Actualol

Actualol Newsletter - May 2023

Added 2023-06-06 16:26:31 +0000 UTC

Hey there actual peeps,

Thanks for watching my 10 Small Games video. Coming up on the channel, I’m going to film my Top 50 games of all time - and actually finish it this time. I’m also planning to do a collection update - I’ve downsized by 100 games recently, so there’s lots to talk about!

In this newsletter, I’m writing about the games I played at the UK Games Expo, which I just got back from.

UK Games Expo 2023

The UK Games Expo is the biggest UK board game convention, which is growing at pace. There were 25,000 unique attendees in 2019, and this year there were 32,000. And you can tell - it felt incredibly busy on Saturday, with traffic jams to rival Essen.

I had a fun and exhausting weekend - although all self-inflicted, staying up until 3:30am two evenings in a row to try and squeeze out the most fun. And yet, I played very few games. It was often hard to find a space to demo a game (unless you schedule ahead, which requires far too much forethought). And there were also not THAT many new games from bigger publishers, because most are released in October, so I’ve already had a chance to try them.

The gaming halls were highly subscribed - and you can waste time trying to find a free table and coordinate with your friends what everyone’s doing. If you’re willing to forgo the buzz of the stands, then you could secure a great spot and game all day and have a brilliant time. But it’s hard to resist wandering the booths - hoping you’ll find a previously missed gem.

It was nice to see more American publishers appear this year, like Funko Games and Pandasaurus. Whereas others like Portal Games were conspicuously missing.

These are the games I played and demoed over the weekend:

Sea, Salt and Paper - In typical convention fashion, I miscalculated the number of players we had on Thursday evening and brought a useless rucksack full of 6-8 players games, only for three of our friends to leave before we played anything. Out came Ben’s copy of Sea, Salt and Paper - which remains a fun, dramatic card game. I only wish it was quicker to teach.

That was followed by LLAMA, which has become something of a convention regular - perfect for late night in the hotel bar, amidst all the catching up with friends.

Our first demo on Friday was Cangaceiros, a fun looking game about Brazilian bandits in the 1800s, by Ares Games. This one was probably too complicated to get the jist of in a short explanation. I came away unenthused - it seemed a lot less combative and interactive than the shared map and theme implied. But I could be judging too soon. Not wanting to commit to a full game, we moved on.

We stopped off at the Haba booth for my friend to buy his daughters some games, and I was excited by all the cute games they have for 2 year olds. I can’t wait to get some for our incoming baby two years from now!

Our next demo was a full game of Inside Job at the Kosmos stand. Unfortunately the game was taught to us badly wrong, and it wasn’t until we read the rulebook and played it again that we got the proper experience. It’s a trick-taking game with a hidden traitor. The good guys are trying to complete a specific mission each trick, much like in The Crew - and the traitor is either trying to sabotage that mission, or win enough tricks to win the round. Our full game was with 3 players, and it felt too easy to guess who the traitor was. I would play it again, but as with The Crew, I feel you need to play it with the same, experienced group to get the best from it. It seems interesting for trick-taking aficionados, but that’s not me - I’d rather a more talky traitor game.

I was keen to try That’s Not A Hat, a Spiel Des Jahres recommended game from Kasper Lapp (Magic Maze, Fun Facts). Our first game was confusing - the demo person didn’t remember how it worked and told us to come back later after she’d asked someone.

It’s a memory game - you each have an object card (duck, watering can, ball etc.) and you must give it to another player face down and tell them what it is. The cards will continue to move around the circle, and you have to remember which is which so that when you’re given it, you know whether to accept it, or refuse it - revealing it. If you call them out successfully, they take the card as a penalty point. Otherwise, you take it. That reveal moment is reminiscent of Cockroach Poker - but the challenge is much more about your memory, and it’s crazy how quickly you can lose track of the cards. If you do forget you have to confidently bluff well enough that the receiver doesn’t call you out.

It’s a neat little game, and fun for a few minutes, but with our group it never lasted long because our memories couldn’t keep up - and certain players would go bust very quickly. I’d like to play it a little more - the tiredness and distractions of a con probably made it a lot harder than usual.

We got to try Mind Up! a card game that’s out in France but not yet in English. It’s a classic numbers and colours affair - and is very reminiscent of 6 Nimmt. You each simultaneously pick a card from your hand, then reveal. The lowest card takes the lowest card from the middle, and so on. The cards you get will score you points, and you want some colours more than others. Then the cards you played become the new middle and you go again. It feels like 6 Nimmt in lots of ways, but it also has some interesting bits of its own. We really enjoyed the one play, but I don’t know how it stands up long term.

We did a full demo of Pioneer Rails, a flip and write that’s currently on Kickstarter. This one felt like a medium-weight flip and write - not quite as complex as some around these days, but still with a lot going on. You’re creating train routes to reach saloons and banks and gun shops, that all score in their own ways. Meanwhile, each card has a poker symbol - and you’re encouraged to take certain cards to create a good poker hand that round, to get more points. It’s full of options and depth for strategy - but I personally prefer a simpler, punchier flip and write game like On Tour.

