Actualol Newsletter - May 2021 (Patreon)

Hey there patron pals,

I’m desperately sorry to have not released a more important video this month than my recent Q&A. It has not been for lack of trying - I have started but not completed a Burgle Bros 2 review, a Railroad Ink: Challenge review, a Best of the Month and a 5 Card Games.

What happened is that I finally reached a point in lockdown where I was being held back by not playing games in person with 3+ people. I had spent time writing reviews of games, only to play them with 4 people (towards the end of the month) and realise my previous criticisms were all wrong and I had to start again. So then I would switch gears to another idea only to hit similar obstacles.

Thankfully, just as it started to be a problem, it was solved. We’re now allowed to meet up (play games) indoors and I’ve been taking full advantage. I will revive some of those video ideas and resume regular scheduled programming.

Thanks to that, in this newsletter I’m able to give you the lowdown on three brand new games, The Initiative from former Fantasy Flight lead designer Corey Koniecska, Sheepy Time from AEG and Brew from Pandasaurus Games.

Thank you for your patience this last year. I’m incredibly grateful to have been able to keep doing Actualol during the pandemic. As always, I strive to repay that support with great videos.

Actual Life

I’m delighted to have had my first Covid vaccine - administered at Guys Hospital, which features in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. This is our celebratory selfie on nearby London Bridge.

The board game nights have been coming thick and fast - I’m reminded that a big part of board game reviewing is arranging calendar dates with gaming friends!

And playing in person has immediately renewed my excitement for games again. The lockdown languishing (see Q&A video) had diminished my desire to even play games with Serena. Now, I’m seeking out any opportunity - like I used to.

Plus the weather has finally picked up, so we’ve been out in the parks playing Kubb, our favourite outdoor game. You throw wooden sticks to knock down wooden blocks, it’s a team game, and it’s a lot of fun. Everyone we’ve ever introduced it to has enjoyed it.

When I’m writing these blogs, I usually look back at the photos on my phone to remind myself what I’ve been up to. For the first twenty days of May, as with the last few months, nothing interesting happened. But now I have so many photos of sunshine and fun times and it is wonderful.

Actual Games

The Initiative is an intriguing game that combines puzzle-solving, cooperative play and a comic book. The year is 1994 and you play as school kids who have found a mysterious board game called The Key. You will play The Key, and use it to uncover wider mysteries.

It’s an exciting premise - and each mission of the campaign gives you a code to crack. But to reveal information about the code, you have to play “The Key”, which is sadly a very generic and dull co-operative game. It is a simple logistics puzzles, where you play numbered cards to take actions, to move around a board and reveal glyph tokens, which then reveal parts of your code.

It doesn’t really feel like a game, it just feels like busywork to provide a slow reveal to the ultimate goal - the code. The one nice touch is that as you reveal letters or numbers, you can choose to crack the case at any time - taking a gamble with what little info you have.

Once you have finished a mission, you continue reading the comic, which has a fairly thin narrative to follow - and some unsubtle, cheesy messages about being a teenager. The artwork is cute, but the story is very basic.

The wider campaign has hidden codes to crack and some extra bits which trigger the same endorphins as escape rooms. But in between all of those you spend 90% of The Initiative playing the bureaucratic obstacle “The Key” - and it just isn’t worth wading through that quicksand for 30 mins each time to solve a puzzle - when an escape room gives you a puzzle every 30 seconds.

Sheepy Time is a push your luck game from AEG, with a cute theme - you are trying to get the most sleep. You play as a sheep running around a track - and every time you jump over the fence you catch 5 winks. The ultimate goal is - you guessed it - 40 winks.

On your turn, you choose one of your two cards to play - moving that many spaces. If the nightmare lands on your spot, it scares you. If it gets you again, it wakes you up, and you lose all your winks that round - you didn’t get any sleep!

You can only “call it a night” and bow out after jumping the fence - which is a really nice rule - it forces you to take risks. And you want to catch the most winks, to get closer to victory.

The clever play comes from the dream tiles - which give you actions, such as jumping further forward. If you’re lucky you can combo them together, having an amazing turn where you get all the way around in one turn.

But to use a dream tile you need to have “caught some Zzzs” to put tokens on it. It requires you to plan ahead. And whilst the dreams are fun and create interesting moments, they are complicated to understand, and take Sheepy Time from being a light family game into being a more gamer-focused push your luck experience.

And that jars both with the silly, childish theme, and the heavy luck. Drawing a card that moves you 7, instead of 2, is huge and swingy. I had fun with Sheepy Time - it has some really, really good parts. But I don’t see a place for it in my collection. A disappointing near miss.

Brew is a dice placement game that was recently at the top of the BGG Hotness, presumably because of its striking aesthetic.

It has a forgettable theme of making potions and “bringing balance back to the forest” that washed over me because it doesn’t come through in the gameplay. You place dice to get stuff, which you spend to make potions to get points.

There is plenty going on - the dice create a small area majority game - if you have the most dice in a forest you win it. And you want specific forest cards to give your creature cards somewhere to live, for more points. Meanwhile, the creatures have ongoing abilities that can really help.

To me, the gameplay feels like tinkering - you never make big, interesting plays. Everything you can do is worth some points. The challenge is in finding the slight efficiencies to ultimately squeeze out two more points. It never feels exciting, and the interaction is minimal.

It is absolutely not my sort of game, and so perhaps some will love it. My prediction is that many will let the artwork blind them to the mediocre gameplay, and in two years time it will never be mentioned again.

“New Studio”

As seen in my Q&A, I’ve painted the walls in my office/studio/guest bedroom to give a new look to the videos. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while. Even though I think the pink chair and bright blue wall were a great upgrade on what I had before, I feel like I’ve outgrown them. I found they felt like a children's TV show and could come across as a bit obnoxious. Now, I’m aiming for a calmer, aesthetic - somewhere you might play a board game, such as a living room or board game cafe.

I also felt that the setup never really spoke much to playing board games, and now having a table in shot makes a little more sense.

I appreciate this won’t matter much to most of you. I have spent the last year confined in this room, so I’ve definitely been thinking about it more. For example, having the white bookcase (and pink chair) take up so much space in this room with no practical use for most of the time feels churlish, so I’ve tried to find ways to be more efficient. Treat everything like a board game.

New arrivals:

- Destinies

- Equinox

- Red Rising

Games I’ve been enjoying lately:

- LAMA Party

- Duck

- Colt Super Express

Song of the Month: Gasoline by HAIM

Video of the Month: Sample Breakdown: Daft Punk - Discovery

Currently watching: Little Voice, Modern Family Season 11

See you soon for my next video,

Actually yours,

Jon