CONVENTIONS (TWO DIFFERENT ONES): SU&SD Newsletter #76

Tom: So! September’s newsletter is rolling in unfashionably late - well into the depths of October after a ferociously tiring couple of weeks of travel where I:

• Attended two whole board game conventions
• Enjoyed one very small holiday
• Spent about thirty-five hours on various transports
• Went to six different museums
• Met approximately forty-three gems of human beings
• And ate three of the best doner kebabs ever

Let’s talk about the REAL stuff, though - the conventions. This newsletter very much revolves around that travel - it’s what we spent most of the month doing! And so we’ve got three great bonus bits at the end of this one - a video talking about our time at the World Series of Boardgames in Vegas, the first in a series of donor-only podcast going over our favourite conventions, and a trial episode of a new series we’re working on with Pip where we play a bunch of ‘Trash From Ebay’? We’ve also got a chunky podcast where me and Quinns sift through the remains of all the games I played at Essen, holding aloft the gems for you to admire! That’s too much stuff!

Quite honestly, I’m afraid of repeating myself here! That block of content should be quite enough to keep all but the most ferociously interested in the loop as to how we felt about this recent slate of board game travel, and it’s all linked below. I think both of these conventions represent great investments for the site - first-times that have shaped how we’ll approach these places and people next time, as they start cementing themselves in our yearly itinerary of conventions.

This travel has made up most of my recent work for the site, and as such I’ve got little to report outside of that - the podcast is spooling back up, the videos are flowing, and we’ve got an absolutely dangerous run of content to round out 2023. There will be another newsletter after this one, in fairly quick succession, probably talking about the beastly business of writing and producing this John Company review; but until then, enjoy (some of) the fruits of our travelling just under the ‘What Are We’s!

What are we video games!  🎮

Tom: First off - I’ve got some slagging off to do. Everyone seems to adore Cocoon and… I don’t get it!? Yes, there’s real beauty to the setting, sound design, and art direction. Yes, the way that it gently locks off previous areas and nudges you towards solutions with its level design is whip-smart and considered. But I just never found it terribly enjoyable!

It felt like a game where I was waiting for its hook to really kick off into some thought-provoking head-scratchers, but the way that the game limits your options in a given area means solutions were almost always instantly apparent - the only thing you could do rather than the smart thing you could do. It’s a game designed to shuffle you on towards a solution instantly by making all other options impossible. Argh! Not a fan. I’d almost rather it just have stuck to being nothing but exploration like previous titles Inside and Limbo, so more time could have been spent on the fringe weirdness of its setting, rather than on oftentimes tedious puzzling. I think Patrick’s Parabox is the better game for folks looking for a more rigorous exploration of the same ideas, and Inside and Limbo still exist for those needing to delve into a surreal new world (as does previous newsletter recommendation Crypt Underworld).

I was, however, really pleasantly surprised by Sea of Stars - I’ve wanted one of these ‘throwback’ RPGs to really click for me and this one might be it. Bouncy, immediate mechanics fused with breezy story sections and real juice in the animation and sound department. I treated myself to an OLED Switch this month and it’s practically luminescent on that thing. I’d also urge folks to check out Cobalt Core - a really cracking Slay The Spire and FTL mashup game that’s got so much charm! I think there’s something deeply warm about it, in every sense - a free demo as part of Steam NEXT Fest has got me so amped for the final release.

What are we music!  🎵

Tom: OooAOoAoAAhhh! UarrGhhH! Those are the noises of guttural recommendation I assign to Laurel Halo’s new record - ‘Atlas’; diaphanous, enveloping, and bleak. It’s got a tone unlike anything I’ve listened to this year - outwardly depressive soundscapes that have tiny glittering peaks of gold dotted amongst them. A taster of this is crops up towards the backend of ‘Belleville’ - weighty and morose piano briefly receding for a collection of voices to pour out, cascade, and again vanish. It’s sparse, but goosebump-inducingly moving when it decides to be. I can’t stop listening.

Polly: Recently I’ve been doing some deep dives on bossa nova jazz standards. I found this one track called “O Pato” (The Duck) which is just the most “roof down driving through the Spanish rivera with an aperol spritz” I’ve ever heard. My favourite version I’ve heard cane from Gilberto Gil’s Gilberto's Samba album.

The whole album is so fun, with lots of cool off kilter subtle drums and fantastic guitar playing. Gilberto's voice reminds me of a Brazilian Chet Baker in its understated and relaxed tone. Perfect for housework and walking around to. Couldn’t recommend enough!

What are we watching? 📺

Quinns: Netflix’s The Devil’s Plan has arrived! Longtime SU&SD fans may remember me effusively blogging about a Korean reality show called The Genius. I was spellbound by The Genius- it had some hits and misses over the course of its four seasons, but I’d never seen TV that had such ambitious game design (or one that used editing to frame its games so well).

The Devil’s Plan, from the original producers of The Genius, is something like The Genius season 5. A whole bunch of intimidatingly smart people are put through a gauntlet of twist-packed games and expected to do their best to make alliances or break the games to survive. Except this time they have to live together for the duration of the show, bringing just a soupçon of Squid Game to the proceedings.

I’ve only just started it so I’m not in a position to judge it just yet, but I’ve heard from folks that while The Devil’s Plan is very strong, it also serves as a reminder of just how likeable the contestants of The Genius season 1 were, and how amazing the various ends they came to throughout the show were. If you haven’t seen it yet, I still thoroughly recommend it. Though you’ll have to get a bit "creative" to find it online.

What are we reading? 📚

Pip: Help! I have fallen into a popular thrillers rabbithole and I cannot get out! This is because my local library has a facility for borrowing audiobooks – HOORAY! – but it's not great at actually helping recommend the next thing to listen to. As a result, I listened to one Harlan Coben book because it was listed as "available" and now I'm just tearing through his back catalogue because the books are pretty entertaining and finding "more by this author" does not require me to do complicated things like making decisions. Coben writes very twisty "THIS THING HAPPENED IN THE PAST AND NOW THE REPERCUSSIONS ARE REPERCUSSING ALL OVER THE PLACE" books which adapt well to television miniseries. In fact, that's the way I'd encountered his stuff prior to this current audio-binge. I just finished Play Dead and it was definitely the most far-fetched so far. That said, it was his debut novel and he clearly hadn't settled into his Coben-ness. In fact, he talks about its gawkiness in endearing terms in the accompanying author's note:

"I'm hard on it, but aren't we all hard on our early stuff? Remember that essay you wrote when you were in school, the one that got you an A-plus, the one your teacher called `inspired' - and one day you're going through your drawer and you find it and you read it and your heart sinks and you say, `Man, what was I thinking?' That's how it is with early novels sometimes."

I feel like that about pretty much everything I've ever written so, despite the fact the book has its flaws, it was really nice to encounter that sentiment and reflect on it while I was reading.

Quinns: I’m also stuck in a thriller right now, Pip. (steeples fingers) It’s an erotic thriller. (leans back in chair) And it’s not very good.

Well, I guess that’s not fair. The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran is readable, and intriguing, and incredibly fast-paced, and the story’s continually surprising. But the plot seems to rocket along as if in the hope you won’t notice all of the ways in which it’s incoherent or implausible. But if you’re looking an easy read that’ll make you feel fractionally more randy, with many, many descriptions of the protagonist helping herself to miniature bottles of champagne, this is probably it.

Other than that, I continue to read novels in the same way that Tom listens to music: gimme highfalutin, gimme impressive, gimme sad. This month that means Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh and The Parade by Dave Eggers.