Oh no, I fear another Plays Badly

By | October 12, 2021
Don’t be fooled by the box art, there’s an English release as well.

Bad timing! If it wasn’t for Jackbox 8 coming out the same day (Thursday) and that I’ve a Game Night to prepare for this Sunday, I rather suspect there’d be a video for the upcoming Koh-Lanta game published – of course! – by Microids.

It’s coming out on all the big systems – XBox, PS4, Switch and promises “over 10 challenging trials directly inspired from the TV show and over 10 survival mini-games to live the ”real” Koh-Lanta experience”. It’s French Survivor.

Luckily! I’m off work next week petsitting, which seems like as good an opportunity as any to make a video, so hopefully you can wait until then.

It’s Bother’s Bar’s Game Night Champion of Champions on Sunday!

By | October 12, 2021

That’s right, join us as last year’s Game Night Champions – and some special guests – compete across the new Jackbox suite of games out on Thursday and an incredible high concept Arbitrary Final. YOU are invited to join in as Team Audience, rightful champions of the last year in your own right.

Why not pretend it’s like Real Life Squid Game, like everything else is right now? I’m not planning on killing the losers but formats can change between paper and screen.

The fun starts Sunday at 8pm UK and ends approximately 10:30pm. Bring your phones!

In other news I watched the rebooted Legends of the Hidden Temple on The CW (pretty easy to do with the Dark Arts). They’ve made a great kids show, but tonally I think the wholesomeness – ironic or otherwise – works against it in an adult format. I also think the Temple Run was a bit inelegantly filmed, it’s not always easy to follow the tasks in the Temple itself, and it really ought to have been filmed at night with torches ideally. It flopped pretty big on premiere although I suspect might have done a bit better if it was on Netflix or something rather than linear TV where it might have got more written thinkpieces. The interesting thing is that people who were old enough to watch LotHT first time round (1993-95) are now more likely than not outside the 18-34 target demo now. Which is terrifying.

New Countdown co-host

By | October 9, 2021

Given there have been far fewer Vital Statisticians over the show’s almost forty year run than actual hosts, this is rather fun. Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon, who did a great job on the Black to Front special, is covering Rachel Riley’s maternity.

https://twitter.com/RachelRileyRR/status/1446416992186085376?t=_98zRgaG6aTBDwlAhpq_zg&s=19

IIt’ll be interesting to see how she fits in with Cats Does Countdown if that continues as we won’t have the extra-curricular knowledge to make jokes about we do with Riley.

Potensh very interesting

By | October 5, 2021

Studio Lambert to remake De Verraders for the BBC (as The Traitors):

It’s an adventure game very similar to Werewolf/Mafia and its ilk – an informed minority take on an uninformed majority – the team earn silver bars by completing adventure challenges, they vote out one of their own (who they believe to be one of the three traitors) meanwhile at night the traitors decide on who to “kill”. At the end the people left do a split or steal decision (YAY) to determine who wins what. Hopefully Studio Lambert can redefine the Prisoner’s Dilemma genre. Hopefully it’ll be as good as their Race Across the World.

The English Wiki page is here. Quite interestingly for a hidden role game, the whole thing’s done largely from the perspective of the Traitors, you as a viewer won’t need to figure it out.

Show Discussion: Murder Island

By | October 4, 2021

Tuesdays, 9:30pm,
C4

Ian Rankin has killed someone on a Scottish Island and eight amateur sleuths will spend six episodes trying to answer the question whodunnit? Of course Iain Rankin hasn’t actually murdered anyone and no actual murder has taken place, this is a fictional world he’s written that our real contestants, with the help of the real police and actors, will have to figure out for £50,000.

If this sounds a bit like The Murder Game… you’re right! But unlike with a proper real-life investigation we don’t think the people with the poorest procedural skills will get sent out to their deaths. We quite enjoyed The Murder Game‘s slightly ridiculous gothic-y ambience, and the guy who was rubbish but basically won by flipping heads six times in a row. Whilst I suspect this is probably going to err on the side of procedural realism, we hope there’s enough atmosphere and frequent revelation to keep us hooked.

The Murder Game was EIGHTEEN years ago if you want to feel old. Since then Armchair Detectives has had a stab (as it were) at the real-people-solving-fictional-cases a few years back but we can’t think of much else off of the top of our heads. Most TV detective dramas come to a conclusion within 1-2 hours, will we be glued for six? Let us know what you think in the comments.