It was surprising to see that UK’s biggest bookshop chain Waterstones had a stand at UKGE. A nice sign of how big board games have become. At the stand, I tried a few rounds of Really Loud Librarians, a new party game from the Exploding Kittens team. It is very similar to a million party games in which you’re given a category (e.g. Modes of Transport) and have to shout out answers starting with certain letters. The mildly interesting twist is that you have three letters you can use, which will move you 3, 2 and 1 spaces around the board. It’s fun for one game, but I don’t find much longevity in these types of games - having gotten rid of the similar Tapple a few years ago.

Back in the gaming halls, we played a full game of Rome In A Day. It’s a simple “I split, you choose” game - in which you all build your own region of vineyards and olive groves. Every round you’re given 5 tiles to divide into two options - and your neighbour will choose one of them - leaving the other for you. Meanwhile, you’ll pick an option from your neighbour - leaving you a bunch of tiles to add to your map. Some of the tiles come with wooden buildings which you need to place adjacent to their matching region to score points. They remind me of the crowns in Kingdomino - because you can’t score a region without them. I really like the interaction of dividing up your offering and looking at what your neighbours want to help you decide. It’s a solid little game - I want to play this one more.

We followed that with Vaalbara - proving my video self right since it’s already Vaalbara 1-0 Libertalia. I’m sad to say I lost to a bunch of first-timers - what an embarrassment.

That evening, I managed to pull together a group to try Feed The Kraken, a hidden traitor game that’s been catching some buzz. It is very similar to Secret Hitler, but with a pirate theme and ridiculous Kickstarter overproduction. In this game there are three factions - Sailors (good guys), Pirates (bad guys) and one Cultist (wildcard). The sailors want to sail the boat to safety, the pirates the other way, and the cultist is trying to get themselves killed. And there are three public positions you can hold - Captain and Lieutenant who both draw navigation cards and pick one to give to the Navigator who ultimately picks which direction you go in. There’s a few other things going on, like actions which come with each card - and certain locations on the board which can let the Captain look at a role, or cut out someone’s tongue so they can’t talk! It was a fun game, but we had a disappointing ending where someone joined the cultist faction in the last turn and they won without really deserving to. I’d definitely play it again, but it’s such a big box that it’s hard to recommend it over other hidden traitor classics.

Annoyingly, the NEC gaming halls kicked us out at midnight, so we had to make the not short walk to the Hilton to continue our fun. In the hotel bar, we played the prototype of my party game that I’ve been designing on and off for a few years, with its working title of “Eliminate My Friends”. I was delighted with how my friends received it - it delivered just the kind of fun discussion that I love from a party game. I hope to pitch it to publishers this year.

On Saturday, it was nigh impossible to find a demo table to try anything I was interested in. We briefly attempted Nacho Pile from Pandasaurus - but the demonstrator purposely taught us the rules wrong because he told us it was “simpler his way”. An absolutely baffling decision to represent a company by redesigning their game.

Later we managed to try String Railway, an upcoming reprint of an older title. It’s a cute design that has you laying shoelaces across the table to connect up train stations. I look forward to trying it properly once the upcoming Kickstarter delivers.

During a brief stop at Hachette, we played a quick game of Quoridor, a two player abstract game in which you’re trying to get your pawn to the other side first. On your turn you can either move your pawn one space or place a wall to slow down your opponent’s pawn. I like this game on the surface, but I always struggle to understand when is the right time to move and the right time to block. Needless to say I lost.

A friend had recently acquired Sniper Elite, so we gave that a quick game.

And followed it with Your Best Life - a new flip and write game about living the perfect life. It’s one of my favourite themes for a game, so I was excited by the opportunity to take holidays with other players, have children, and post social media stories.

It has some really interesting ways to interact with other players, such as playing on a team with another player as a couple. But overall it felt like there were a lot of soulless tracks and too much to keep track of. I can’t imagine this one replacing CV or The Pursuit of Happiness.

After a crazy wait for dinner at the food trucks, we played Crossing, a lively filler I hadn’t played in years. You’re trying to collect gems, and each round you simultaneously point at the stash you want to take. But if someone points at the same one as you, you get nothing. It’s very light and silly, and feels like it’s over before it’s started. Fun enough for a moment, but gamers would probably want more depth.

Then we played a six player game of HEAT: Pedal to the Metal and after a rough start I managed to catch back up and win a race for the first time! Huzzah!

The group expanded and we played a few rounds of Two Rooms and a Boom at ten players. It’s a unique social deduction game which you play across two rooms - with players being passed back and forth. In a nutshell, the red team is trying to get their Bomber in the room with the blue team’s President to finish him off. There are lots of other roles thrown in, and it’s all about sharing information with each other. As an experience, it’s one of a kind and you can get swept up by its ambition. But as a game it doesn’t always deliver. There’s an alchemy to picking the right roles and who ends up in what rooms. It’s fun once a year in this setting, but I found myself not feeling the need to own it anymore, because I can’t imagine playing it outside of UK Games Expo.

After that, one of my friends requested we play my prototype again, and we ended up getting three games of it in, which were a lot of fun, even with people we’d just met.

With most of my friends gone by Sunday, I wandered the halls for a bit, but without any focus I decided to pack it in early and head back to London to see Serena.

New arrivals: