Shut Up & Sit Down

GAMES NEWS! 29/04/19

warp and weft, wigs and cogs, wonks and cubes

Ava (they/them): Oh dear. The bosses took a break to get rotten in the state of Denmark. Specifically, they’re attending the Fastaval gaming convention, and only dropping the occasional cryptic photo (see above) into the company Slack.

That means I’m on my own for this week’s games news. They shouldn’t have left me alone. I don’t know enough of the news-ropes to not pick a random sentence, append the word news to random bits of it and pretend it’s an intro.

I guess it must be time to news-sail the news-seas and news-harpoon some news-whales.

115 Comments

Review: Tiny Towns

in the pockets of big stone, fighting with rainbows, a katsu sambo

Quinns: Tiny Towns is a cute little 30 minute city-building game that arrives in U.S. stores tomorrow. The box is full of winsome wooden buildings, players erect farms and homes, and on the cards you can see animals living peaceful lives.

All of which is a little misleading. The best bit of Tiny Towns is hearing one of your neighbours – having carefully examined their own tiny town – mutter “Oh, sh**.”

Intentionally or not, designer Peter McPherson has captured the reality of living in a tiny town. Friendly interactions, with a pungent undercurrent of jealousy.

56 Comments

Podcast #94: Seven Players, Exchanging Bananas

clomping in circles, desperate for citrus, almost eating the intern

Recently, Quinns was tasked with hosting a 7 player game night, and rose to the challenge with Herculean vigour. In this episode, Matt, Quinns and intern Kylie discuss his breathtaking efforts. That means talking about Watson & Holmes (03:00), Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space (12:14), and a little card game called Bourré (19:55). Incidentally, Bourré is probably the only time that SU&SD will ever crossover with the NBA. Afterwards, the group slims down for a chat about some 3 player games, namely Gùgōng (27:34) and Chinatown (38:30). Finally, the team answers a quick reader mail asking what table is best for board gaming. Big or small? Square or circle? That’s right! We are beyond parody.

118 Comments

Oh Baby: SHUX’19 tickets are now on sale!

a smoking clock, embiggened decrypting, game tea

Quinns: Are you interested in coming to the third Shut Up & Sit Down convention this October? Because tickets are now on sale on the official event page!

If you’re one of our amazing attendees from previous years, you’ll know what to expect- a world-class buffet of published and experimental games, plenty of goofy stage shows, and all sorts of opportunities to make new friends.

It’s a huge privilege for us to be able to throw this party for the best community in board gaming. If you want to see what all the SHUX is about, we’d love to see you there!

100 Comments

SU&SD Play… The Estates!

Get out the ice packs! It’s time for board gaming’s most bruising real-estate showdown.

But then, to simply call The Estates “bruising” is probably unfair. This game isn’t just cruel, it’s beautiful, and beautifully simple, and very funny indeed.

Take a look at our Let’s Play and see what we’re talking about. Could this be the greatest auction game ever made? Is it better than Ra and Cyclades? Maybe, maybe…

26 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 15/04/19

haunt your bones, slay the story, travel a worm hole, make a sex tape

Quinns: Good morning. Our top story this week? Shut Up & Sit Down has a new staff writer! Everybody, please give the warmest of welcomes to Ava Foxfort. Ava, will you please step in front of the class and introduce yourself?

Ava Foxfort (they/them): Hi everybody! You may have seen me in the comments or the forums, and I have to say I’m utterly thrilled to be here. Shut Up & Sit Down has been one of my favourite imaginary places for a very long time, and I’m delighted to be part of it.

Quinns: Ava, please kneel. I dub thee… a News Knight of the Realm.

Ava: I guess I’d better go slay some news.

174 Comments

Quinns Walks You Through His Game Collection!

belly stories, a mormon biome, and a hidden expansion

In 2015, we posted our Top 50 Games Ever. In 2017, we lost our minds examining every game in the Board Game Geek Top 100.

This year, we’re doing something a little more personal: A series of videos on the team’s board game collections, starting with Quinns. After working on SU&SD for seven years, games slipping between his fingers like grains of sand, these are the 136 (plus) games that he’s chosen to keep (and a few that are in his flat despite his best efforts).

Enjoy, everybody!

160 Comments

Podcast #93: Alone with the Norwegians

a trojan expansion, matt's pizza-toast, quintin's oily market, the mandela effect

The 93rd ever episode of the SU&SD podcast begins with Matt and Quinns discussing Klaus Wunderlich, before then talking about people talking about us talking about Blood on the Clocktower (02:05). With a bit of luck, this should clear up some misgivings surrounding our glowing review. There’s then chat about the hot new roll’n’write Corinth (10:08), the superlative expansion A Feast for Odin: The Norwegians (18:36), an additional superb expansion, Space Base: The Emergence of Shy Pluto (27:32), the oh-so-nearly-a-SU&SD-video-review Monolith Arena (32:42) and the fantastically inventive game Alone (43:52). Finally, the mailbag returns! We chat about which games offer the best emotional rollercoaster of feeling very clever, and then very dumb (01:05:27).

133 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 08/04/19

The irish-o-meter, rolly robot boys (RRBs), THE WRONG TRAINS

Matt: Unlucky Matt this week! I’ve got a cold! And worse than that, it’s not even a rare cold or an illustrious purple EPIC cold, but merely a plain green chunk of common head-gunk. As the coffee and paracetamol begin to wear off, I’m switching over to rooibos tea and lashings of toast with off-brand nutella. I’m not sure “lashings of toast” makes 100% sense, but what I get up to in my house is my business.

And on that note – it looks like Fantasy Flight Games has certainly been putting the BUSY into BUSI(Y)NESS!

84 Comments

Tonight, we’re streaming Chinatown!

Quinns: Hey everybody! Tonight team SU&SD is celebrating how superb negotiation game Chinatown is arriving back in shops after a very long absence. You can watch Quinns’ review above, and at 7pm BST we’ll be playing a game of Chinatown live on Twitch! Yes, we normally stream on Thursdays, but not tonight! Remember to click “Follow” on our Twitch page to get an email whenever we go live.

Anyway, as I was saying, what a game! With a slim box, reasonable price, and simple-yet-fresh design, this is the kind of game that we can see ourselves recommending from now until this site finally implodes like a dying star.

…That said, the box art and setting look increasingly iffy with each passing year. Here’s hoping that with the next print run, Z-Man update the theming to something less eye-rolly to Chinese board gamers.

32 Comments

Feeds