OPENING

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Come with me, and you'll be in a world of cardboard imagination. Yes, it's Essenspiel 2026. So let's unpack this.

PHASE A: PULL UP A CHAIR

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome everybody to the Just Play podcast. It's your host, JP, and I'm here with a Just Play with Others special convention episode, which is of course Essenspiel 2026. And I am literally back. I have just got back yesterday. This at the time of recording, I was gonna look at my watch, but I don't have it on, um, is about six in the morning. Yes, it's it's bloody early. Um, and the reason why I'm up so early trying to record this before I start uh my real job um is because there's a lot to get through, and I want to make sure I can get this episode out as soon as possible. But there we go. This is why I'm here. This is probably why my voice is still fairly croaky. Um, and and there we

PHASE B: SPIEL 2026 PART ONE

SPEAKER_00 1:02

go. Um just a quick uh kind of an aside before we start. I have recorded some vlogs uh whilst I was out there. Um so every day, once I got back to the hotel, I'd kind of do a very, very brief kind of high-level overview of the day, usually around 10-15 minutes long. Um, those are up on my YouTube channel, they're on the the podcast um platforms for you to kind of uh listen to, download, view, uh whatever you fancy, really. So they're there. And there's gonna be overlap on this this main episode to those for sure. However, the purpose of this episode is to get into the the bit more the nitty-gritty where I've got time to to unpack the games and explore and explain a bit more about kind of how they work, really. Um so I wanted to cover that off. Um, but other than that, I think I'm gonna get straight into it. There's just a lot to to cover, so

Our Travel Group

SPEAKER_00 1:55

let's do it. So, first off, I want to talk about the group that we went to Asson. So the group was um, well, we we kind of organized um a lot of hotel rooms this year. Um, I happen to have uh three uh hotel rooms at the Premier Inn. And Adrian, good friend, uh had uh three also. Um Adrian, unfortunately, couldn't make it uh along with many others um to the trip. So we ended up having uh a group that was kind of traveling in a van. We had a group that's traveling in another car. Um we had some flyers um going over, and and then we had someone else. So in the van, we had myself, we had uh Paul Grogan from Gaming Rules, we had Mark Monk for Ninja Geek Games, and friends of ours, Rob and Ian. So we had five of us in the van. Um in the other car, we had um uh Jimmy, so board game Jimmy on Instagram. We had Meeples Republic, which is uh Mark, and we had their friend uh Paul, aka Pokey. Um, and the Flyers, we had Curly and Becky, so they flew over, and and this was uh Curly's first ever essence spiel. Um, and Adam Turtsy. So Adam Tursey made his own way, I think, flew uh as well, and I basically took uh one half of one of the rooms. So this was kind of our group. It was like a Venn diagram of mixture of content creators, mixture of friends, and yeah, it was a pretty, pretty cool group. Um, where I think all of us are kind of intermingled at some point, uh read into that what you will. Um so right, let's get

TUESDAY - TRAVEL DAY

SPEAKER_00 3:26

straight into it. So Tuesday, we left Tuesday. The plan was wake up um uh about 4 a.m. and go and pick Paul up first. So the idea was we're leaving at 6 a.m. I had the task of collecting Paul um from his house and bringing him back to mine. Um so I got to there about uh 5:20. Although the problem was I'd not actually woken up um, well sorry, I'd not actually slept that well uh that night. So I'd I think I'd managed to to kind of have about three hours' sleep, woke up at half two, and it was just a bit like uh um as you can imagine. So getting there, um picking him up, I was a bit blurry-eyed, um, but very excited because Esther Spiel was just literally round the corner. Um, so we got in, got back, uh Rob and Ian turned up. We all then bundled into the van once Mart turned up and assumed our positions in the car. Um, so effectively the van that like the the trip over to the the tunnel, because we took the tunnel, was largely uneventful. Um, and yeah, lots of board game chat, you know, all the usual stuff you expect uh to kind of travel for four hours because it takes four hours for us to get to the tunnel. And then um Mark did the UK driving, and then Rob took over and did the European leg uh for another four hours, and again, very uneventful. Usually we get stuck in Antwerp or Brussels this year, straight through. It was a straight sale, and we managed to kind of arrive um at Essen around 6 pm, uh, which is great because we actually had a bit of an evening. I didn't think we would get one. Uh so that was a little bonus. So the time we got checked in, got the rooms, dumped the bags, you know, very, very happy to kind of be back in the city again. Um it yeah, we we just kind of relaxed, got ourselves a beer, and and we played

