A Brief Interlude – Something a little different!

Interlude

“A pause between the acts of a play.”

Or in this case, between posts

It’s been a busy few weeks and, whilst I haven’t been creating much in the way of content, I have been keeping my eyes open for anything of interest.

I like things that are a little different from the usual run of the mill and so I found my attention drawn to these two little gems…

Fast, Furious, and Funny

Grant Lyon is a comedian of some standing, or, to put it another way, he’s a stand-up comedian. He starred as Jimmy in the movie Killer Kate and he’s also a game designer, with his first game, Curmudgeon, due for release this year.

But what really caught my attention was his YouTube channel. Grant’s a gamer and he’s created a playlist called Grant’s Game Recs. So what, I here you say, there are hundreds of thousands of these things knocking about, what’s so special about this one?

Well, for starters, they’re short, I mean they average a little over a minute per video, so they aren’t going to eat into your precious time to watch them.

Secondly, they’re punchy. Grant doesn’t bury himself in mechanisms, he doesn’t give a deep or meaningful insight into how the game plays, its highs or lows, he simply says, ‘Hey, I love this game, this is what it looks like,’ and he does it all with his own brand of humour.

I just went to his playlist, hit the first video, and sat back. If you’re looking for some quick fire game recommendations then you can’t go far wrong than looking here, their all solid games and many of them are small box, quick to play, just like his videos.

Check out his YouTube channel HERE.

Reach for the stars

Moons and Stars is a board game currently on Kickstarter and at the time of writing looks set to reach its funding goal.

There are several things that set this apart from the crowd: the story behind the game, the design, and the campaign itself.

There’s a wonderful story about how the game came to be, all of which can be read on the KS page, but in a nutshell the designer, Ben Jerred, has been working on a graphic novel where the fictional characters of Allfield play the game Moon and Stars and so he set out to turn the game into reality, even though he had no idea how it would be played!

When I say he set out to turn the game into a reality, I mean literally. He handmade the board and pieces from wood, campfire-hardened clay, stone, and canvas – he’s a pretty creative kind of guy. His 11-year-old son developed the gameplay, and from the looks of things he’s punching well above his age in terms of game design, as the game looks to have a fair amount of strategic depth to it, and the rest of the family pitched in to get it to Kickstarter.

The campaign is a breath of fresh air in a way. There are no crazy aims, just a modest target of £3,053 to fund the campaign and the pledge levels start at £27 (US$35) for the standard game – Fulfilment December this year.

You must remember this is a handmade game, all by Ben and his family, no factories feature in the making of this product!

Having not played the game I can’t comment on the gameplay, I can however say that it looks, how shall I say, as though it belongs. I mean, it looks as if it’s been around forever, created by an ancient civilisation using skills long forgotten – it’s the kind of game that you’ll leave set up on a coffee table knowing full-well that any visitor is going to be drawn to it, and from there it’s just a short step to them playing it. Unfortunately, I haven’t any pictures to share, so you’ll have to head over to the Kickstarter campaign and take a look for yourself.

The only downside, It’s US only (Edit-Australia and EU shipping has just been added) so for the likes of me who can only watch from afar, I can only wish Ben and his family all the best in getting this game to the table and for doing it all by themselves.

Moon and Stars Kickstarter HERE.

Ben Jerred’s Website HERE.