Games News! 10/11/14

game of thrones gets shot, pandemic gets animals, Quinns gets drunk
Games News! 10/11/14

Quinns: Morning everybody! Our cover star today is Boom Bokken, which sounds and looks just lovely.

This is a hand management game with the theme of ninjas throwing a bomb back and forth where you’re trying to play gentle cards to at your team mate (“play a card higher than this 4, Paul!”) and hardball your opponents (“play a card lower than this 2, Brendan.”).

Blue cards can also be played that intercept a card being played between to other players, and there are a few clutch “emergency stop” cards in the deck. Best of all, players who fail to play the card expected of them are blown up, leading to dramatic dodgeball-like finishes where the one member of your team still standing takes on a whole team of three. In other words, it’s a game where every play could literally blow up in your face with plenty of room for heroism. Doesn’t that sound like our kind of thing?

Read More
112 Comments

Review: Chinatown

vomiting laundromats, fish finishes, i like you but i love to watch you struggle
Review: Chinatown

Oh my goodness, you’re looking sharp! Yes you, the one reading this! I don’t suppose you came here looking to buy some kind of board game, did you?

Well it just so happens we’ve got one for you. It’s called Chinatown, an absolute classic that just got reprinted. A classic, I tell you. A game all about the art of the deal set in 1960s New York. But you probably knew that already, didn’t you? A savvy shopper like you.

You’ll take two? Fantastic, fantastic. You’ve made the right choice. Who’s next?

Read More
Leave a comment

Review: Fire in the Lake

dope smoke, flipping guerillas, literary shrapnel gorging on strategic meat
Review: Fire in the Lake

Thrower: Vietnam. Sex, drugs and terror lurking in the tropical night. If even half of what you read about it is true, then this was the war to end all wars: the war of America against itself. The Viet Cong were just along for the ride.

This was my generation’s World War 2, the conflict from which 80’s society forged martial myths of heroism. Yet, hard as it tried, pop culture couldn’t quite scrub the filth away. Always there were undertones of dirty warfare, of eventual failure. It wasn’t ideal hero material, but it was all we had. For me, that complexity made it all the more compelling.

Then I read Dispatches. This account of a journalist’s experience in the conflict is the finest book on war I have ever read. As well as the history, there is an important lesson. Dispatches taught me that war can be both beautiful and terrible at the same time. That it was okay to hate war and love militaria. To be a pacifist and to play wargames. Reading it made a piece of distant history into a personal thing, a hot piece of literary shrapnel lodged close to my heart.

Read More
53 Comments

Games News! 03/11/14

bi-plane witches, the jerks from outer space, polish dairy, sexless minions
Night Witches

Quinns: A lot of people come up to me and ask “Quinns, what’s the secret? How do you always have amazing stories for the Games News?” And I swing my Armani shoes up onto the desk, light a cigar, and I tell ’em “Well, I start by checking blogs. Basically you… you check some blogs. Is that coffee ready yet?”

Our cover game (seen above) is the absolutely beautiful The Ancient World, which might reach shops just before Christmas. Remember 8 Minute Empire, that lovely little area control game we reviewed? The Ancient World is designer Ryan Laukat’s next game. It tasks you with developing a pretty little civilisation, while finding time to slay the terrible titans striding the earth.

Dare you to take one look at what a completed city looks like and not be 100% sold on this game.

Read More
66 Comments

Review: Zombie 15′

sexy teens, sexy metaphors, pass the parcel but the parcel is full of corpses
Review: Zombie 15'

Roll over, Zombie Dice. Zombicide? It’s history. Zombie 15′ is our game for Halloween in 2014! A real-time, co-operative 15 minute game of 15 year-olds fighting their way past restless dead across 15 missions.

The question isn’t whether Paul and Quinns like it. It’s whether they can succeed at reviewing it in a single 15 minute take. Enjoy, everybody!

Read More
Leave a comment

Presenting… Sean Bean Quest

the day the magnets stopped, sexy bean's sexy neck injury destiny, the dracula medal

Last month Grant Howitt Kickstarted a silly RPG called Goblin Quest. A game where players take the role of a steady stream of goblins trying to compete banal tasks, but mostly just dying along the way. This week Grant sent us a preview of one of the variants in the back of the book, titled … Read more

Read More
76 Comments

Games News! 27/10/14

boss germs, more loyalty, man vs. ladder, our signature pear
Stretch Goals

Quinns: Morning everyone! How are we all? It’s a lovely sunny day in London, with Autumn air crisp enough that you could take a bite out of it. Just the thing to chase away my memories of being a cutthroat bastard in a game of Chinatown at the weekend. I’ll tell you what else- I can’t remember the last time I played a game and immediately had so much to talk about. Expect a review as soon as we can manage.

There’s only one thing to say about the imminent “Designer Edition” of classic area control game Small World, and that is oh my god, oh my GOD, MOTHER, COME HERE AND LOOK AT THIS IMMEDIATELY. That’s it up top, if you hadn’t guessed.

Read More
88 Comments

The Opener: Sheriff of Nottingham & Chicken Apple Bread

wait don't open it, it's four apples man, seriously it's four apples, it's four apples
The Opener: Sheriff of Nottingham & Chicken Apple Bread

The Opener returns with another game to get your friends into board gaming! This time it’s Sheriff of Nottingham. Would you like to see your mum smuggle five barrels of mead past your dad? Or watch your girlfriend get busted with a “cheese cart” full of crossbows? Of course you would.

This game’s got a history, actually. Originally a 2006 Brazilian release titled Jogo da Fronteira, it had little tin suitcases with players trying to smuggle cigars, tequila and ancient relics around South America. In 2011 it was rethemed as Robin Hood, before finally receiving yet another overhaul in this year’s Sheriff of Nottingham. The more you know!

Read More
104 Comments

Review: Dog Eat Dog

rich friends, smoking lizards, the most socially awkward B-52, shame
Review: dog eat dog

Brendan: Dog Eat Dog is one of those rare games we come across that do not necessarily have ‘fun’ as the end goal but, like Freedom: The Underground Railroad, try to impart some wisdom on their way through your life. It is thoughtful and intelligent and just a little uncomfortable. It’s a game with a point to make and it makes it worryingly well. If I were to describe it using SUSD’s internal style guide, “Rulez, Regulationz and Ztuff” I would call it an indie RPG about the colonisation of an island and the resultant back ‘n’ forth between ‘native’ and ‘occupier’. But since I already burned my style guide when it suggested I use ‘paragraphz’, I will have to settle for this description:

Dog Eat Dog should be taught in schools.

Read More
217 Comments

The Magic Position

cheating, puberty 2: electric boogaloo, the saga of class l5b, winning
The Magic Position

Quinns: Morning everybody! This week the entire board game industry is rammed into Essen’s convention centre, so the only news story we have is of a new collectible Magic: The Gathering board game! It looks an awful lot like Heroscape but less interesting. Mike said it best: “Monochromatic miniatures, poor terrain, and absolutely no chance that a dinosaur will eat a robot while an army man watches.”

If you’re interested in the details then Board Game Geek has already uploaded a comprehensive Essen preview video, but I’m unconvinced. I want to revisit Magic: The Gathering like I want to revisit puberty.

Speaking of which, as we don’t have any more news this week why don’t I share my sad story of playing Magic when I was a kid? Take a seat. Or if you’re at work, slide your wheely chair a little closer to your PC, creating a calming snugness between your thighs and your desk. It’s almost like being in bed.

Read More
152 Comments