DECKO

SPEAKER_00 5:17

um Deco. That's the first game. Um, I'm not gonna go into Deco into too much detail. And the reason why is because I've got a future episode which is gonna cover some kind of gambling adjacent games. And I'll I'll go into detail more then. Um, and plus it's not the newest, newest hotness, although there is a Game Found campaign uh for it um pretty much happening right now. Um all I'll say about it is that it's a poker deck building game where you are uh effectively trying to improve your deck from cards you'll uh purchase in the market, and those cards you purchase in the market just have bonkers powers and you can purchase jokers, which twists the rules up in the game. But effectively it's like playing poker, you're winning chips, and and yeah, I think we had a nice uh three-player game of that with me marking in, um, which was good to introduce it to it. I think Mark might be picking it up. Uh I think he had a blast with that. So we played that, we had uh uh pretty much a chill afterwards and realised everyone's a bit knackered because travelling to Essen from the southwest of the UK is is effectively uh a bit of a long journey. So off to

WEDNESDAY - PRESS DAY

SPEAKER_00 6:24

bed we went, and then we get to the first day. So this is the the Wednesday. So Wednesday is pretty much um the novelty show, um, which is mainly for press. So actually, general public don't tend to start their Essen until the Thursday. So this is why I like to get there a year early, because I have uh a press pass this year, and it's the first press pass I've I've kind of had for the Just Play podcast. Previously it's been for the Whose Turn Is It Anyway podcast. So I was very kind of chuffed uh to get a press pass from being completely open with you guys, um, mainly because you know just play is a new uh channel, uh it's a new thing, and I didn't think I would get one, but you know, I was very, very happy to uh to be able to kind of secure one this year. So yeah, I want to make full advantage of this, and you know, and that's why I wanted to do a lot more vlogging um over the period of of the convention and also it's why I want to sit here and get into the the nitty-gritty to give you guys a bit more information. So, yeah, so Wednesday was a press event. We had decided, me and Mark, we are gonna double team Essen this year. Uh read into that what you will, but yeah, we decided to double team it and and pretty much yeah, kind of be joined at the hip on on most of the business meetings because we can cover more ground and organise a lot of those things between us and and actually get more out of it. So I think that worked really well. Um, and I'd love to kind of do that again with him because he's just just a bloody lovely bloke. For those that don't know Mark and don't follow his channel, please do. He's he's such a nice guy, um, and he makes funny skit comedy things for board game related um kind of uh comedy, and and yeah, just they're they're hilarious, and I love it. And he also does playthroughs and things like that, so definitely check him out. Um, but before we kind of got going, I got this thing in my head that I wanted to kind of provide this motivational music um for the week. And I decided that every morning I would share a kind of an obscure song from the 1980s to help motivate people, and it just became kind of a thing. Um, so I'm gonna share this with you so you can kind of get involved in in some of the in-jokes that we we were doing. So the first day, and this song had been buzzing around my bloody head um all the way to Essen, and I was kind of singing it, and and I kind of get these earworms um that they kind of sit in in my brain, and I can't help it, I have to share them and pass these earworms for everyone, and mainly because it's funny. So the first motivational song was Working for the Weekend by Loverboy, right? And if you don't know it, it kind of starts like everyone's watching to see what you could do, that kind of thing. And I'm not gonna sing it properly. Um, and it's just one of those songs that's very cheesy, very 80s, and it's the scene from Click where you've got TV Cruz pulls up in the car, and Adam Sandler is literally in there and it's just singing it. It's funny, it's a funny song. Um, and if you want to see a uh a TikTok or Instagram reel that Mark Monk did for Ninja Git Games, we capitalised on this song, so yeah, please do check that out. Um, so that was the motivational music, which everyone uh didn't have a choice, so that was inflicted upon everyone for the day. Um,

Meeting People

SPEAKER_00 9:42

and then we got into the uh the press event. So we rolled in about 11. We had a bit of a lie-in, which was bloody lovely. Rolled in at 11, and then me and Mark kind of met um uh Pavlina um from Czech Games Edition, literally walked through the door, and there she was, gave her a hug. Great to see her, and we literally followed her to the Czech Games uh edition CGE booth upstairs. And lo and behold, we then saw uh Vlada Shvatel and Thomas Hollick all dressed in their medieval gear and garb. So we had to stop and meet them. Of course, you do. We had to stop and meet them and get photographs, and no doubt I'm probably showing this um on the uh the video uh side of the podcast anyway. So if you're watching, there you go. There's some uh pictures. Um, and it was just a bloody joy, like literally going from I'm in Essence, I've just met probably one of the most popular designers from the one of the most popular games and hype games uh this spiel, and we had a good chat about things, and we're trying to drill Thomas for more seti uh news, but he wasn't having any of it, or at least anything that we could share. Yeah, so we also met the uh the designers from drillers who were there literally kind of around the corner, uh, which was uh Adam and uh Ramon. And basically they were so cool. Um, they were so cool, very down to earth. Um, and we were just chatting about the game. Um, and you know, by this point I'd not played it yet, and just chatting about the the production quality on it and and just yeah, they're their kind of ethos about what they were doing with the game, how long they've been working on it, and um, yeah, genuine genuine, genuine pleasure um to to kind of speak to them. And again, got photos of those guys as well. Um, so yeah, so we kind of did that, and then we picked up our copies um of CG Goody bag, which included Kingdom Con Deliverance, yes, um, and uh drillers and other bits and bobs, code names, critical role adventures, and yeah, so we were laden already. So I had this big bag of heavy stuff, and we kind of made the mistake to pick that up straight away. Uh so but I think we were one of the first ones in um because I think the presentation was just wrapping up by the time we we'd got there. So me and Mark were very much like this is probably a mistake, but we're so happy to have our copies. So there we go. Um, so we did that, we kind of had a look around the halls, um, met many, many people. I've met Ascadelia from from Warplay, um, and she was a sweetheart, she was lovely. Um, she knows Mark uh as well, so that was kind of helpful to kind of get introduced to her, and yeah, we talked a little bit about container and and other things, and yeah, so she she was good fun. Uh, we met uh Peter from Alby, um, and I'd promised Pete to have some uh chocolate. So he said, bring me some chocolate when you come over. Uh so I did, I fulfilled my promise. So I met Peter. We had a fantastic chat about a lot of things about the success of Prague and Scene and you know how how pleased he was with that, and and also going through his catalogue of future endeavours, and those that have watched the blog would know I mentioned the game and I cannot remember the name of the game. It had the word steel in it, might have been Heart of Steel or something like that. And it was a um a heavy uh you know economic Euro game that's coming, um, with lots of like stocks and managing companies, and those know that that's my jam. So as as he was explaining this game, I was kind of uh I would say I was drooling, but it was close. Um, and I was saying, man, I I need to know what this game is. This sounds right up my street. So I'm gonna be looking forward to to learning more about that one. Um, also caught up with my good friends at Mindclash Games. Um, so I met with Soma and uh Adina and had a great you know catch up with them. It's the first time I met Adina as well. Um, and the main thing really is is I wanted to ensure that I I'm trying to get my mindclash jacket. Like this has become a thing over the past five years. I've demoed for Mindclash in in the past that previous session spills, so I have a good relationship with those guys, and I've helped them out um on you know countless times for you know um marketing for for their games and things like that. And I'm a genuine, genuine fan of Mindclash games, always have been. Um, you know, some of the best games uh in my collection are Mindclash and they're still there. Um, but I want a jacket, I want a mindclash jacket. So Mindclash, if any of the team are watching, what do I have to do to get a Mindclash jacket? Um, probably join the company full time. That's probably what I need to do. And uh yeah, I just I just want one let's just become a thing. Um so one day that's gonna happen. Um, and also I um spoke to uh I think it was Annika from Deep Print Games as well, and uh talking about the Decca's duplicity expansion, had a cracking conversation um uh with her around that, and uh yeah, and it was just just nice, it was just a nice day, and like we were there two or three hours just talking, doing the business connections thing, and I think it was my best press event so far. It was just it was just fantastic, really, really enjoyed it. So we did that, we came back and we got a couple of games in, and the only games that I had really was Deco, which we played before because I only brought one game, because you don't take games to Essen, you bring games back, and

