Games News! 26/08/13

Munchkin

Quinns: Oh gods. I may have had too much to drink last night. It’s cool, though. As long as I remain perfectly still I’m pretty sure I can make it through the news without one of my internal organs making a brave attempt to escape my body.

Details are beginning to emerge regarding Keyflower: The Farmers (pictured above), which we haven’t covered, but which is an expansion to Keyflower! Which we also haven’t covered.

It might be a long week.

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Escape: The Curse of the Temple

Escape: The Curse of the Temple

You are a team of adventurers – trapped in a cursed temple. Together you must activate the magic gems in the temple chambers in order to banish the curse.

Look out for one another. Some tasks can be accomplished only as a team – and you have only 10 minutes before the temple collapses!

Escape is a cooperative real-time game, that is not played in rounds. Instead, each player rolls as quickly and as often as he can with his five dice.

The dice determine your fate:

Discover the different temple chambers by rolling the correct dice combinations. Take care, though, because if you fall under the spell of the Black Mask, you‘ll need the help of the Golden Mask and your team-mates in order to keep moving!

Act together:

If several adventurers are together in one chamber, you‘ll activate more magic gems faster!

Two modules make Escape even more exciting: The modules “Curses” and “Treasures“ make gameplay even more varied. The treasures aid you whereas the curses make escape more difficult. After all, an adventurer who is unable to talk or who must roll his dice with one hand stuck on top of his head will have a tough time working with his team!

The 10-minute soundtrack enhances the exciting atmosphere of the temple adventure!

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Escape: Illusions

Escape: Illusions

Escape: Illusions includes two new modules for the Escape base game that can be used individually or mixed with any other available modules.

The “Illusion Chambers” module consists of six chamber tiles that replace the tiles with only one magic gem in the basic game. After players return to the starting chamber during the game – something they must do twice in order to avoid losing a die – all illusion chambers in play are removed and returned to the bottom of the tile deck. Hopefully you already completed your business in any section of the temple now disconnected from the rest!

The “Special Chambers” module consists of six new chamber tiles, divided as follows:

Three linked chamber tiles that allow you to activate magic gems, thereby making it easier for the adventurers to escape the temple – but the gems can be activated only if players are in two separate such chambers at the same time.

Two double chamber tiles that consist of a front and back room, with access to the back room being available only if you add tiles to the temple and snake around to the back. Why do you want to reach this room? More opportunities to activate magic gems and ease your way out of the temple.

One treasure chamber tile, containing a chalice that adventurers must bear to the exit tile. If they fail to do so, they lose the game – even if they otherwise would all escape!

Components for a sixth player are included, as well as two copies each of one new curse card (“Soul Exchange”) and one new treasure tile (“Large Torch”).

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Review: Escape: The Curse of the Temple

Review: Escape: The Curse of the Temple

Have you heard of Escape: The Curse of the Temple? Rumoured to be greatest family game of all time, they say it can be found in the Temple to the God of Luck, in the world’s most unfun jungle. Wait. No, hang on, that’s wrong. It’s in Quinns’ flat.

In this review, we answer the question of whether you should buy Escape, we take a look at the Illusions expansion, AND we compare the whole thing to Space Alert. Now, only one question remains: How did Quinns get so dirty?

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Review: Gen Con 2013

Review: Gen Con 2013

Indianapolis is a city generally known for auto racing and being the birthplace of America’s first 20th-century outlaw. Every August, though, it hosts almost 50,000 people who care little for either of those things.

They come for the sweet aroma of freshly punched cardboard counters, for the textured heft of rank upon rank of miniature figures, for the piles of weird dice slimed with the cast-off condiments of terrible convention center food, and for the sight of dozens on dozens of costumed geeks, scantily clad and otherwise, who’ve traveled from all over the nation and beyond for an event that’s billed as “The Best Four Days in Gaming,” and which does in fact give tabletop gamers and steampunk airship captains alike a formidably long weekend on which to celebrate their passion and ours: tabletop games.

