Paul: Good morning, Quinns!
Quinns: Good morning, Paul!
Paul: You know what, I think it’s going to be an exciting Games News this week! Let’s get right into the Games News Forecast, beginning with a look at the satellite picture that shows a heavy cloud of zombies coming in from the north.
Quinns: That sounds like one of the all-time bad weeks.
Paul: Don’t worry! It’s just the forthcoming single-player campaign for Zombie 15’. If our review of that one slipped you by, you should know that we recorded it in a single 15 minute take.
Quinns: Yes! Our favourite against-the-clock-undead-panic will soon support solo survivors. A designer diary over on BoardGameGeek explains some of the challenges that the creators had to hack and blast their way through to create this game mode, one they’d been hoping to bring to players with the original release. While it’s good news for Zombie 15’ fans, it’s more of a case of a long-overdue obligation to Kickstarter backers. A solo campaign was promised as a stretch goal a year and a half back, so this storm’s been a long time coming.
Paul: Also moving west with that high-pressure wave, we’re going to see a lot of sin coming in over the next few days, at least 7 sin by my estimates. That’s thanks to The Others: 7 Sins, yet another game from Quarriors! and XCOM designer Eric Lang, this time collaborating with Cool Mini or Not. The Kickstarter for this miniatures-heavy, Ameritrash-style horror game popped its six figure stack within moments and it looks like money is going to be raining in for the next few weeks.
One player pits the forces of Sin (is that capitalised?) against everyone else’s forces of Faith, battling it out across a modular board, with each Sin having different powers and miniatures at their disposal. Is it very glossy? Yes. Does it feature lots of body horror? Of course. Are all the women overly sexualised in that “evil-sexy” way? Yep. Sigh.
Quinns: Something has probably gone wrong when your game’s ordinary women make me more uncomfortable than the unholy lust monster with tits for elbows. Cool Mini or Not’s catalogue is the definition of a cold front.
We’ve actually got another boob-filled Eric Lang / Cool Mini or Not collaboration in our review stack right now, the much-hyped Blood Rage. I got through the whole manual and couldn’t figure out what was so strong about it, but hopefully we’ll find out in play.
In more refreshing news, sunny spells are bringing with them the promise of an Ultimate Edition of the friend-feasting, hidden movement classic that is Escape From The Aliens In Outer Space. Osprey Games, the same publisher who are bringing out cat-and-mouse sub game They Come Unseen, are gently reaching into areas board gaming outside of their wargaming base and an Ultimate Edition this game should work great for everybody.
We keep singing the praises of this sneaky game of spaceship suspense and hopefully this new release will help it reach even more people. And then let those people grab their pens and scribble their way toward eating one another.
Paul: Those distant rumbles you’ve heard are big changes happening over at Fantasy Flight Games, after a hurricane whisked away the license for the Legend of the Five Rings from AEG and carried it right to their Minnesota doorstep.
Legend of the Five Rings, or L5R as the cool (i.e. old) kids call it, is feudal Asia meets Game of Thrones, though it was actually created before Game of Thrones was published. Great (and not so great) noble houses play politics with one another in an ever-complicated game of etiquette, while strange and terrible things live beyond the great wall that defends the land.
It’s a setting I’ve always had a soft spot for, not least because I had a great time in a roleplaying campaign run by Quinns a few years back. Currently, it’s best known for that roleplaying game and also its collectible card game, but FFG’s plans are to re-release the latter as a living card game by 2017 and to “explore new possibilities” for the roleplaying setting. Given that FFG re-released the Warhammer and Star Wars RPGs as very shiny things with oh so many custom dice, I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that lies ahead.
Quinns: When I heard the news I felt a lightning strike of excitement, following by a long rolling thunderclap of sadness. Fantasy Flight’s Warhammer and Star Wars RPGs were bold experiments in how to make money from a dwindling RPG market, but I came to hate how they both played.
If they want to sell me a single rulebook with some nice custom dice, I’ll be happy. If they want to split it into four rulebooks, or make it into a giant box set, or sell me cards or any of that other crap that actively sacrifices a clean game on the altar of profit, so help me god I’ll… I’LL… well, I’ll probably just not buy it.
Quinns: We may have a rough night ahead of us, with Private Die coming down heavy in the early hours. It looks like we won’t be getting much sleep with all that noise.
Paul: All about “questioning suspects” (more like beating them until they’re bulbous) to gain evidence tokens, Private Die seems to be mostly a very straightforward dice game of pushing your luck. Still, it had one of the best Kickstarter pitch videos we’ve seen in a while, especially for such a lo-fi game and, oh my goodness, was I slowly dying in my seat this week as I watched yet more mumbling men stand against a blank wall while talking about their game instead of showing it in action. We really should put together a tips guide for Kickstarter pitches one of these days.
Quinns: Finally, we’re seeing an unusual shower of Bitcrates on the horizon. That’s a very fancy name for what is quite literally a kickstarter for a box.
What a box, though! A much more civilised solution that spilling your board game bits in neat puddles out on the table, which suddenly seems highly inappropriate.
So that’s it, everyone. Stay safe tonight. Remember to close your windows, put your heating on, buy de-icer, get the air conditioning going and also wear some bug spray! Basically, we have no idea what’s going to happen this week and anyone who you see making prophecies about things to come is some kind of mad witch or warlock. Don’t believe all you see on television.
What did you lot get up to this weekend?
