Feature: A Day in the Life of Matt Thrower’s Game Collection

reeking of solvents, bloated with hope, an early sumo, a vital box

[Our series on the collections of our writers continues! Today it’s the turn of long-time contributor Matt Thrower. If you missed our previous entries, you can now navigate to them using those buttons on the right. Enjoy, everybody!]

Thrower: Well hello there! Nice of you to stop by. Hope you had a good journey. It’s rare we get the chance to entertain adult visitors, with all the space the children take up. So, please, let me show you round the house.

The first thing you learn as a parent is that every other parent lives in a pristine house. Even when chasing after kids has left them looking like exhausted pandas, their houses are still clean and tidy. Naturally, ours has to be the same. We’d all be happier if everyone could drop this charade and wallow in their familial filth. Anyway, it’s nice to have someone here who might appreciate the results.

Hang your coat up over there…

Read more

48 Comments

Games News! 27/03/2017

soft English dough, i feel the need the need for rabbits, poisoned by a poison

Paul: All right, everyone, keep your heads low! The seas are choppy today and that doesn’t make it any easier for the headlines to land on Shut Up & Sit Down’s Games News carrier. This 100,000 tonne vessel carries the very latest in state-of-the-art news-projection technology and, oh boy, that sound you hear RIGHT NOW IS A BIG KICKSTARTER COMING IN OKAY I GOTTA GUIDE THIS BABY DOWN HOLD TIGHT PREPARE FOR 878 VIKINGS!!!

Read more

61 Comments

Review: Flamme Rouge

Spokey Poker, Bi-Men, I thought it would taste of cakes

Who among us can claim that they didn’t once dream of growing up to be a master of bicycles? Those debonair doctors of velocity. The zeal on wheels.

I have good news, friends. It turns out that in the game of Flamme Rouge (French for “Red Flam”) you can become a cycleman for no less than 30 to 45 minutes at a time. Clearly we had to give it the full review treatment, and you know what? It turns out that this game is an absolute delight.

Have a fantastic weekend, everybody!

UPDATE: Thanks to SU&SD fan Meeple101 for telling us about the official Flamme Rouge Companion for iOS and Android, which lets you link individual races into a grand tour! What fun.

Read More
1 Comment

Podcast #55: Teenage Monstrous Roman Soldiers

a police raid on heaven, quintin's sassy grapefruit, a sex mask, falsified speed chess

You guys love podcasts! We literally know how to do them! With episode #55 of the SU&SD podcast we’re committing to getting these bad babies out twice a month. If you like what you hear please do share it among your friends! So what’s in this one? Ooh, only Quinns discussing the electrifying yet accessible escape rooms of Unlock! (which has a free demo available online), the insanity of Magic Maze (which also has a free print-n-play version) and the challenging slumbers of When I Dream, while Paul outlines his pathetic enjoyment of Kingdomino and his struggling TV station in The Networks. We close with Quinns talking about Snakes & Ladders after discovering an astonishing article on its history, and finish with a Christian folk game that leaves the pair even more speechless than usual. Let’s just say that teenagers should never be given power, but especially not iron age judicial power. Enjoy, everybody!

Read More
Leave a comment

Games News! 20/03/2017

a warrior bird, a drugged thief, flamingo milk, correct toiletry

Paul: Oh crikey, what a week it’s been. There’s been all sorts of news exploding out of GAMA, the Game Manufacturers Association trade show in Ohio, but probably the most significant of these was publisher CMON casually announcing that they’re kickstarting a tabletop miniatures game based on A Song of Ice & Fire. Yep, they’ve got a Game of Thrones wargame on the way. That’s quite the license to muscle in on and with the first box being a Stark vs. Lannister “Starter Set” there’s no doubt they have aspirations to grow this substantially.

Quinns: I might have just read too many Game of Thrones books, but this announcement seemed undercut with an amount of… intrigue.

Paul: What do you mean? MURDER?

Quinns: Oh god, no! No-one’s murdering one another.

It’s… EVEN WORSE.

Read more

77 Comments

Review: Diamant

Conversational sex act, Danny DeVito, No no no no no

Paul: QUINTIN. I know we want to tell people all about Diamant and how this cute-but-cruel game of pushing your luck can make you either rich or dead, but I’ve got to say one thing right thing right here, right now, right off the bat. Right?

Quinns: I’ll allow it!