This is Gen Con. Its origins lost to the mists of time, the nearly half-century-old gaming party — for that’s what it is — is probably the largest annual gathering of tabletop gamers outside Germany’s Spiel. I arrived midday on Thursday, just as Day One was getting into full swing. The Indiana Convention Center is a massive place, and, as is the habit among Actual Journalists, I wandered into it unaided by map or signpost, following the flow of musky t-shirts into the first exhibit hall I could find. The simple elegance of what greeted me there felt both surprising and inevitable at once. Because what’s special about Gen Con is that it’s about the one thing most important to the cardboard arts: playing games.

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Games News! 19/08/13

Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game

Quinns: It was GenCon this weekend! The most sleep-deprived four days in gaming. Here’s hoping somebody spotted Mike, our tech guru, because the last message I got from him said he was going to try and carry this stack of review copies back to his hotel, followed by radio silence.

So, yeah, he might be dead, but on the bright side gloss-house Fantasy Flight had a ton of stuff to announce, causing the biggest stir with BattleLore 2nd edition, seen above. If you’re a regular reader you’ll probably have seen us review or play Memoir ’44, a phenomenal, approachable World War 2 strategy game. BattleLore is based on the same systems, but takes place in a colourful fantasy world. So, less horrors of war, more bipedal horrors who want to eat your face.

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The Opener: Mascarade & Cheesy Twists

The Opener: Mascarade & Cheesy Twists

Matt’s only gone and looked at a new way to open your game night! Isn’t he an great? Holding his ground on the very frontlines of play like a big ol’ play… man.

This month he’s encouraging us to don the masks of the fabulous Mascarade by Bruno Faidutti, one of our favourite designers. This game is pretty. It’s funny. It’s simple. Most of it even occurs underneath the table. But most excitingly of all, Matt’s baking again! Today is a good day.

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We’re at Gen Con 2013! …Kind of.

We're at Gen Con 2013! ...Kind of.

The moon landing. Penicillin. The telephone. And now humanity can boast another grand achievement: With exactly no money, SU&SD has managed to get two of its roster to Indiana’s Gen Con gaming convention ’13. The dreamy Mike, who built the site you’re on right now and continues to upgrade it on a daily basis, and Mark Wallace, of our actual journalism and Borderlands review.

These are two lovely individuals. So lovely. If you’d like to meet exactly ⅓ of Team SU&SD, they’ll be around at 8pm on Friday in the Hyatt Regency’s bar/lounge area.

Also, if you’re an exhibitor and would like to demo your game to Mike so he can tell the UK team about it, drop an email to [email protected]. He says his best times are “Thursday after 3:00pm or Friday after 11:00am, booth numbers help.”

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RPG Review: The Quiet Year

RPG Review: The Quiet Year

Leigh: Hi, Shut Up & Sit Down-ers (the Silenced & Seated?)! Thank you for having me back again as your ongoing indie RPG correspondent. Quinns, I think something might have gone off in your fridge, though. What is that?

Quinns: My flat has an Abundance of Rare Meats, but a Scarcity of Hygiene.

Leigh: A reference to the game mechanics, how clever!

So, The Quiet Year. I’m accustomed to roleplaying games that give me the chance to tell a story about a character, through interaction with other characters, but this game is different: Two to four players collaborate over a map to tell the story of a place, and the narrative that unspools itself is about the challenges a community faces following a long war, given one year to prepare for the advent of the mysterious Frost Shepherds.

What are the Frost Shepherds? Who knows! What is this place? Well, that’s what you play to discover. The designer, Avery Mcdaldno, calls it the world’s first cartography RPG.

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Designer Interview: Zach Gage

Designer Interview: Zach Gage

[Zach Gage is a New York-based game designer, artist and friend of SU&SD whose work recently saw a change in direction. After success in the App store with SpellTower and such high-profile experiments as a videogame that penalises failure by deleting files on your computer, he’s started working with table games. Guts of Glory is his post-apocalyptic eating contest, and is arriving very, very soon. We got in touch to find out where the shift came from.]

Quinns: Can you explain how the New York University Game Centre came to commission Guts of Glory?

Zach Gage: Sure thing!

Actually I think they wanted me to make a weird artsy game. They commission a few people each year, and typically, one of those people is the type of person who sometimes makes really odd games. Robin Arnott and Terry Cavanagh filled this roll in years past. I think Charles was expecting something closer to Lose/Lose or Killing Spree from me, the card game came a bit out of left field.

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