This might be quite fun, hats off to Buzzerblog for noticing that LostinTV are advertising for a Channel 5 show that sounds awfully like Hollywood Game Night.

Monkey Kingdom, the production company behind ‘TFI Friday’ and ‘Made in Chelsea’ are making a brand new game show for Channel 5.

The show features two teams of celebrity guests playing hilarious games that test pop culture knowledge, acting skills, and nerves of steel. There will also be performances from our studio band!

This exciting programme is based on a successful global game show, so you won’t want to miss out!

We quite like HGN (we wrote a little bit about it in the past), although rather suspect the level of celebrity for this might be quite low. Still, if you’re interested, it’s filming at Elstree at the end of the month. I can’t go but if anyone can do let us know what you think. Or even if it actually is Borehamwood Game Night.

We’ve been alerted to the fact that the new Crystal Maze board game has begun its slow roll-out and you can buy it from WH Smiths for £28. KEEP ‘EM PEELED.

It’s meant to be coming to bigger retailers in due course.

And so the MASSIVE BIG NAME host for Money Tree has been announced and you WON’T BE DISAPPOINTED, it’s Alfonso Ribeiro who you may remember as the seventh place finisher on I’m a Celeb in 2013 and more famously, Carlton from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air 25 years ago. So either a) somebody is taking the piss or b) there’s a large disconnect between what TV peeps think is a big name and the general public.

However he has hosted a gameshow before, the pretty good fun Catch 21 on Game Show Network in the States, a modern reversioning of Bother’s Bar favourite Gambit, at the turn of the decade.

Right, yesterday I found myself playing Town of Salem, a game that’s actually about four years old now in various capacities but is in fact about to come to mobile next week and is currently on sale on Steam (although there’s a completely free to play browser version as well) so shut up it is still relevant.

It’s online Mafia/Werewolf basically – an informed minority vs an uninformed majority, the Town must try and get rid of the Mafia by lynching them during the day or killing them at night, each night the mafia (who know who each other are) kill townfolk and win if they have a majority. Add into the mix neutral characters who have their own set of win conditions (the Jester who wants to be lynched, the Serial Killer who wants to be the last person standing and so on) and there’s plenty of confusing fun to be had.

There’s no voice chat, all discussion is done through IRC-style chatbox.

I’d suggest it’s not the friendliest of games to just dive into and start playing – even the initial set of roles feels like rather a lot to take in (there’s no real training given other than tool tips, some sort of nursery slopes starting with vanilla Mafia and increasing the amount of roles would be useful, I think) but I suggest you do have a go because I want to hold a Bother’s Bar Lynching Party on a Saturday in November, possibly with Discord reaction (but all legit strat in the chat).

Here’s someone’s early experience to be getting on with:

And if you’re thinking they should have done this on telly… they have! There was a five episode pilot series called Traitor with Tony Livesey on BBC2 almost fifteen years ago but we can’t find any video of that. It was also used as a task on Dutch Mole a few years ago.

Saw this at Applause Store:

Money Tree is an exciting, fun, new primetime gameshow that features a MASSIVE big name star, one you’ve never seen host a UK gameshow… trust us you won’t be disappointed!

The show sees two families go head-to-head over a series of fun trivia rounds.  But unlike every other show, the question value will be decided by contestants themselves.

So it they are feeling super confident they could add some big, big money to the tree. Who will win and can they shake a fortune off the Money Tree?

Please place your bets on how massive this big name star will be. Anyway I can’t make it, but it’s filming at BBC Elstree (also a tree) on Thursday 18th. Do let us know what you thought if you go.

We’re playtesting a few new game show formats on Saturday, 2-6pm at Limehouse Town Hall (although it probably won’t be that long). Travel expenses paid. Please contact tom@tomscott.com for further details.

I might be there. If that’s not reason enough to put yourself forward I don’t know what is.