Drillers

SPEAKER_00 15:15

that's what you do. Um, so the first game that we played was Drillers, and I've been excited for Drillers. So the reason why we were playing Drillers first, and most people most people like you've got Kingdom Come Deliverance, JP. Why why wasn't you playing that? Well, I just spent two hours popping that that game out, and that's a feat. Anyone who's popped um KCD out will know that that is a mission. Um, so I've been popping that out for about two hours, sorting it all out, organising it, and I have to say, the the organization in that game is is pretty fantastic. It it works, it it's sorted, and once it's sorted, it's done, and you don't have to do it again. Um, but I was kind of like, I I don't think I've got the mental capacity to dive into this right now. And then beside me, Mark was popping out his copy of Drillers. He was finished in about 20 minutes, so he was ready to rock and roll. So he was learning that while I was finishing that off. So Drillers. Drillers is a CGE game, um, and as mentioned, designed by Adam and Roman, and it's a game of uh effectively you control these mechs, these drilling mechs that have been converted from trams and boats and planes, and you're in this kind of dystopian world where you're you're drilling for minerals um underground, and you're effectively selling those minerals for for credits, and those credits can be used to improve your mechs to go back down and do it all over again. So the gameplay loop is that is effectively go underground, drill, sell, and improve and keep going and keep going and keep going. Now, the main board is this vertical um stack of of levels. So you start at the top on the surface, and then you've got level one, two, three, four, five, six, and so on and so forth. Now, the best stuff is in the deep areas of the mine, which you would expect. And um, but not all of the areas of the mine are accessible from the start. So you can kind of go down, you can drill out the minerals, you can drill out the corridors, which are these tiles that you get that go onto your player board, or you can drill the floor below you, and if you do, you'll kind of collapse into the floor, um, and then you unlock the the room or the thing that you found. And usually there's an ability in each level, each floor, um, that that kind of helps you, or sometimes hinders you. It just depends on on what happens. And effectively, the game's a deck building game. Um, you've got your your kind of deck and you've got your hand of cards, and you're playing those cards for spending fuel to to move, spending fuel to drill, um, or activating your drones because your drones are these little tokens that you can use to spend to either sell minerals whilst you're still underground or um purchase cards while you're still underground, which are things that you can only do usually at the surface. You're in that um that kind of position of playing those cards and you're gonna run out of fuel, but you can also ditch those cards for fuel to keep you going, but you can't do that forever. So it's a real nice kind of push and pull of your hand or managing your hand on what you're trying to do and achieve. Um, but effectively, if you can, you get to the surface, and then you can do the whole surface action at the end of your turn, which is then this big refuel, sell stuff, buy stuff, and uh etc. etc. And what I really like about it is that your mech is kind of limited at the start, you can only hold two minerals, and your fuel tank is is kind of like it's a bit meh, but you can upgrade that on the surface, and literally you're kind of moving the the player board um pieces so you can actually then expand the fuel that you can um store and the minerals that you can capture, so you can do that. Um, and the deck building part is then you've got an access to a bunch of cards that can do all sorts of cool stuff. So if you want to go heavy and drilling, you can. If you want to get heavy on moving, you can. Oh, there's some advanced stuff which can help with your drone replenishment, all different options that you can pretty much do. And then the cool thing is that as you're drilling corridors, these tiles, or as you're drilling down, you are putting these tiles onto your player board and you're covering these um milestones. So the first to cover the milestones will get them, and they're gonna give you points, and that will escalate as the game goes on. And that really is a clever uh decision as well. Of do I go for that? Or I actually need those minerals, but I really need to get the milestone before that player. Um, and the more you kind of sell the same mineral, the diminishing returns, like it becomes less worthy. Um, and so you kind of want to diversify a bit as well. Um, but the more you kind of drill of the same colour, it goes into an overflow stack. And here's the trigger when that overflow stack literally meets the uh the tiles that you drill out, once it crosses over, the game is over, and and in pretty much everyone finishes their turn. So, yeah, what do I think of it? Drillers is a solid game, it doesn't do anything new, like deck building, that's not new. Uh push your luck, that's not new. Um, it's it's kind of like it's just uh I came away going, I enjoyed that. That was a solid game, it's a clean game, right? It's a clean game, it took two hours, and and we played it three player, and it was just a really fantastic game. I can't wait to play it again. I the production quality is fantastic, the player boards look amazing, dual-layered, all of that kind of stuff. So a lot of thought has gone into this game, and I just bloody enjoyed it. Um, some people are saying no, it needs expansion. Um, it's hard for me to say that after one play. I can totally see that it it could, you know, benefit from some expandable content at some point, but only when I'm, you know, feel like I've exhausted the variations and options in now, which you won't do on one play. Um, but yeah, solid game, really recommend it.

