'The Great Week of Games' SU&SD Newsletter #54

Ava: Our little trip to Oxford was a blast, if a  surprisingly knackering one. I had a whale of a time with some of the  games, and it was just lovely to be sharing space with my wonderful  workmates. It was interesting finding out a bit more about how we all  play, and what we disagree on was really enlightening too. I’m still  really fascinated by how sharp the split between mine and Matt’s and  Quinns and Tom’s sense of Moonrakers was, in particular. It’s possible that it’s just that mine and Matt’s  chaos goblin energy aligned quite well on that one. I also got to play Oath for  the first time in real life, which was a proper delight after a lot of  exciting online play. I think it might have been my best game of it yet,  with an even more vivid story than usual (although you can wait/look  for Tom’s review to find out more of the specifics).

The last night’s tired and late card game session might still be  the highlight though. I was absolutely shattered, and not quite as  chatty as a result, but it made me remember one of the things I love  most about games, when you can just lean back and play the game and  listen to the chat and be a bit out of it, but without any awkwardness  or anxiety. Games do such an amazing job for me of making social  situations easier, and making me feel less awks about my deeply anx  self, and I’d forgotten how much I’d missed playing simple games, with a  cosy bundle of people, and just keeping on getting dragged in for one  more game. Wonderful con energy with a bundle of people I care deeply  about. Perfection.

Quinns: Goodness gracious, that night of cards at the end of our trip was so good. We warmed up with the perfectly pleasant Ohanami, then spent about an hour idly dropkicking one another in Stick ‘Em, then at around midnight we all struggled to get to grips with No Thanks!. It was so nice to end the week laughing so hard that I had to stand up and leave the table.

Those are far from the only card games we played, too- you might be able to enjoy some coverage of Equinox and Ettin from Matt in the near future. Also, it was on this trip that I finally had to admit to myself that Similo is not as good as I was hoping. Ava pointed out that to have fun with  it you need to mix and match different sets, which means you have to buy  multiple copies before you can have fun, which is a bit of a  dealbreaker.

Tom: Stop that, you! Similo is a good game, we’re just blasting you for really wanting to love it ;)

Quinns: It’s probably pretty telling that on a trip where I got to try Oath, the Twilight Imperium expansion and the Inis expansion ,  my favourite games were the party games and card games. I’ve been  trapped indoors playing giant eurogames and asymmetric wagames for more  than a year! Let me out! Let me paaaarty!

Matt: I’m still weirdly quite happy being a  non-party goblin and staying inside, thanks! But what a glorious few  days of cramming game after game in… We agreed ahead of time that  nothing was mandatory and that people could wander off and take a break  whenever they fancied, and I was amazed that I barely felt the need to  stop playing? Aside from breaks for sleep and food, it really was just  four days of back-to-back games - it reminded me why I love this job, it  was amazing to spend some time together with the whole editorial team,  and it’s frankly a relief to return home again with A Faint Idea of what  my job is and how I’m going to do it. How on earth we’ve kept going  over the past year and a bit, I’ve no idea.

Tom: I’ve long said to my game groups that I have  ‘unlimited’ stamina for games and I’m glad that Oxford proved that to be  a claim that’s almost entirely true. I think I had a brief  patch of hating everything that moved after that game of Moonrakers but I  was then thoroughly straightened out by a game of Furnace, soundtracked by Pharaoh Sanders.  What a delightful week. Perhaps the most delightful thing about it  might have been resting up for this Oath review - something I ended up  writing more words for than my actual dissertation (don’t worry; I’ve  since slimmed it right down). I’ve no idea if it’s even a good piece of  work any more - I’m just about to start filming some luxury b-roll for  it. Sorry if it’s bad!

What are we video games!  🎮

Ava: Dorfromantik is lovely. All the satisfactions of a tile-laying board game, in a  digital package with lovely soothing graphics. It doesn’t have the sheer  unadulterated loveliness of Townscaper, but it does have goals, scores  and purpose, making it easier to get lost in, at least sometimes.

Quinns: Love Dorfromantik! Although for this last  month when I’ve *not* been playing Oxygen Not Included or Dorfromantik,  I’ve been spending time with Overboard! It’s got lovely writing, a great hook and a fabulous interface, and I’ve loved every minute I’ve spent with it.

Tom: I’m super humbug about Dorfromantik - but  that might be because I’m more inclined to just whip out some Railroad  Ink if I want something soothing. It also might be because my terrible  “attention span” necessitates any games I play at the moment to be fast.  Very fast.

I’ve been lost in a sea of retro shooter revivals recently - slamming through Dusk (again) at breakneck pace, gobbling up Prodeus, slaloming through Amid Evil. These are all very good videogames. But the best of all has to be Post Void - a nauseatingly psychedelic FPS with a killer one-song soundtrack and  intensely purposeful design that costs less than a sandwich. It’s  perfect.

