Actualol Newsletter August 2020 (Patreon)

 ‘Appy Anniversary Actualol ‘letter lovers,

We’ve had one whole year of Actualol Newsletters! Let’s celebrate by having another one!

It was Virtually Expo at the weekend, the online version of UK Games Expo. I tried to get involved, but I found it hard to adapt to the format. There were so many barriers to entry, that I found it quite frustrating. Have any of you “attended” an online convention? What was your experience?

On a positive note, I played a live game of Herd Mentality, Big Potato’s new party game, with Suzanne Sheldon, Ruel Gaviola and MJ, which was a lot of fun. You can watch it here.

Next up on Actualol will be another silly video in the mould of the Daniel Radcliffe one.

Actual Life

I’ve been getting back into video games more this month, thanks to Fall Guys. It’s a last-person standing tournament of obstacle races and team games, that feels like you’re on the TV shows Wipeout or Takeshi’s Castle.

It’s refreshing to play an online multiplayer game that doesn’t involve killing people, and the chaos and lucky breaks mean you don’t have to be a really skilled gamer to enjoy it, or do well. Sadly, I haven’t won a tournament yet, but I’ve got to the final round many times, so I hope to win one soon! 

I’ve also returned to designing a party game idea I’ve had for years. The last time I playtested it was NYE 2018! 

I’ve always wanted a party game that gets you talking about each other, but not in a mean way. Using your knowledge of each other as the topic for clue-giving, rather than your general knowledge. And in turn, provoking fun discussion between you - which friend around the table would be best at sweet talking a bouncer, or surviving in the wilderness the longest?

I taught myself how to put together a prototype in Tabletop Simulator and I’ve tried with two groups so far. The first attempt wasn’t ideal, but after some tweaks the second one went pretty well. Hopefully I can playtest it in real life soon and get it closer to one day being made.

Actual Games

As I’m starting to play more games in person again, I have a fresh crop of newer games to give my thoughts on...

Village Green is an upcoming card game from Osprey Games. Your goal is to make the best English village green, represented by a grid of 9 cards. It's a pleasantly simple “take a card and play a card” experience, as you add trees and fountains to your green.

Each row and column has a goal card, asking for certain features to score points, such as pairs of certain trees, or garden ornaments. But you don’t have to settle for the goals you’re given, you can spend a turn replacing a goal to better suit the cards you have.

The trickiness comes in the placement rules. Each card has a flower in its corner, roses, petunias or lilies, in either red, purple or yellow. When you place a card, it must match all the cards adjacent to it, either by colour or type of flower. This makes the game incredibly hard, and quite frustrating.

I love the simplicity and the theme of Village Green. But it’s too personal of an experience for it to be social, and too unforgiving for it to be a satisfying puzzle. All players felt permanently hamstrung by their situation and it wasn’t a feeling that made us want to return to the game. 

Metro X is a flip and write game about building an underground train network. It’s incredibly simple, each round you flip a card which gives you a number. You pick a train line and cross off that many stations on that line, starting from the first empty space.

You score points by finishing lines, but each line can only be used 2 or 3 times, so you have to decide which ones to invest the higher numbers into. The lines cross each other, and when you cross out an intersection on one line it gets you closer to finishing another.

There’s a race to finish lines, getting more points than everyone else for that line if you finish it first, which offers some player interaction.

Metro X is a good flip and write game. If it had been released five years ago it would have stood out, but I don’t think it builds on the great flip and writes we already have. It’s perfect if you want something super simple. But I would personally opt for Avenue or Cartographers, which have more to offer. 

Abandon All Artichokes is an adorable-looking card game from the publisher behind Sushi Go. You each start with a deck of 10 artichokes and you’re trying to get rid of them as quickly as possible.

Each turn you can take a new vegetable, and then play any vegetables you have. Each vegetable allows you to manipulate your deck/hand/discard pile in a unique way to get rid of artichokes. At the end of each turn you draw five cards from your deck, and if you don’t draw any artichokes you win the game.

The artwork and packaging for Abandon All Artichokes promise something more fun and straightforward than the game can quite deliver. Turns are fiddly, with players forgetting to perform the four distinct phases in order. And the game is bogged down by everyone reading and re-reading card powers that aren’t memorable or intuitive. The game works, but it doesn’t have the tension or excitement of other, simpler games. 

Cutterland is an I cut, you choose game, which involves the literal cutting up of cards. The goal is to create the best kingdom, by collecting and arranging creatures to best score points.

On your turn, you pick one of your cards, and cut it up into sections, so that there is one for each player. Of course, you will get the last (worst) section, so you need to be careful how to divide up the creatures.

Each creature scores in a unique way. Krakens eat adjacent creatures, scoring 2 points for each. But bear in mind that if a creature is eaten, it won’t score itself. Centaurs want big fields to roam in. And frogs are worth minus points, so try to get a Kraken or Dragon to eat them.

The scoring options give you plenty to think about, and ways to pivot if you don’t get the tiles you want. But it’s hard to feel like you’re making clever decisions in how you cut the card, when there’s so many variables to consider. 

If you want a cutting game, I certainly prefer it to Clipcut Parks. But for an “I split, you choose” I prefer the simpler dynamic of New York Slice, where you can easily see what your opponents do and don’t want.

Games I’ve been enjoying lately

- Memorinth

- Spicy

- Oriflamme

Games that have just arrived

- The Secret Neighbor Party Game

- Colt Super Express

Video of the Month - Turning Reviewers Into Kids

Song of the Month - Nadia Rose - Skwod

Now watching - Get Shorty (TV show)

We’re fasting approaching Essen time, and I’ve got my eye out for exciting games that are coming this year, so that I can find the right ones to tell you lot about!

Actually yours,

Jon