Shut Up & Sit Down

Our 1 Player Game Review Roundup!

orange you sad you saw me do that, loner fiesta, y(s)olo

WE NEVER THOUGHT IT WOULD COME TO THIS.

After years of ragging on 1 player board games, it’s time for SU&SD to eat crow. It turns out that solitaire games can be fun, if they’re consumed in a rational and safe fashion. We’d wholeheartedly recommend Aerion, Kosmos’ new Adventure Game series, and then also in this video there is The Hunted: Twilight of the U-Boats.

Enjoy, everybody!

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GAMES NEWS! 13/04/2020

The return of the Newspipes, Science Junk, BREAKFASTRON, Freebies galore

Ava: Come on, we’ve got to get this news flowing or we’ll have nothing to report this week and people will be sad.

Tom: I’ll join you in just a moment. Matt’s busy demolishing me at Terra Mystica on BoardGameArena and I’ve got to focus all my energy on losing so that HE doesn’t feel sad.

Ava: It’s the important work. Especially when he pays my invoices and decides if our news is news enough.

Tom: Wait, Matt can see this? Oh cripes.

Ava: Did we ever bother telling you what an editor is?

Tom: Some kind of fruit?

Ava: Oh dear.

Matt: Hey now! I beat you with my darkling buddies FAIR AND SQUARE. Ooh, While I’m here – don’t forget we’re now streaming on Twitch every Thursday at 3pm UK time. It’s mostly just silly stuff with me on my own for now, but that will change soon, once I can work out how to do magic with wires. Anyway! Ava – do us some GAMES NEWS!

Ava: OK! Games News. In inevitably increasing multimedia empire news, some art got turned into a role playing game got turned into a telly show and now a board game.

Tales from the Loop is a cocktail of 80s nostalgia, weird sci fi and large mechs. The board game take on Simon Stålenhag’s moody artwork offers a selection of scenarios and adventures. Players take the role of kids playing detective and co-operating to solve some mystery or another caused by that eponymous underground particle accelerator.

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Podcast #107: The City of the Pork Shoulders

It’s Alive! With Tom Brewster, Storming! Hungry! Bowling!, Grandma Bonus, The Deafening Sound of Solo Silence

‘Ello ‘ello ‘ello, wot’s going on ‘ere then? Looks and sounds like there are three english men crammed inside one english cupboard talking about a series of “board games” from who knows where. That’s a recipe for disease-based disaster right there. City of the Big Shoulders? You’re certainly crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in here, though one of you is a bit smaller than the others. I’ve heard it’s as good an economic euro as any, though I, for one, prefer my commodity speculation games a little less beige. Last Bastion? I’ve heard that one’s a pretty dandy co-operative game, but personally I felt the fantasy redesign was a little lacking.

Wait, I swear on me nan’s ghost that I saw more games in here when I first burst in. Are you hiding ‘em? What’s that on there? Is that a game on your mobile device, Mr Lees? Is it Vlaada Chvatil’s classic tableau-builder, Through The Ages? You of all people should know those is contraband, as they remind people of ‘the time before’, when they could play games with their friends around their tables spreading all their germs. Not any more. You’re going to prison, but seen as we can’t go outside, I’m locking you in your own dishwasher. It’s for the best.

Tap below for full timestamps and more info!

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GAMES NEWS! 06/04/20

Let’s kick some bubblegum, Cruisin’ for an Oozin’, Night at the Newseum, Cubes are not your friends

Tom: Whose idea was it to go steal from the Newseum during lockdown? It’s spooky and it feels, I don’t know, a little wrong to take advantage of a cultural site under public ownershi-

Ava: Shh… keep your voice down. This is where all the best news is kept, if we’re sneaky then we can get some good stuff to put in this week’s games news, and no-one will even know it’s missing until after lockdown. We’ll put it right back when we’re done!

Tom: I’ve only been here a few months, and already I’m doing heists! My contract said ‘all sorts of hijinks’, but I didn’t think we’d be doing actual newscrimes.

Ava: You should’ve read the small print. Hijinks is a very complicated part of contract law.

Tom: So I keep hearing.

Ava: Too big to not mention (even though we’ve mentioned it before), is the game with the biggest box and the coldest setting, which only makes me assume this Gloomhaven sequel will actually be a fully functional fridge.

