt my back stooping over the table! That’s very reductive, of course; the music is fabulously colourful and groovy for electronic - which is likely to do with Port’s background as a percussionist. His track ‘My Love’ was a staple in basically every DJ set I did whilst I was at university - a very warm track that really fills a dancefloor. All of his stuff is great - a deliciously diverse catalogue.

What are we watching? 📺

Matt: After really not liking the last decade or so of Fallout videogames, I am surprised as anyone to discover that the new TV show is actually great? I think that the Last of Us show worked best when it was filling in the gaps that the videogames couldn’re able to whip up inside our heads are far more compelling and realistic than anything developers can currently show us.

But getting to see Fallout’s Vaults, inhabited by talented human actors rather than Bethesda’s digital plasticine puppets? It’s a joy I wasn’t expecting! Lovely to see a familiar face for Severance appear too, hammering home the obvious overlap of creepy corporate vibes.
 

Pip: Last time I chipped in on this newsletter, I think I was telling you about Vanderpump Rules' #Scandoval; a reality TV infidelity scandal which played out in real time and in retrospect as details of an off-air affair between two castmates emerged while the show was depicting a completely different version of events. Cue feverish Reddit activity, explainer articles and podcast episodes. You'll also recall that I could not, in good conscience, recommend anyone watch it. 

Well, that show – already a spin-off of one of the Real Housewives jurisdictions – has its own spin-offs. The one I'm currently watching is The Valley (not to be confused with the Welsh Geordie Shore-esque reality show The Valleys). I refuse to recommend it at all, am not comfy with my own complicity in these people's fame, and one of the most recent episodes involved someone confessing she had pooped on a stingray. What am I doing with my life?

What are we reading? 📖

Pip: I am reading John Claudius Loudon's "On the laying out, planting, and managing of cemeteries; and on the improvement of churchyards. With sixty engravings." It is a book from 1843 – back when book titles were paragraphs in their own right, rather than short, snappy puns, and would tell you exactly what to expect without needing to faff about with blurbs. As a result, you will be unsurprised to hear that it's about laying out, planting and managing cemeteries, and improving churchyards. How many engravings are there to support this endeavour? Exactly sixty. 

I picked it up a while back because a) I find cemeteries beautiful and fascinating places which exist at the nexus of all these religious, philosophical, practical, private and public needs, and b) because Loudon laid out a cemetery I like and was curious about. In poking around online to find out more about him, I found out that he married a woman called Jane Webb who sounds fascinating. 

In 1827, Jane Webb wrote the first fictional book about mummies. It's called "The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century" wherein she predicted coffee machines and a kind of internet. I'm also delighted by the wiki description of the mummy So that's my next book sorted, too!