Paul: Diamant is probably the most fun I’ve had for the least investment of time and energy SO FAR THIS YEAR. I’m so sorry. I just had to blurt that. It’s a petite wonder. PETITE. WONDER. Like… Danny DeVito. Or… a teabag?

Quinns: You’re arriving at this party a little late though, aren’t you? Last year I called Incan Gold the best little push-your-luck game I’d played in forever. Diamant is just a beautiful new edition of the same game! You can’t talk about it like you’ve just found a dead sea scroll in your back garden.

Paul: All right, all right, back that boulder up, snarkaeologist. Incan Gold? The 2006 game? And when did you come to it, exactly?

Quinns: Erm. 2016.

Paul: An entire decade of incompetence.

Read more

102 Comments

Update: Our Nonsense Box Kickstarter Just Got Sexier!

Make a sound effect using someone else's hand from another room

Quinns: Hey everybody! With just seven days left on our Kickstarter for the Monikers Nonsense Box – a standalone expansion for Monikers written entirely by SU&SD staff – all backers now get a free gift!

Basically we reached 2,500 backers and decided we’d like to improve the product you guys were getting. Think of it as a kind of thank you for helping us to stretch past our original goal. We’re calling this addition a “Girth Objective” and it’s my guess that by 2020 every Kickstarter will have one.

As of this week every backer of the Nonsense Box Kickstarter will get a free pack of Hopelessly Stupid Fourth Round Cards. You see, Monikers is a game that starts off very pedestrian in round 1 and becomes marginally more interesting in round 2 before going completely insane in round 3. But as old Monikers pros will tell you, you can keep playing and the game gets dumber and funnier with every additional round. “Charades but under a bedsheet” has to be played to be believed.

We have a tenative list already drawn up, but we’re well aware that you guys are often funnier and smarter than us in our comment threads. If you have an idea for a fourth round for Monikers, and would like to see it on a card with your name on it and a professional illustration, please leave a comment below!

Thanks so much, everyone. <3

Read More
Leave a comment

RPG Review: Numenera

A sentient saw, a song from aladdin, a giant map, seriously you gotta see this map

Cynthia: Imagine rising to the top of a valley and discovering the above vista: green hills, snowcapped mountains, seemingly pristine waters, and an obelisk, tens of thousands of years old, humming with magical (or mechanical?) power. You could be the first to learn all of its secrets, or simply find out how it works, and harness its power. And that could be just the beginning of your earthly adventures.

For this uncanny place is our Earth, far, far, far into the future, after our civilization and seven others have climbed, peaked, fallen, and been rusted over. More than one alien invasion has occurred, and more than one alien species has mingled genes with humanity. A new civilization has arisen, but hasn’t really gotten past the middle ages. The perplexing debris of past civilizations, from humming obelisks and transdimensional portals to enchanted amulets and portable CD players, is everywhere. The people of earth call these weird objects “filled-with-power-things”: numenera.

Welcome to the Ninth World, the setting of Monte Cook’s Numenera. I would say, “come on in, the water’s fine,” but it’s probably filled with flesh-eating microdroids or laced with bubble-gum flavored psychotropic drugs or something. But forget the water, there’s so much here. This place is so ancient, and vast, and tremendous. Let’s explore!

Read more

112 Comments

Games News! 13/03/2017

hidden royalty, leverage your swans, sonar talents, jamiroquai, verdun

Quinns: OH MY GOD YOU’RE BACK.

Paul: OH MY GOD I’M BACK.

Quinns: OH MY GOD.

Paul: Did I miss anything while I was aw-

Quinns: ONLY THE GIGANTIC RISING SUN KICKSTARTER, THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE GRIZZLED, THE BIG NEWS ABOUT RUNE WARS AND THIS CRAZY NEW MUSIC MIXING GAME.

Paul: …Were you eating properly while I was gone?

Read more

201 Comments

Review: Watson & Holmes

drop a deduce, the gut-motor, a nice hot loaf of police, elementary you're a dick

A mere thirty-six years after the release of the amazing Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, the board game industry has leapt into action! This month sees the release of the West End Adventures standalone expansion, and… we’re not reviewing it.

That’s because this month we’re also getting a new English-language edition of Watson & Holmes, and that’s EVEN MORE EXCITING. This game takes the original, superlative co-op experience that is Consulting Detective and makes it… competitive. Is this a work of evil genius to rival Moriarty? Or simply an error in deductive reasoning? Let’s find out.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Read More
Leave a comment