Hexagonal Tile-Laying Game Fest, 2013

Hexagonal Tile-Laying Game Fest

It’s that most wonderful time of the year! The holiday when families come together and induldge in colourful capitalism. That’s right, I’m talking about Economic Hex-Based Tile Laying Game Fest: 2013.

In this year’s hex fest we review the moreish Suburbia, the quaint Keyflower, remember the daring Archipelago, and in doing so unearth our Game of the Year.

Pour yourself a glass of hexnog, dear viewer. Tis’ the season!

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Games News! 18/11/13

Aliens vs Predator adaptation

Paul: Hello and welcome again to another pumping, vibrant edition of Shut Up & Sit Down’s Games News. As the introductory sting fades away, let me swivel my chair to face camera two and sternly address you all with our lead story. Please duck to make way for the swooshing infographic, which gives thanks to both Meople’s Magazine and BoardGameGeek’s News Blog who, along with many publisher announcements, help to keep us informed.

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Podcast #11: All Your Broken Monsters

That’s right, babies! You asked for more regular podcasts on your subscriber questionnaires, and we’re doing exactly that. The system works! Ignore that clattering and keening coming from our servers. Right now, in this moment, the system works. Packed into podcast #11 are discussions of Freedom: The Underground Railroad, Keyflower, Space Cadets , Rattus and … Read more

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Keyflower

Keyflower

Keyflower is a game for two to six players played over four rounds. Each round represents a season: spring, summer, autumn, and finally winter. Each player starts the game with a “home” tile and an initial team of eight workers, each of which is colored red, yellow, or blue. Workers of matching colors are used by the players to bid for tiles to add to their villages. Matching workers may alternatively be used to generate resources, skills and additional workers, not only from the player’s own tiles, but also from the tiles in the other players’ villages and from the new tiles being auctioned.

In spring, summer, and autumn, more workers will arrive on board the Keyflower and her sister boats, with some of these workers possessing skills in the working of the key resources of iron, stone, and wood. In each of these seasons, village tiles are set out at random for auction. In the winter, no new workers arrive, and the players select the village tiles for auction from those they received at the beginning of the game. Each winter village tile offers VPs for certain combinations of resources, skills, and workers. The player whose village and workers generate the most VPs wins the game.

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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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Game Salute: A New Kind of Publisher?

Game Salute: A New Kind of Publisher?

Since our last foray into Actual Journalism was so well received (It was? — Mark.), we’ve decided to give it another go. This time, we take a look at Game Salute, a company headquartered deep in the hinterlands of New Hampshire, a state that somewhat resembles in shape a standard reference pear.

Game Salute styles itself as a new kind of publisher, one that does much more than handle marketing and fulfillment (fulfillment meaning “getting the game out to customers”, from receiving, to warehousing, secure storage, picking, packing, shipping, tracking, sales to stores globally and customer service).

Among the flexible services they offer are solutions for other publishers, and, intriguingly, managing Kickstarter campaigns, boasting such success stories as Alien Frontiers, as well as unique titles ranging from Chicken Caesar to Pixel Lincoln.

It was started as a response to the many pain points its CEO Dan Yarrington saw in the board game industry. To find out how the cure compares with the disease, we sent Actual Journalist Mark Wallace off to have a good long chat with Yarrington, and he came back (from a phone call, not from New Hampshire) with this exciting and informative Q&A!

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