Simon Fox tweets:

@BothersBar Flicking through TV channels in hotel room in Latvia and there seems to be some sort of Russian reality show which I think involves celebrities training dolphins (there’s definitely 4 judges voting out of 10) pic.twitter.com/avZ7eJ33Zc

— Simon Fox (@FoxyRhino) 30 June 2018

Obviously this has caused some controversy.

Not gameshow related but likely of interest (as we do from time to time when there’s not much of note), last night, having been on my to do list for sometime, I discovered The Dragon’s Tomb, from their Youtube:

Everyone hates learning the rules to tabletop games. It’s like going to one of those long timeshare presentations before getting your free vacation: if you want to have fun, you have to suffer through boring torture first.

That is… until now!

My name is Jeff Kornberg, and I make “How To Play” board game tutorial videos on my channel called “The Dragon’s Tomb.” A lot of other YouTube channels currently make similar kinds of videos, but most of them get the rules wrong, go on too long, or have boring hosts who are nerdy. My channel aims to fix all that. Each one of my videos concisely covers all rules of each game, while being hosted by someone who isn’t a nerd (me).

I am planning on making a “How To Play” video for every board game that exists, so if you get a new game, please wait until I make a video for it before attempting to play.

Here is a very short five-minute tutorial on Carcassonne:

Viewers, I wasn’t aware I wanted a niche Look Around You-esque take on boardgame rules tutorials in my life, but now I do I want a ton more of it. Pointing out it’s a joke probably isn’t ideal, but I suspect it’s the only way I’ll get you to watch the vid. Jeff absolutely nails the measured tone and presentation of this sort of thing – it’s probably about 30-45 seconds in you start to realise it’s not what you think it is, and the tutorial is even funnier if you’re aware of what he does with the source materials. This video series is a blast.

[If you want to go to see Britain’s Brightest Family being filmed, it’s filming in early August in Salford, tickets SRO.]

Thanks to it being Summer and there being a World Cup there is very little of interest to write about. However Lumines Remastered has just come out on All The Systems, and it would be remiss not to point out that it’s basically Four Square: The Puzzle Game, hence it is relevant actually.

I’ve bought the PS4 version but it is apparently a very good Switch game.

With this in mind, time to remind you of my various Usernames elsewhere for fun and hi-score frolics:

Steam: Add me on Steam if you want. (bothersbar)
Playstation Network: Ditto we can be chums on PSN for high score fun if you’re that way inclined. BrigBother ought to do it, but this handy link should do it as well.
Switch: Code SW-2805-5403-1808
XBox Live: I also recently reactivated my old XBox Live account for PC stuff, where I am Brig Bother.

Beat the Internet with John Robins.

Players attempt to guess how search engines respond to questions.

Sounds a bit dull to be honest, and no idea what the prize is, but they are looking for contestants and they’ve twenty episodes to fill, so fill your boots.

The new series of Fort Boyard starts on France 2 on Saturday (unless you’re in Belgium, then you get on Fridays for whatever reason) and as is usual I’ve set up a discussion page for it.

But if you’re reading this you’re probably not French. How can you watch it?

• Absolutely, if you’re serious about watching foreign free-to-air television, paying for a proper VPN is recommended. I pay for a subscription to Tunnelbear, other paid for VPNs are available. Windscribe has been recommended as a free limited alternative, we can’t be held responsible for what you do to your computer. The advantage of the VPN route is that you can also watch on catch-up if you miss it without too much effort. On the France 2 site, Direct is live, replay is catch-up. Which you probably worked out, but still. You may need to register with a Google account or similar.
• Dodgy live streams may be available, they’re usually heavy on ads so an ad-blocker is recommended. Try searching for France 2 live stream. Again, on your own heads be it.
• Somebody usually uploads them to Youtube a day or two after. Obviously these run the risk of getting taken down, so check early and often.

It’s scheduled to start at 7:55 UK time and will finish just after ten, although French TV timings can be pretty flexible so you’ll probably put it on and get five minutes of the hilarious Parents Mode d’Emploi first, probably. Anyway, there you are.

Last night Jackbox Games showed off a live work in progress (underlining that twice) version of YDKJ’18 coming to Jackbox 5 this autu… er fall. I was very interested to see how it would work, now that it’s going to support eight players and audience play, which means there would have to be changes certainly to account for stream lag so things surely can’t be quite as time sensitive. Here are my key takeaways:

• They’ve gone all-in on being themed around Binjpipe, a parody streaming service.
• Cookie Masterson is back.
• Questions are worth a flat amount of money $1/2,000, BUT correct answers also get a bonus dependant on what percentage of the audience gets the question wrong ($10/20 per percentage point). Jack does Pointless!
• The game is no longer episodic, questions played at random (with allowances for question chains to set up gags or whatever – not unlike the original games). Hopefully it will keep track of which questions you’ve done.
• Everybody gets to play Dis or Dat, everyone gets ten seconds to respond to each question.
• The worst performing players at various points are given Screws. These are used to make things harder for their opponents – rather than picking a player out, they now effect all players and have various penalty effects – turning the writing upside down, removing all the vowels and so on. However right now they don’t seem to effect how the question plays out on screen, just on phone, which seems a bit odd. These effect the audience as well!
• The Gibberish question returns, now instead of buzz and answer it’s answer then buzz. Everyone gets to play, it’s on a money countdown timer, they’re currently playing around with the timings. Right now it’s a minute which feels probably a bit too long.
• The Jack Attack has seen an overhaul – there are now six possible responses revealed gradually and more than one of them can be right and you earn credit for each one you hit. It looks like the first person to hit a right answer on their phone earns big money for it with everyone else picking up half if they then select it. It does not look like you can spam wrong answers to end on a minus score. This gets round lag by having all the answers – and their timers – appear on your phone.
• We don’t know how the Audience can play with Dis or Dat, Gibberish or the Jack Attack yet, only that they will be able to.

Only a few months until we can play this for real!