Codenames: Critical Role Adventures

SPEAKER_00 21:05

It was cool. So we played that and then we finished um the the evening by something a little bit lighter, and we played codenames, critical role adventures, which I think should be renamed the other way around. It should be a critical role adventures, a code names game. Now, why do I say that? Well, uh I say that because uh if you say code names critical role adventures, you're just gonna think it's codenames box standard, but the words are dungeon-y, that's probably what you're gonna think, like DD words instead of like other words. But that's the main thing, like that's what you're gonna think. And the reality is is this is more, this is like codenames squared. Like this is adding a game into code names um on top you know on top of it. So it's more than what you think it is, and I implore anybody who's that you know uh a fan of D D or fantasy type adventures to just look at this. Um, because it's not a standard code names game. So let me explain. So we set in the Critical Role Um Adventures world. Um, I'm not like a fan of that, as in not that I'm not a fan, but I'm not like a mega fan of Critical Role, um, mainly because DD is not really my thing. Um, but the people that we played with, we actually had Jace who was demoing for Mindclash, um, and they came over to uh have a game um and and basically play it. And Adam Tursey was our games master. Um so effectively it's a cooperative game. You've got your games master who has their DD mini screen, and in there has the what you'd expect the code names, positions of what's good, what's bad, etc. And myself, Jace, and Rob, we played three characters um from the uh the the game, and I played as Grog, who's a barbarian, and you get your character sheet, and on your character sheet, you've got your health, um, you've got uh your skills at the bottom, which you unlock once you get to level one and two, um, and then you basically fold them out. Um once you once you do that, you've got your experience, you've got all these things. See, it sounds different already, right? You've got XP, um, and you go through like a six uh scenario campaign of which there are three of them in the box, and you're trying to play code games, um, and of course your characters have different abilities, and there is a d20 that you roll, and you can get an at 20 on things, which does some cool stuff, and you're trying to guess the right words um which will unlock XP and obviously fulfill the scenario. There are other side quests that you can do, or the GM can help lead you down if they think that makes sense. That might help you get more XP or this thing or do something else. You can go shopping at um certain points in the quest to get items, that's going to help you in your campaign. Um, so that's pretty cool. Uh, but yeah, you you can kind of work together, and the idea is that for each round, you will all have to at least participate once with your character um to effectively start getting XP. And uh yeah, you you end up doing like little mini boss fights um and all sorts of stuff. So it's really adding a lot of innovation into the code name system that I've not seen before, and it was just a lot of fun, a lot of fun. And I think Jason and Adam had literally got their copies uh purchased the next day. Um, they had a blast, and and yeah, to be fair, I had I had a good time. Um, I can't see me playing it loads and loads, and that's probably because DD is not my massive thing, but I think if you like DD and you like that puzzle of code names, you you should just buy this, you should just absolutely get this. It's it's fantastic. So so yeah, Wednesday was a CGE night, um, and that's pretty much because we had the games and we wanted to play them. Um, so yeah, went to bed. Wednesday was

THURSDAY - DAY 1

SPEAKER_00 24:55

done. So Thursday begins. Motivational music for Thursday was Stir It Up by Patty LaBelle. For those that don't know that song, it is from Beverly Hills Cup. Um, and I think it's the montage scene when he's driving into Beverly Hills and he's looking around as all the different shops and and the vibrant things that are going on, and it's just a good, feel-good song. As I said, very obscure 80s songs, uh, pretty much from movie soundtracks. So we got in, me and Mark, um straight in at half nine, because press get in half hour earlier than the general public, and uh yeah, and I love that half-hour time because you can get around the halls as fast because there's no cues, there's no crowds, and you can get to where you're going pretty quickly. And lo and behold, I think within 10 seconds, there was Tom Vassal from the Dice Tower, and he was stood there, and we just had to say hello. So we stopped, shook the man's hand, and pretty much had a you know a five-minute encounter chatting, got photos with Tom. Um, and when you stand next to Tom Vassal, you are like, Holy shit, he's he's tall. He's really tall. And you can totally see from the photo that I'm just like a hobbit standing next to him, which Mark reminded me of. So thanks, mate. Um, so we met him. I literally saw David Tursey bundle around the corner. So I obviously gave him a hug um and checked how he was, but he was late and he had to run off to something else. Um, and also who other people I met uh during the day was Mark Dainty from Not Ball Gaming. Um, so great to catch up with him about what was going on. Um, and we always have a bit of banter, me, Mark, and and the other Mark. It's always uh yeah, it's always good fun to catch with Mr. Dainty. And also met Marik from Tribe Solo, who's working in the glass cannon booth. Um, and again, I always like catching up with Marik is uh is a sweetheart, he's a he's a good egg. Um so we did that. So straight in, had a meeting with CG, even though we'd picked up all the stuff with CG and our games, but we had a good chat around Kingdom Come Deliverance and and other things um coming up and hopefully um hopefully like to get uh some CGE related content on the on the channel, whether that's interviews or something in the future, but we'll see. We'll see. I did pick up my pre-orders as well. I picked up time spam, more on that later, and I picked up a bunch of Pink Troubadour games. Those that know who watched my preview list, I had three games on that, which I literally picked up Carpet Racers, Carl von Linet, and the Forestry expansion. So I've picked all those three up, which was great. Yeah, so so those were picked

