Matt Lees
Ava: Who goes there?
Tom: Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.
Ava: Oh thank god it’s you Tom, I thought I’d seen a ghost on the news-battlements.
Tom: Not this time, but I have had one pale figure looming over me on my rounds. Please enjoy a short word from our sponsors at LeesCorp.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tom: … So I’ve got all these because I thought you said ‘Games Newts’, it’s just a simple misunderstanding.
Ava: Look, it doesn’t matter, we’ll just get on with the news and absolutely nothing will happen, and nobody will notice and nobody will tell Matt and we’ll all keep our jobs, and you can put them in the Shut Up & Sit Down pond after we’ve finished.
Tom: Oh dang I think two of them escaped, and I think one had a bottle of whiskey and the other was carrying a tiny gun.
Ava: Uh oh. That’s some really bad newts.
New York Zoo is Uwe’s latest attempt to re-bottle the lightning of Patchwork, with a lovely looking tile laying zoo builder. You’ll be filling tiny zoos with tiny animals, and trying to best your opponents in this hopefully sharp family friendly game. Each turn you can either expand your zoo with new tiles or pull more tiny wooden animals onto your board, provided you’ve got the space to house them. On top of this, New York Zoo borrows a bit from some of Uwe’s big farm themed games. Just like in real life, animals will breed when the shared elephant crosses certain thresholds on the central board, helping you fill up enclosures to grab bonuses. It’s like a little Uwe’s greatest hits. Capstone Games is publishing in collaboration with Feuerland and they always make things look pretty.
Tom: I hate visiting the news nurse’s office.
Ava: Look, you’re lucky that we’ve got the News Health Service so it doesn’t cost you a penny – maybe you should do something to take your mind off the growing, creeping pain from that nasty news infection? They’ve got some light reading here. Would you like a newspaper?
Tom: ARGH. I need a holiday. Matt’s been having me play boardgames all day and then we’ve had to talk about them afterwards? Honestly it’s been my absolute worst nightmare.
Ava: Sounds terrible, how about a Segue-Class flight to Santa Monica? This is one of Alderac’s big releases of the year, promising a delightfully pastel worker-placement drafting game about the titular town. It looks soothing, and could be interesting. Josh Wood previously designed Cat Lady, so has an eye for a quirky relaxing theme. Key choices are about whether your bit of the seafront will be more for tourist bustle or a break from the hustle. To be honest, we don’t have much to go on here, I just really like the art.
Tom: Ow ow ow ow. I got my hands stuck in the news cookie jar.
Ava: Tom, that’s not the news cookie jar, that’s just a mousetrap. What were you even thinking? Let’s get you some nice soothing news before your hand swells up.
Tom: It’s too late! I think I’ve got a news infection!
Ava: Don’t worry about that, get your suit on: we’ve got some business news this week, as what used to be my favourite publisher jumps back to independence. Plaid Hat Games was bought by Asmodee Group in 2015, and has now been bought back by its founder, Colby Dauch. Several of their big titles will be transferred to Fantasy Flight and Z-Man Games, and Plaid Hat will go back to being a (relatively) small fish.
Tom: Where are we going today Ava?
Ava: It’s a whole new world! A new fantastic point of view! We’ve got street magic, unionised superheroes (real and fictional), smells you can touch, sand enthusiasts, at least one very bad joke and games that ask you to escape from both Nottingham and your very own kitchen table.
Tom: I think you’re slightly misremembering the plot of Aladdin.
Ava: Get back in your lamp, evil Mr Jaffa Cake!
Tom: Does that count as one of your wishes, or is that for me to decide?
Ava: Hang on a moment, I need to find my union rep.
Ava: Huzzah. After a media blackout of a couple of months, Kickstarter United has been officially recognised as a union.