Alone is a sci-fi survival horror / dungeon crawler game that will pit a single, stranded hero against 1-3 evil masterminds who will do their best to stop the hero from completing a quest to discover the truth and save his companions. The Evil players always have the full map of the scenario in front … Read more
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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).
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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!
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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.
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Under a blazing sun in 4th century BCE, traders come from all corners of the Mediterranean Sea to Corinth to sell their goods; Persian carpets, Cretan olive oil, Roman grapes, and Egyptian spices are highly prized by traders. Players have a few weeks to secure their place in Corinthian lore as its most savvy trader!
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The first large expansion for A Feast for Odin, The Norwegians includes four new islands (Isle of Man, Isle of Skye, Islay, Outer Hebrides) with Irish coastal viking-settlements on the backside (Waterford, Wexford, Cork, Limerick), where people from Norway came to stay through the winter (longphort), to trade at, and to settle nearby. This offers new strategies and new puzzle-tiles like horse (6VP, 2×5 spaces)/pregnant horse/leather(green)/vadmal(blue) and pigs (1 VP, breed every round; 2×3 – 1 = 5 spaces)/herbal (orange)/ antler (green)/tools (blue). The game has a third box for the tiles and offers the four old islands too (renewed little different VPs and new graphic-aspects of mini-expansion islands Lofoten/Orkneys/Tierra del Fuego).
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Wage war against opponents on a hexagonal board. Prepare your armies to face off on the battlefield and surprise your enemy with your choice of special abilities!
Monolith Arena is a fantasy battleground board game built around the base engine of Neuroshima Hex, which is also from designer Michał Oracz. The game includes four factions, with unique abilities and units! Each player has a monolith that serves as their headquarters, and each player seeds their monolith with three tokens that provide special abilities. When an opponent damages your monolith, you remove the top layer to expose the first token, gaining its special ability, so being attacked can actually make you stronger — albeit while still moving you toward defeat…
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New York in the 1960’s. A new wave of Chinese immigrants is moving into Chinatown. The adoption of the new immigration act has launched the district in a demographic boom! It now reaches Canal Street to the north and Bowery Street to the east. The immigrants, hard-working men and women, are arriving by the thousands to buy buildings, establish businesses and fulfill the American Dream! In this game, you are one of them. With all your savings in hand, the Big Apple is up for grabs! Will you know how to use your talents and acquire the most extraordinary fortune in America?
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In the quiet village of Ravenswood Bluff, a demon walks amongst you… During a hellish thunderstorm, on the stroke of midnight, there echoes a bone-chilling scream. The townsfolk rush to investigate and find the town storyteller murdered, their body impaled on the hands of the clocktower, blood dripping onto the cobblestones below. A Demon is … Read more
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Quinns: Everybody, please give a warm welcome to a new gladiator in the news arena. Intern Kylie is here to write news and drink tea, and she’s well aware it’s not tea time.
Did that sound badass? I’m pretty sure it did. Kylie, take it away.
Kylie: Capstone Games has announced a special 20th anniversary reprint of a Splotter Spellen classic, Bus. Splotter Spellen is the Dutch team behind Food Chain Magnate and the bucolic and bizarre Roads & Boats. Sadly, they’re also known for sparse print runs and a lot of their games are nigh-on impossible to find. This year, they’re letting another publish reprint one of their grand designs.
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