Hegemony: Shadows of Authority

SPEAKER_00 27:37

up. Um, but then we had a meeting with hegemonic project uh games uh with Demetria, and um she took us through the hegemonic um sorry, she took us through the hegemony shadows of authority expansion in prototype form, which they were showing off I think for the first time, and we've not seen it. So, yeah, so basically what we saw was a playmat, um, and the playmat had everything integrated into it. So we had three more axis um uh that you could tinker with in the game. Um, and that was um one around like uh crime um and policing, one was around environmental, um, and one was kind of around liberalism, uh, freedom of speech and things like that. So he definitely had saw more tracks that you could interact with based on you know where your policies are are set, and every uh faction has like an extension to their board, so you can absolutely lean into criminal enterprises now, so you can be fully corrupt and lean into being dodgy as a capitalist, for example, and and invest into criminal enterprise, you know, criminal enterprises and businesses and and things. Um so yeah, you've just got more levers to pull in this game, and and I'm excited for it. I think it looks pretty cool, you know, more cards, more different ways to win, different things to kind of lean into, and it's all looks like it'll be seamlessly integrated into you know the base game in kind of how it works. And that's what they're working on at the minute, trying to balance all of this, trying to make sure it you know it all works and totally in development. Um, but for those that don't know, Gemini will be coming in and like a big box to house everything uh together. Um, also with the they showed off the ballot box that you use to draw the cubes out of the bag, but now they've got a box where you can fill it and you can literally just do a slider and it'll just drop the the number of cubes that you need, whether it's five or six or or whatever, and it does it in a nice neat way. So that was pretty cool to see. Um so yeah, I'm looking forward to it, Gemini. Didn't get to play it, so I don't know too much about it, but I'm really, really looking forward to to getting my hands on it and hopefully, fingers crossed, um getting a playthrough on that soon at

Tedoku

SPEAKER_00 29:52

some point. Met with Ares as well, uh had a good chat with with them and picked up uh a game of Todoku. Um that was pretty cool. I've not played it yet, I've got it um uh on my list to play. But Todoku is a flip and right where you are effectively doing a cross between Sudoku and Tetris, and you're putting uh like polyomino shapes onto a grid um based on the dice that you roll. So it's probably actually more a roll and write, not a flip and right. Um, and as always, with these kind of games, you're running out of space and you're kind of scoring the columns and and rows and also the the kind of grid sections as well of what you fill out. So, again, fairly simple game, something I thought my wife might quite enjoy. She likes to do Sudoku puzzles, and again, I'll I'll go through that more when I uh play it in more detail.

Trigger Warning

SPEAKER_00 30:45

So we got towards the end of the day, and uh we had a uh meeting with uh Rockstone and Dice um and uh effectively with Roberto. So I met Roberto last year um to talk about gems of Iridicea, if I've said that right, I think I have. Um and this year I wanted to talk to him about another game, um, which I'll come to in a minute. But whilst we were waiting, because uh they were kind of finishing up on the kind of the demo and playthrough, we met with uh a designer called Hugo who was sharing the booth with uh Roberto, and we basically had a quick game of game called Trigger Warning. So trigger warning is kind of like a standoff, like a you know cowboy shootout. Um, and it's like a memory game, and you have a deck of cards, and in the deck you put in so many based on the number of players, and you start with some items in front of you, and on your turn, it's quite simple is that you choose to whether to resolve the gun to you or to your opponent or to another player, and the cards are either uh a bang, which means it's gone off, or a click. So if it's a bang, they lose a life. If it's a click, the person will get an item from the bag randomly. And there's items like twist things up, which is like a heal you on. You've got three lives. You can heal you on, you can steal an item off another player, you can do all these things. But the idea is kind of like Russian roulette, it's kind of that you need to memorize what's in that deck, um, how many, what's coming out, where do you think that's gonna go until basically you're the last one standing. And it was a quick, fun little game. And uh, you know, bless you, go, he basically gave myself and Mark a copy. Um, so yeah, we'll we'll get that out. But it's a nice party game. Um, it was good fun to

Power Punch!

