It’s not hard to catch SU&SD’s eye. An award on your box will do it. Or a panda! Or the colour pink. Or three-dimensional components. Or an inlay with phallic slots. In offering all five at once, though, Takenoko could have been made for us.
Is it a good Opener, though? The perfect game to open a friend’s mind to the wonders of board gaming like you were opening a cheap tin of brain-beans? Tell us, Matt! We have to know.
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Are you ready for the most half-arsed impersonation of explorers Lewis & Clark the internet has ever seen? We’ve got you covered. We’ve also got a lengthy review of much-hyped board game Lewis & Clark, on the off chance you come here for the board game reviews.
It’s an interesting game, though. In a year when fantastic eurogames are coming thick and fast, like hail in the Great Plains, this one looks pretty enough to make a name for itself. But does it have that frontier spirit? Quinns will let you know. Probably. Assuming he doesn’t get distracted and start talking about sodding Timeline again.
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For literally our entire lives, Paul and I hadn’t played Mice and Mystics. Then we played Mice and Mystics. Then it was out of stock!
But this month will see a new printing of the much-discussed game scurrying onto shop shelves the world over. A game of daring-do and wild adventure! A story of tiny heroes with huge hearts. A tale… of cheese.
And so it was written that Shut Up & Sit Down would perform “The Review”, and take a quick peek at Mice and Mystics: Heart of Glorm, too.
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What’s this? Looks like your donations weren’t enough, everybody. Paul and Quinns are now moonlighting as space marines. No way this could go wrong! Especially not in the spooky space-lanes of Theseus: The Dark Orbit.
This was one of the trickiest reviews we’ve done in some time. If we have any designers reading this, do you think you could make your games a little less distinctive, nuanced, rich and basically a bit worse? As critics, we’d really appreciate it.
EDIT: Audio gremlins now fixed!
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The Opener is back with another perfect game to start your board game night, your collection, or set your friends down the Cardboard Path. It’s Pandemic and penicillin! Meaning a whiskey cocktail called a penicillin. Going to your friends’ house and eating their mold colonies is not only unpalatable, it’s quite rude.
It might sound less attractive than Skull & Roses with fresh pizza, but you haven’t lived until you’ve had a great game of Pandemic. Catching that redeye flight to Seoul, praying you can prevent an outbreak? Driving around Africa, crates of your precious cure rattling around in the back of your jeep? That’s the good stuff, and it gets even better with Pandemic: On the Brink, and even more nightmarish with Pandemic: In the Lab.
G’wan! Treat yourself and pick up a copy. No other game is this tense and rich, and yet this accessible.
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So many games feature dice, but so few capture the thrill of gambling. Why is that?
The answer is, of course, to just buy Machi Koro and shout “WHO CARES!” right in your friend’s face while buying a fourth bakery. Though if you’re looking for a dazzling little economic card game for 2-4 players, we’ve also taken a look at Splendor… and a look back over our shoulder at Mundus Novus.
Wow! On reflection, we really do make your lives difficult, don’t we?
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It’s the end of the world. Survivors huddle together, sheltering in rags and silence. There are bad men outside. And you’re one of them.
Arctic Scavengers is a card game for 2-5 players, and this week the updated edition first fell into our laps, then entered our hearts, like cardboard frostbite. Better yet, it’s Quinns’ favourite of all the games we’ve reviewed this year!
Oh dear. Wallets at the ready, people.
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We end Simplicity Week with a bang, and the bang in question comes from you executing your friends, one after another.
Skull & Roses is the game Matt’s reviewing here, although throughout the review he calls it Skulls and Roses, and actually, the new, gorgeous edition is just called “Skull”.
But never mind our charming incompetence! This isn’t just one of the simplest games we’ve ever played. It’s one of our favourite games, period. And just to make sure your friends come over and get involved, Matt’s also going to teach you the single darkest secret known to SU&SD. How to “make” “pizza”.
But what if I were to tell you that for the next Opener, we’re planning something even better? Ah, it’s a good time to be a board gamer. A very good time.
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Today’s the beginning of Simplicity Week here at SU&SD! Aren’t games a little too complex? Isn’t life a little too complex, with all these mobly phones and dark webs and human rights? We think so, so from today through next Friday we’ll be turning our simple brains to some simple games, inarguably the most beautiful games of all.
Quinns kicks us off with a look at Going, Going, GONE! A bargain-hunting game that could be the savviest and funniest purchase you’ve made this year.
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Arriving like a shimmering meteorite of steely ludic logic, Quantum is landing in shops now! It’s got dice. It’s got spaceships (which are dice). It has scientific research (which is another die). It even models the psychological size of your galactic race as you scream and smash your way around deep space (using, yep, another die).
Is Quantum pushing the boundaries of what dice can do? Or is it just like my one gross uncle who has pickles for every meal? It’s time… for the review.
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