News 23 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Games News! 29/01/18

Quinns: Good morning, my sweet creatures of the table. There’s only one story that could possibly kick us off this week: How a Random New Zealand Man Became a Character in Rising Sun.

To summarise, CMON’s ludicrously successful Kickstarter game, Rising Sun, was this month shipped to some 32,000 backers only for a few people to begin asking about this “Kotahi” stretch goal miniature. The backers couldn’t find any Japanese folklore by that name, but they did find a fake Wikipedia entry where someone put their friend, Kotahi-Manawa Bradford, in Wikipedia’s list of Japanese mythical creatures as a joke. In other words, research for Rising Sun was being done via Wikipedia and as a result a random Maori guy was immortalised in CMON’s biggest release of the year.

CMON have since stated that they were indeed “tricked”, and have sent a couple of copies of the game to Kotahi and his friend in a coy bit of PR, but I’m not sure they come out of this looking good.

Quinns: Good morning everyone! I’m back from a holiday in India where I watched a lot of Kabaddi, ate a lot of dosas and explored a little bit of ancient Hampi.

Ack, I’ve only been back at my desk for a few minutes and I’m already playing havoc with the Games News brand. Not one of those links takes you to a rousing piece of honest-to-betsy board game news. Please, let me start your week with some links that do.

As always I like to give the top story to the game with the prettiest header image, and this week that means the glossy Kickstarter of “Ridley Scott’s Alien but Don’t Tell His Lawyers” board game Nemesis. As any Shut Up & Sit Down reader will know, you’ll struggle to find a bigger Kickstarter curmudgeon that ol’ Quintinius P. Smith, but Nemesis’ campaign is so assured, so dramatic and so generous that even I found my mouse finger twitching towards the “Back this Project” button.

Paul: Happy New Year, one and all! As I turn the lights back on at Shut Up & Sit Down, stoke the boilers and put the hamsters back on the treadmills, I watch our site slowly coming back to life. The gears turn, the pistons thrust and the Supercomputer blinks back into a state of self-awareness, giving for just one nanosecond a familiar scream that signals the eternal understanding that it will be forever trapped inside its painful, wretched metal body.

I hope your 2018 has started well! The news has been piling up in drifts, so I’ve scooped out some of my favourite bits. Feel free to leave any more stories you are particularly excited by in the comments below!

Paul: Good morning, Quintin!

Quinns: Good morning, Paul. How are you on this brisk winter’s morning?

Paul: I am so refreshed and wholesome.

Quinns: I slept curled up, and a draft in my bedroom froze me into a parenthesis.

Paul: What does that look like?

Quinns: )

But nevermind my failing body. Paul, voting has begun for the annual Pearple’s Choice awards on the SU&SD forum! Everybody reading this should go and vote for their games of 2017, and we’ll be discussing the results on our year-end podcast. Vote now to replace disappointment with frustration! Isn’t democracy fun!

Quinns: Hello everyone! Did our American readers have a nice Thanksgiving? I’m happy to say that I tried pecan pie for the very first time. The sugar is still bouncing around my body like a pinball.

But today I’m handing out slices of something even sweeter. I am, of course, talking about The Games News. We kick things off with the announcement of Decrypto, a team game of announcing coded messages to your team while racing to decypher the other team’s cypher.

…And I have only this second realised that “cypher” is the root word of “decypher”. That’s probably an indication that I’m going to suck at this game.

One thing I have deduced, however, is that Decrypto is almost certainly inspired by Codenames. Not only does it – like Codenames – play up to 8 players on two teams and feature a mechanic whereby a wrong move could instantly lose you the game, you are sending literal codenames to one another.

Paul: Tis the season to be wet, for many of us in the Northern hemisphere, and as the clouds swell and the sky cascades, we need all the Games News that we can get to keep us toasty and dry. Thank heavens, then, for Rob Daviau, whose warm and welcoming announcement of Betrayal Legacy is like a sizzling space heater against the cold November rain.

So, are you ready to stumble through haunted houses again and again and again? It’s time to get spooked. Repeatedly.

Paul: Games News is storm front that rolls forever toward us, each new band of rain drenching us with fresh updates and moist headlines. It’s all we can do to stay afloat amongst this unrelenting deluge, so perhaps we should welcome the watertight safety of UBOOT.

So let’s dive in! Secure that hatch and join me taking a look at one of the year’s most fascinating announcements…

Paul: Dear Readers, did you know that Games News is the exact opposite of the Battle of Hastings? It’s true. Rather than fearing the invading Norman (news) hordes, we beckon them onto our beaches, wave them toward us and are delighted when they fire new games right into our eyes.

How else can we find out about such fine titles as A Handful of Stars?

Paul: This week’s Games News speeds toward us with all the speed and power of a hovercraft. You know why a hovercraft is the most powerful of vehicles? Because it can cross both land AND water. Like a frog. But much bigger. A giant frog. Once again HUMANITY TRUMPS NATURE.

Quinns: OK, first off, a hovercraft is just a poor man’s ekranoplan. But speaking of plans, can we talk a bit about Vital Lacerda’s Escape Plan, which has been confirmed as a 2018 release?

Paul: Ooh, ok! Heist games have been doing rather well at Shut Up & Sit Down this year (we’ve all become big fans of Burgle Bros and Blades in the Dark), so it’s easy to see why you’d be so excited about Lacerda’s latest, which is all about a team of bank robbers trying to get out of town. What’s the best way to get out of town? Put the police on someone else’s tail.

Paul: Matt! Welcome to the Games News Office! I can’t believe it’s your first time here!

Matt: Paul, this is just a bin with a laptop and-

Paul: Uh, what’s that? You’re also excited about the Pandemic Legacy Season 2 trailer? And it’s official release date being so near?

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