SPEAKER_00 32:27

play. Uh, but once uh Roberto freed up, me and Mark put on our boxing gloves. We decided to try and duke it out in Power Punch, and I've been excited about Power Punch. I think in my preview I I'd I kind of highlighted that it was an honourable mention. And the reason why it was an honourable mention is because I've not heard anything about it, and it was mainly the art style that drew me in, and yeah, and I didn't really know much about it at the time when I was pulling my list. So I wanted to try it out on on you know during the show, and that's why I had the meeting set up. So, what is Power Punch? Well, Power Punch is definitely inspired. Uh, I got this from Roberto, it's definitely inspired by Punch Out uh or Super Punch Out. So, you know, this is a video game where you're playing a boxer and you're kind of looking through them as you're taking down the opponents and and learning the patterns of the opponents, and it's it's definitely inspired by that game in the way it looks and feels. Um, but this time you're going head to head against an opponent. So it's you know, 1v1 duking it out. So you pick your boxer, which has an ability, and you pick your coach, which has another ability, and um, and away you go, ding ding, round one. Um, so what happens is you've got a bunch of dice, I think it's five dice, and you've got a time die or the round die, and you roll it on your turn, and then the round die will have a number of one, two, and three, and then you'll have a round dial of which you will you'll move that that counter off to uh uh so many segments, and that's basically how long the round's gonna last. So, again, quite thematic with boxing. Um, and on the dice, you've got like left, left jab, and you know, right hook, um, you've got uh the power punch logo, and you've got uh half half a heart, that's right, half a heart, and uh and um energy, some lightning bolts, some energy. Um, so the energy is used to kind of spend to re-roll your dice rolls. So if you don't like what you've got, you can use energy to do that. However, if you use too much, you become defenseless and you can't keep your hands up, and that's not good. Um, so effectively, your most cases you need two of a symbol to actually activate that that um power or thing. So, for example, you need two lefts to do a left hit and two rights to do a right hit. So you're kind of manipulating the dice yachtsy style to try and get what you need. Um, and if you roll or resolve a power punch, there's a track in the middle of the ball between you where it's like a tug of war system. You're pulling this dice towards you, or they're pulling this dice towards them. And the idea is if you get that dice towards you, you get to roll it and it does this really cool thing, which might be a knockout, it might be uh something else entirely, it could be fully healing, whatever. Um, so there you go, back and forth. So once you kind of deal your attack, the opponent deals their defense to try and match the symbols up to cancel them out. Um, again, providing they've got enough energy to do that. So you go back and forth, back and forth. And as the start of the round, you can't use your abilities until it gets out of this uh yellow zone. Once the time dial gets out, all bets are off. And Mark had an ability where his coach basically told his boxer to headbutt me, um, which meant his crowd favour kind of went down and it dragged that that dice towards me. But Christ, yeah, that just getting a headbutt and losing health. But what's quite fun with this is you've got uh this uh adrenaline token on your health track, and as the the as you get hit and hit and hit, once that meets you you basically become this like fury mode, and all your hits do double damage, so you get really dangerous the more kind of closer to to knockout uh you get. And the idea is when you get knocked out, you put a plaster onto your health track, so you actually have less health for next time, which is again quite thematic. But it's all done in this cartoony style, and you can't help have fun with it. And we had a nice dice tray, which we we saw the the final version coming, and it looks like a boxing ring, so that was quite cool. So, yeah, I I I'm hoping to get Roberto onto the channel and we'll have a little bit of an interview and a deeper dive on this game because I just think it's a fun game. Um, and something I can play with uh my son for sure. I can see me and Josh playing this. Um uh it's just yeah, I had a blast with it, it was a great way of ending Thursday.