Frosthaven, from Isaac Childres, is smashing through the millions as quickly as you’d expect the follow up to one of the most lauded games of the last decade. Now that pretty much everyone knows what’s in store from a Gloomhaven game (and if you don’t, check out Matt’s almost as enormous review) it’s no surprise this dungeon crawling, legacy behemoth is covered in big numbers.

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Our 5 Favourite Brand-New Card Games

it is all thanks to the refreshing great taste of sprite

April 2, 2020 Reviews Card Games, New to Games?, Air Land & Sea, The Crew: The Quest for Planet 9, Tournament at Camelot, Mandala, Bruxelles 1897 It’s gonna take more than the ‘rona to infect THIS website! In this video Quinns tackles no less than five of the greatest card games to come out in … Read more

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MinuteWalt: In Memoriam

We talk a lot about community at Shut Up & Sit Down, and that’s because for a while we’ve been aware that it isn’t us that makes this place special: it’s the people who congregate around the fringes of our work that drive us to keep on making more of it. This week we’re extremely sad to report that one of the most beloved members of this community recently passed away, peacefully, after a long-term illness.

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GAMES NEWS! 30/03/20

Don’t say Monopoly isn’t so bad actually, Stumpwatch 2020, fetch!, Here Bohnanza, Tramampoline, The Horror The Horror

Tom: m o n d a y

Ava: Is it? It is? How can you tell?

Tom: t h e n e w s

Ava: Oh dear, you might be right. Let’s take a look in the news-pipes and see what pops out.

I try to avoid quoting the Simpsons too often, but if anything gives me the chance to say trombopaline, then I’m going to take it.

Trampoline Park is bouncing high to the top of the list of ‘games with themes I cannot believe have happened’, and what a bounce it is. It sounds like a family friendly puzzle of using varying power to bounce between trampolines, bouncing other players or your other bouncing tokens away when you land on them. First person to have three tokens bouncing on all the same colours or letters wins.

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Podcast #106: The Very First Quarantine Special

Wet ken, shut up and sourdough, a renegade host, too much sting for my liking

Welcome to the loosiest, goosiest episode of the Shut Up and Sit Down podcast yet, where three adults try to have a conversation via the internet without talking over each other all of the time. Experience the mixed results contained therein! Marvel at how 5 games are spread thinly over an hour of your life, like existential marmalade made of cardboard and opinions. What games, specifically – I hear you roar? I was getting there, no need to get impatient.

This week we’re bobbing around on an ocean of average in Flotilla, drinking some questionably garnered tea in Alubari: A Nice Cup Of Tea, and pelting druids with rocks in Cairn. Sandwiched amidst these activities one can find a brief segue through the eccentric Tokyo Game Show, and a brief visit to the ancient tabletop colossus that is The Castles of Burgundy. Also in this podcast: meandering chats about how the team is faring under quarantine, and a few brief teases of potential bread-based content.

Tap below for full timestamps and more info!

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A Shut Up & Sit Down Update

March 25, 2020 Specials Hello all! It probably goes without saying, but we just wanted to let you know that the work we do might be a little disrupted or different in the coming months. Thanks for your patience, and we hope you enjoy!

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GAMES NEWS! 23/03/20

FAFF REMOVAL SERVICES, IS THAT TWO SHINY PENNIES?, A TEMPORAL NIGHTMARE, JUST DON’T EAT DOGS AT ALL IF YOU CAN AVOID IT TO BE HONEST

Tom: …So they were saying that I didn’t care at all about the game, when really that couldn’t be further from the truth! I was super invested!

Ava: Wait what’s going on are you-

Tom: -and I just found myself getting so frustrated because even though my strategy was a little rough around the edges… Ultimately, I did Care, Too!

Ava: Ha! Just like the… Wait did you go back to the start of the article to edit this bit so that you could make the reference first? Nobody is going to have a clue what’s going on.

Tom: It’ll be like Primer. Everyone will have to go back and read it a second time, and we’ll get paid twice as much.

Ava: Well, you certainly will be, with this lovely shiny penny.

Ava: What’s more mysterious than Mysterium? Science just cannot tell us, but soon we’ll know what’s less Mysterium, with a stripped back sequel, Mysterium Park.

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