Behind the Cardboard Curtain: SU&SD Newsletter #39

Quinns: Hello my sweet Shut Upsters and Sit  Downlings! Thank you for once again donating to this internet web site.  Nothing can repay your generosity, but we can offer a little peek behind  the cardboard curtain.

This month I’m delighted to point out that you’re funding us during  the holiday season. SU&SD actually gets the most traffic in  November and December as everyone starts searching for what board games  to get as gifts, as well as which games to take home to /meet the  parents./ So it’s often when we try to pull out all the stops and do  something a little special.

And so you may have seen our recent review, “10 Oink Games in 10 Minutes”. It’s a bit of an homage to an ancient video of ours, the Rapid Review Special,  which we released back in 2013. We never did a second rapid review  special because bundles of reviews in one video make for comprehensively  un-Googleable content, but I’ve always been a little in love with the  format, and so jumped at the chance to do it again.

The thing is, as Shut Up & Sit Down has gotten bigger and bigger  (imagine Matt and me like the unprepared custodians of a baby elephant),  we find that we can’t be as irreverent or dismissive as we used to be.  As easy and entertaining as it is to mock a board game, it’s just rude  to do that if your video is going to be the biggest video that game will  ever get - but it feels less heavy to poke fun at a game or your own  skill as a critic if you’ve got another review from the same publisher  coming up in 30 seconds.

Format-wise, we’re also pushing the boat out with today's video review of Don’t Get Got.  This is a party game containing almost 200 tasks that you have to get  your friends to do without them noticing. In other words, it’s a review  of a box that had no game that we could put on camera, and what little  there is to film, we didn’t want to spoil. Keep that in mind when you  watch the video- we had to employ some serious creativity to keep the  video varied over 10 minutes!

Interestingly, while Shut Up & Sit Down might be known for trying to spread designer board games into the mainstream, Don’t Get Got is the first game we’ve covered that’s already in mainstream shops, and  that we’re trying to spread to hobbyist board gamers (except for maybe Loopin’ Louie). When it comes to getting great games into everybody’s hands, we have no allegiance. Jeux Sans Frontières!

I’m also part of a small team working on our big, year-end blowout review: 2015 Kickstarter smash hit Cthulhu Wars.  This is the poster child of a Kickstarter board game that’s packed with  plastic. Every faction in Cthulhu Wars has their own unique /bag/ of  miniatures, one of which is a “Great Old One” the size of a small  orange. It’s absurd, expensive, and has about a thousand expansions. In  other words, it’s precisely the kind of game that appears to be designed  to be an appealing Kickstarter project first, and a good game second,  just like we saw with Batman: Gotham City Chronicles.

But how’s this for a Christmas twist- I think I love Cthulhu Wars. I can barely bring myself to say anything more than that.

What are we watching? 📺

Quinns: Hey, did everybody know that Succession is amazing? You did? Oh.

(IT’S SO AMAZING.)

Matt: I’ve been really enjoying the new TV Watchmen thing - which is far more interesting than it has any right to be. I’ll  pop back and sing its praises further in the event that it manages to  nail the landing - which I’m not wholly convinced it will at this stage.  Time will tell!

What are we reading? 📙

Quinns: Christmas decorations have gone up in Brighton, which means /Quintin’s Holiday Fantasy Reading Bonanza 2019/  has begun. I’ve got the stack of books right next to my desk- I picked  them all out months ago, and they’ve been waiting for me every since.

To start with we’ve got Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James, which I’m enormously excited for. Then there’s The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty, and The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, then The Rosewater Insurrection by Tade Thompson.

You might notice that all of those authors are women or people of  colour. I wish I was doing that for altruistic reasons, but it’s  entirely selfish. I’ve been reading fantasy my whole life, so I’m always  looking for new styles and new ideas, and the easiest way to get that  is to embrace authors with new perspectives. Diversity: It Makes Art  Better.

Tom: As a freshly minted graduate of English  Literature, I now harbour a seething hatred of the written word. Despite  this, books still manage to seep into my life by hiding in drawers, on  shelves, and inside my bag as I leave Waterstones. I’ve recently been  reading Charles Isherwood’s ‘A Single Man’ - a beautifully dense, descriptive novel of a man’s life after his partner passes away, and Siri Husvedt’s ‘The Blazing World’  - a semi-fiction deconstruction of an “art-world” obsessed with image  and persona over substance. I also had time for another read of Vonnegut’s ‘Breakfast of Champions’, as per my yearly tradition of picking up Vonnegut during winter, when I’m at my most bitter and (literally) cold.

What are we music!  🎵

Tom: My housemates want to kill me after I thoroughly enjoyed Lightning Bolt’s ‘Sonic Citadels’ and Sunn 0)))’s ‘Pyroclasts’  back-to-back last Sunday – two albums that have the capacity to make  you feel violently ill very quickly or very slowly – it’s your call,  baby. In lighter fare, I’m going through a bit of a phase with Dan Bejar’s work as Destroyer.  There’s nothing quite like finding a new artist with a consistently  brilliant discography – where each new record is a little treat that  you’re excited to snack on, and Bejar’s work is like an advent calendar  filled with only the good Quality Streets. If you’re new to Bejar, I’d  thoroughly recommend either ‘Kaputt’ or ‘Rubies’ as entry points into his vast and terrifying body of work. Lastly, I’ve been enjoying the DIY charms of Grace Ives and Yves Jarvis,  both artists who make weirdo alt-pop from their bedroom, but go in such  opposite directions that I don’t really know why I put them in the same  sentence. Ives’ work is like parallel universe Donna Summer, and Jarvis  pushes genre boundaries like there’s no tomorrow.

What are we video games!  🎮

Matt: As someone who increasingly doesn’t play many video games, this last year has been a treat. The Outer Wilds and The Return of the Obra Dinn are both all-time classics as far as I’m concerned, and I’m pretty blown away by Disco Elysium. In lighter fare, I must admit I’m enjoying dipping into Warframe for half an hour once or twice a week - a game in which I shoot robots  in the head with a bow and arrow whilst constantly sprinting, and then  am handed 5,000 objects and currencies that I will never possibly  understand. Video games are strange, honestly.

Tom: I want to sing the praises of ‘Later Alligator’  – the most charming game that has ever existed ever. I’m increasingly  finding joy in short, polished experiences that, above all, make me  laugh – and Later Alligator absolutely fills that niche with snappy,  silly dialogue and a minigame-based structure that’s jammed with daft  punchlines. Think Jazzpunk, but a point-and-click with hand-drawn  alligators. I also really really enjoyed Disco Elysium –  but I feel I’ve used up my recommendation after telling a friend to buy  it, who actually loathed it, but only decided that after playing enough  of it that he couldn’t get a refund. OOPS.Quinns: Disco Elysium is fantastic. I gobbled it up in about three days while I was on holiday.I’m now totally engrossed in theme park management game Parkitect.  There have been lots of theme park management games in recent years,  but Parkitect is the first to just get everything right. It’s not too  easy, it’s not too tough, you can get creative but still have to keep an  eye on the budget- I can’t recommend it highly enough.

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