Gaming Rules! Meet-Up

SPEAKER_00 36:47

So once we were done, we headed out to um uh basically Fritz Patrick's. So Fritzpatrick's is uh a German-Irish bar, um, pretty much right near the halls uh of Esmond on on kind of like a high street. And uh we caught up with the other guys there, and I had to have my annual injection of of schnitzel. It's it's a thing. For the past four years I've had schnitzel at that place, and that's all I'll ever order. Um, because why the hell not? Because that's what we want to do. Um, so I had my schnitzel, bloody enjoyed that, had a couple of beers, um, and you know, basically the whole event is is Paul Grogan's Gaming Rules event, and and he invites all of his Patreon supporters, you know, friends, media, and you know, to come have a beer, play some games, convers, you know, have some conversations, and it's just a good fun event to do whilst whilst in Asson. Um,

Carpet Racers

SPEAKER_00 37:41

so the final game I'm gonna talk about is Carpet Racers. And I managed to pick that copy up um from Pink Troubadour earlier in the day, and I thought that's a quite a nice game to play in the pub. Um, so I popped it out, got it ready, read the rules, fairly straightforward, and and away we go. So carpet racers, what is carpet racers? Well, carpet races is a game designed by Thomas Hollock, and it's a social deduction racing game, which I've never heard of. Well, I've heard of social deduction games, but not racing games with that kind of mechanic. So the idea is that you are um you've got a kind of radio control cock uh controller, and in there it opens up, and in there is the car, one of the five colour cars that you are, so it's like a micro trip. And so let's say I'm the red car, but I don't actually know I'm the red car. What I do know is the player to the right of me is the yellow car. So I have that information. I'm not yellow, and one of the others, but I could be any of the other four, and everyone has that same sort of information. Um, but the whole premise of the game is that you've got your hand of cards, you're playing a card, on the card's got movement points in the top left, and let's say it's five, and then you've got the two coloured cars on the top of the car, which let's say is I don't know, yellow and green, and you have to move both of them once, but you can divide the movement points between them. So you're moving two cars on the track, and first off, if you hit a trap, which is little tokens on on the track, if you hit them, you resolve them. Um, and that could be, oh no, I've lost the boost, which I'll cover in a minute, or it could be, oh no, I get a stop uh uh symbol, which is not great for the end of the game. Um, or it could be yes, I'll get a radio control uh discovery track and you go up um the track and get a bonus. So it's not all bad, but mainly it's not great. Then you resolve the track bonuses. So on the track, there are some spaces that give you bonuses for landing one of the cars on there, and you pick one and you do the thing, um, which might be I get more traps, um, because you can hold up to three traps in in your controller, um, and you can also set those traps um to to basically help hinder other players once you start deducing what's going on. So, yeah, so that was done. Um, and you kind of then have your turn, your card has a main action on it, you then do the main action, and then depending on the bottom of the card, you might seed more traps onto the the track. And that's the game. That's pretty much the game. You go around, you're doing this thing, the car's got three laps before the game ends, and the only way to discover um what other players are properly, and you only get to know uh three uh things. So you discovered one at the beginning, and you get two opportunities to look at other players' uh controllers, and that's up this discovery track on the left hand side. It has a magnifying glass, and you can have a look. So then you can deduce, well, you're you're blue. Okay, you're blue, you're yellow, and I know you're green. So I'm either one of two. So then you're looking at what people are doing. Which cars are they moving? Well, who do they think they are? And you're trying to deduce who you are. And again, you come down to a game at the end, and I was either pink or blue, and I invested in blue because you can get these boost tokens that look like batteries, and there's one for every coloured car. When you collect those, you put them in your play area, and when you move that car, you move the the boosts, additional um kind of movement points to that car. And I just went in blue, so everyone's like, Yeah, he thinks he's blue. And obviously, one player at that table was probably laughing because I was not remotely blue, I was pink, and I was last, so it didn't work. And uh yeah, so everyone who played, and we had a uh uh a new player join us, um, Ken, I believe his name was, and he sat down, he joined us for the game. So we had a full five player, and and I think everyone enjoyed that game um because it was light, it's what we needed, I think, for the end of the day. It wasn't too heavy, and yeah, it was just you know, just good fun. All good fun, all good

PHASE C: END OF PART ONE

SPEAKER_00 41:45

stuff. So, what we're gonna do is is gonna split this Essen episode into two parts. So I'm gonna finish part one right here. Um, I don't know what you're thinking. It's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to go. Um don't worry, I've got you covered. Just check out part two, which will be coming soon, and uh effectively I'll be covering more games and more things that have been going on. Um, so if you enjoyed the show so far, please give me a like, subscribe, comment, engage, and all that good stuff. Um, and uh yeah, I will hope to see you on the next episode. But as always, you only grow old when you stop playing, so don't. So see you later. Bye bye!