Games News! 30/07/18

the death slot, leany paul, an appetite for sneaking, Canada's largest adult men
Paul: Welcome back once again, dear readers, to the Games News lab, where fresh Games News stories are grown in special hydroponic vats and tended carefully until, at last, they are ready to be released to-

Quinns: ANOTHER ONE’S ESCAPED.

Paul: QUARANTINE PROTOCOL GAMMA. ENGAGE DEFENSE TURRETS. EVACUATE THE BIODOME. THE WORLD ISN’T READY FOR THE NEWS OF GEN7.

Good grief, this is two weeks in a row that Plaid Hat games are leading our Games News, but Gen7 is none other than the second "Crossroads" game. In other words, it's the long-awaited spiritual sequel to Dead of Winter.

Games News! 23/07/18

abstract plasticts, united biscuits, pipin' my oil about the place
Paul: Quinns, what is it that you have there, under one of your many board gaming arms?

Quinns: What, this? This little thing under my tertiary limb? Why, it’s only the latest announcement from Plaid Hat games, their fancy new Neon Gods. Doesn’t it look pretty, Paul? Doesn’t it look like an imaginative cross between roller derby, cyberpunk and Adventure Time? Doesn’t it also look… CURIOUSLY FAMILIAR?

Paul: ...!!

Quinns: Ha, you've figured it out, haven't you? Yes, I believe that Neon Gods is nothing less than the mutant child of early Plaid Hat classic City of Remnants, a game we were delighted by all the way back in 2013.

Games News! 16/07/18

quintin is three velociraptors, paul craves norwegians, space jail
Paul: Once again, deep behind enemy lines, we light the fires and wave our torches into the cloudy night sky in the hope that our signals will be seen by our brave allies and that they will parachute in the latest drop of vital Games New supplies. The distant drone of an engine, a dark shape in the air. Suddenly, it’s here! Quinns, open the crate! What’s inside?

Quinns: IT’S ONLY THE SEQUEL TO AZUL.

Games News! 09/07/18

war all the way down, weighty buffoonery, hang on a sec an entire box of cornflakes
Paul: It’s HOT today and it’s only going to get hotter as the week goes on, meaning the Shut Up & Sit Down News Room (at the very top of Pear Towers, 1 Pear Street, London, W1 1AA) is absolutely sweltering. Quinns and I can’t get too close in case we stick together like a pair of softening gummy bears.

Quinns: Do you know what the opposite of a softening gummy bear is?

Games Workshop’s new announcement, KILL TEAM.

Games News! 26/06/18

a celebrity guest, the old ursus spelaeus, our troyes screenplay
Quinns: Last week we wrote the news in a cider pub, tapping away at our keyboards to the merry belching of a few old men. Today, we thought we’d write the news in a fashionable local coffee shop.

Paul: This is a disaster. Why can’t people put their mugs into the saucers gently. Why are they all bashing them together like toddlers.

Quinns: There are at least two women within ten feet of me who think they’re Carrie Bradshaw. I’m friends with a lot of writers and none of them look this stylish or pleased with themselves as they write. They all put their hair up and enter a kind of sticky and hypnotised state.

Paul: I did like that yappy animal that was behind you though. The one that looked like a Normal Dog that a level 5 wizard had cast Reduce Dog on.

Quinns: I don’t want to ever come back here. Why would anyone come here instead of sitting snug in the shadowy confines of a quiet pub. I feel like I’m in an iPhone advert.

Games News! 18/06/18

we are an "early adopters", quinception, that is not lemonade, it is urine
Paul: WELCOME to our sunny June Games News, live from a Brighton pub. Quinns and I are, in fact, writing this together in a secret alcove in a cider pub. Yes, that’s right, we have suddenly both become forty-five years old.

Quinns: Paul, it’s time for you to get a round in.

Paul: You don’t need to type that, I’m sat right next to you. Also it’s not even 1pm.

Quinns: Don’t give me that you NARC

Games News! 11/06/18

right inside the sausage, the generous bushes of Kickstarter island, axe-barons
Quinns: Have you heard the news? I’ve been playing sad fanfares on my cyber-bugle all weekend. On Friday Fantasy Flight announced that Wizards of the Coast has ended the licensing agreement for Netrunner, which means that Fantasy Flight’s phenomenal living card game Android: Netrunner will be coming to an abrupt end after the next big expansion, Reign and Reverie.

Paul: What?! But Fantasy Flight have only just released the revamped starter set!

Quinns: Yeah. As you’d imagine, the unexpected announcement has left the Netrunner community in a state of shock.

Games News! 21/05/18

hard raisins, crab attacks, needle size, Underwater Cities
Images from MojoNation.com

Paul: This year's Spiel Des Jahres nominees are coming at us like hail in a windstorm. That’s to say SIDEWAYS and KIND OF PAINFULLY. Like HARD RAISINS. A HARD RAISINS’ A-GONNA FALL.

Quinns: Well said, Paul! I can hardly tell you just had a big coffee.

If you’re not aware, once a year this prestigious German prize is awarded by a jury of critics for “excellence in game design”. Because the winner of the Spiel des Jahres can sell up to half a million copies, it's basically the only prize in board gaming that matters. You can see the past winners here.

It’s now also tradition that every year Shut Up & Sit Down looks at the nominees and contort our faces into the kind of expression you might wear when checking if you’ve broken a toe.

GAMES NEWS! 23/04/18

Saturday Morning Cartoons, Paul's love of risotto, Sembali Grimtongue
Paul: Do you like games? And do you like news? If so, you’re in EXACTLY the right place. Even as I type these words, news about games is forming out of the very air itself. It speckles and shines like morning dew, so here we are collecting only the freshest of drops-

Quinns: paul there has been another SCANDAL

After acquiring the license for the Alien franchise, publisher Wonderdice announced the forthcoming USCSS Nostromo, a co-operative survival horror game about trying to escape from the film’s famous shiny space monster. So far, so promising. However, soon after the announcement, French designer François Bachelart stepped forward to say that the game was a copy of a design he’d already pitched to Wonderdice, four years back.

Games News! 09/04/18

unexpected oranges, a bag of old receipts, the cia are going to kill praul
Paul: What is that distant honking I hear, that mournful note that sings its way through the evening fog? Why, it’s the horn on the Games News Barge! And who is sailing it into port? Why, it’s Quintin Smith!

Quinns: My hold is stacked full of the freshest Games News stories, my crew primed and ready to unload them. What’s first? Only Plaid Hat’s in-depth update of Starship Samurai. With an unusual anime aesthetic and design credentials from Isaac Vega (Dead of Winter, Ashes, City of Remnants), I’ve been awaiting some hot hot details on this game for a long time.