Shut Up & Sit Down

Give us your Gloomhaven questions for Isaac Childres!

gloom with a view, looming gloom, two goons and a gloom, haven a good time

Matt: With SHUX just three days away, I’m vibrating with excitement at the prospect of getting to quiz designer Isaac Childres about the past – and future! – of the brilliant Gloomhaven at 11:30am on Friday.

But one man can only brain-think so much, so as part of our efforts to host and record the most interesting conversation about the game to date, we would love to field the hottest questions from you: our startlingly clever and good-looking community.

If you leave a question in the comments, we’ll credit you and get answers from the man himself: Big Mr. Isaac.

See you Friday!

85 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 30/09/19

word-biscuits, spidery conversation, string (conspiracy) theory

Ava (definitely singing, not necessarily well): I work hard (they work hard) every day of my life, I work ‘til I ache my bones. At the end (at the end of the day) I take home my hard earned pay all on my own…

Nobody: ….

Ava: Oh cripes. Hi there. I might’ve been making myself a little too at home in the Shut Up & Sit Down office complex while everyone else trots off to Vancouver. Without Matt here I don’t have to fight about who has to do backing vocals.

But you’re here, and you know what that means? It’s Monday. SHUX is approaching, and just beyond that lies enormous shopping convention Essen Spiel, and that means the news hopper is heaving. Let’s get to work.

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And with that, Team SU&SD Leave for SHUX!

hello jetlag my old friend, forgot to pack my pants again

Quinns: With just over a week until the third annual Shut Up & Sit Down convention, which still has a good few tickets left (including one day passes), it’s time for our team to G.O.S.P. (get on some planes).

For those of you attending, it’s gonna be fabulous. For those not attending, I’m here to say that our content schedule for the next couple of weeks will be a little spotty. Keep an eye on the SU&SD Instagram for any hijinks that occur, and expect the occasional written article, but probably no more than that.

But fear not! We’re going to return with all kinds of recorded shows, unusual jetlag-infused videos and tales of games big and small.

Thank you for your patience, everybody. See you on the other side!

22 Comments

Podcast #99.9 – My Hungry, Sleepy Civilization

Quinns can't pronounce cacao?, Mr. Snap, an actual census, feather-lovin'

In what is still definitely *not* our 100th episode, Quinns and intern Ben are grappling with some truly epic boxes. As is the SU&SD motto, “We grap so you don’t have to.” For starters, these two summon the energy to discuss their 12 hour(!) game of Western Empires (02:32). Then there’s chat about the byzantine challenges of hit Kickstarter games Cloudspire (18:05) and Skulk Hollow (29:38). Quinns reveals he can’t pronounce cacao in a segment on sprawling eurogame Teotihuacan: City of Gods (37:05), before the two round things off with some lighter games, namely Yokai (43:06), Detective Club (46:57), and Combo Fighter (53:06). Thanks to our amazing community, podcast transcripts are available here, and are usually completed within a week of the podcast’s release.

GAMES NEWS! 23/09/19

an intergenerational dance virus, periodontal peril

Ava: Welcome to the news, my greedy little fact-hounds. You’ve arrived to find me waist deep in an ethical quagmire. My news-galoshes are brimming with nuanced political mithering. How troubling.

Last week we reported on the alleged union-busting of Kickstarter, and stood in solidarity with the unionised workers. Obviously we still do. But this week sees the biggest glut of exciting-looking kickstarters I’ve seen in months, and it feels cruel to punish the creators of those projects for picking the platform as this skulduggery emerges.

Former Kickstarter worker Clarissa Redwine had a strong twitter thread about the escalation of the fired workers resistance into a federal complaint, and has highlighted that they aren’t asking creators to boycott, and so it follows they aren’t asking potential backers to snub those creators (or asking media folk to steer folk away).

We’ll keep on monitoring the situation, and if you do back any of these tasty looking projects, you may want to think about how you can communicate to Kickstarter your feelings on the situation, and your solidarity with the workers.

80 Comments

Review: Lords of Hellas

a small but, ankles assemble, a greek salad (and a coke?)

Who’s a fan of Greece’s Pieces?

This week, Matt’s strapped on his cyber-sandals for a jaunt through Lords of Hellas. This is an enormous, Kickstarted “dudes on a map” game of slaying cyber-monsters, building cyber-statues, amassing cyber-hoplites and going on cyber-adventures.

Will this game triumph, like Homer? Or fall out of the sky like a big Icarus idiot?

Have a fantastic weekend, everybody!

Review: Detective Club

travel? Regret? Sponges?, the Annual Art Critics Arguing Convention, a jazz lad

Ben: Picture the scene: you are in an art gallery. The curator asks you to pick two paintings that match a specific word. They won’t, however, tell you what that word is. You run off and pick two different paintings; one of a horse, the other of an apple in a window. The curator then tells you the word they were thinking of was “escape”, and asks you why on earth you picked those two paintings.

Welcome to the most unusual club in the world!

Detective Club is a party game that sees 4-8 players trying to match fabulous picture cards to different words. Each round, a different player will choose a word, write it on all but one of the adorable tiny notebooks the game comes with, shuffles them, and deals them out. Can you see where this is going?

34 Comments

Impressions: Yomi

a card with a heart condition, a seedy lady, the famous su&sd aaa system

Quinns: The people have spoken! After our glowing review of Combo Fighter on Friday, Shut Up & Sit Down was besieged by comments asking what we thought of Yomi, a well-liked 2011 game with a very similar foundation (as well as a teeming crowd of 20 playable characters).

We hadn’t played Yomi when we filmed the Combo Fighter review. Today, I can announce that we have played Yomi, and can provide some official SU&SD impressions!

So let’s start here: Holy kittens, Yomi is *bizarre*.

50 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 16/09/19

mash potato dreams, a kodak moment at the tower of silence, wrestling a ferry

Ava: Hlph um kumphlll. Mummph blumph fulmph bugublfu

Quinns: What was that, Ava?

Ava: *large tearing noise and a series of ragged gasps* Help me, Quinns, I’m stuck inside this baseball!

Quinns: …

Ava: It’s an allegory, Quinns, and a warning that this week’s games news is a bit more inside baseball than usual.

Quinns: I can just about understand that, but how did you get in there!?

Ava: Never doubt my commitment to a bit, Quinns. Also, I’m sorry I ruined your baseball.

68 Comments

Review: Combo Fighter

a sexualised forklift truck, a fist class ticket, intern inches tall

As anyone who’s seen us at conventions will know, it’s hard for team SU&SD to spend a day out and about without getting into a punching fight or muscle demonstration.

As such, it was only natural that we’d review Combo Fighter. An expandable, simple card game about kicking bottom, and a glorious team effort between designer Asger Johansen and artist Snorre Krogh. If you like the sound of a lightning-fast 1 vs 1 game that’s more intelligent than it has any right to be, do take a closer look.

(And if you’d like to see more of this kind of thing, check out our impressions of Critical Mass on podcast #84.)

Have a great weekend, everybody!

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