I’ve also been playing a bunch of Griftlands,  which is an excellent little (big) deckbuilder - I think Matt’s been  getting in on that one too. It’s a really good ‘weight’ and I’m having  plenty fun just trying to unlock everything with the first character  before moving on. It’s got some great beats in there, and moments that  make you go ‘ooooh yeahhh…. videogames’.

What are we reading? 📖

Ava: I’ve been digging into 1491,  a journalistic historiography of the indigenous people, cultures and  civilisations of the Americas as they existed before (and just after)  Columbus landed and ‘discovered’ the world they’d been living in for  millenia. It’s a gripping read for a history book, marred only by the  author’s love of setting up something as fact, and then suddenly  switching to ‘well that’s not true, it’s something else instead’. It’s  also utterly heart-wrenching. The first portion notes that the sheer  extent of loss of people, culture and knowledge caused by disease and  colonisation is so much larger than pop culture history gives credit  for. I would’ve thought I was someone who was already aware of the scale  of this, but this book has blown my understanding out of the water.  It’s truly awful. I do wish the book had more modern indigenous voices  in it though.

Elsewhere, a friend of mine has just published an academic article on indigenous island cultures, colonialism, the anthropocene and  boardgames. I’ve even got a name-check in the acknowledgments. It’s  dense academic stuff, but makes a fascinating read if you’re interested  in those intersections.

Quinns: So, my country (and, statistically  speaking, probably yours too) is in the grip of a housing crisis spurred  by investors purchasing more and more homes for their portfolios,  driving up prices and making housing increasingly unaffordable for most  people. That’s bad news for all of us, but it *has* seen the creation of  a new kind of property-centric thriller, where a desirable house is a  character all of its own.

That’s the case in Naomi Booth’s Exit Management,  which I’ve been enjoying this month. Two unconnected characters end up  in a position to acquire an unfathomably expensive London property, and  the plot immediately begins spiralling and spitting like a pinwheel  firework. It’s pacy, it’s surprising, and I’m a big fan of the author’s  quirk of adding gaps to sentences for emphasis.

What are we music!  🎵

Ava: Literally just going to shout out a single track, the Prins Thomas remix of Beam Me Up by Midnight Magic.  Perfect slice of joyful disco. It popped up on my playlist while we  were playing card games in Oxford, and the entire team asked me to give  them a link to it, which felt like getting the entire room dancing while  DJing at a wedding. Lovely little banger.

Tom: I can absolutely confirm that track as being  utterly delicious. After the Oxford trip I asked for some  recommendations from Ava - so I’ve been enjoying a bunch of music from  her playlists. HNNY, Mildlife, Mariah... all fabulous! I’ve also been listening to ‘If This Is House I Want My Money Back 3’  which is a great compilation record if you sort of like House? On the  more downbeat side of things, I’ve been getting into the breadth of work  from Kurt Wagner - as Lambchop, and as HeCTA. I think ‘Sympathy For The Auto Industry’  is so beautiful and so simple and is the kind of sticky synth thing  that I’m endeavouring to write... Can I talk about making music in here  too?

I’ve been pursuing ‘the perfect groovebox’ for absolutely ages now,  and I think I’ve landed on one with the Elektron Model:Cycles. It’s  utterly fabulous and disgustingly intuitive - and you can hear some of  its sounds in the MicroMacro and Beyond The Sun reviews. I’m yet to be  truly confident in my music making to put anything front-and-centre  (save for one review last year) but I’m getting there, slowly but  surely.

Matt: I’ve been deeply hooked to SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE’s new album - Entertainment, Death.  It’s like being drowned by a modem, then getting trapped in a haunted  children’s ride for half an hour. Other than that I’ve been left with  numerous earworms from Bo Burnham’s Inside - which I enjoyed far more than I expected. Usually I can’t stand  musical comedy, which is shaky ground for a man who has attempted it at  LEAST three times.

What are we watching? 📺

Quinns: Matt got me into Netflix’s Call My Agent this month, and I’m so glad he did. It’s a French show set in a talent  agency, with all of the agency’s famous actors being played by  themselves, in the vein of the UK series Extras.

There are seven main characters, and I think I love all of them?  Although my favourite is Mathias Barneville, the proud and unmistakably  French partner of the agency who glides around like a force of nature  even as his life crumbles around him. That said, I’m only on season 2 so  I don’t know what life has in store for him. Bon chance, Mathias!

Matt: Ahhh it’s so good! The guy who plays  Mathias’s claim to fame prior to this was that he did all the French  voice-overs in the movies for Tom Cruise. It’s not as saccharin as Ted Lasso, but I loved how broadly cheerful it all was.

On a less cheerful note, I really enjoyed the performances in Time - the 3-part BBC show about the British prison system, starring Sean Bean. Equally grim but less illuminating, series 2 of Black Summer is a huge improvement on the original set of episodes simply because  they’ve now got cameras that can handle the single-shot jerky motions  that the show relies on. If you enjoyed The Walking Dead until they  stopped killing off any popular characters, it’s a horribly mean  zombie-based treat.

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