I haven’t queried manufacturers to find out the cost of the game at ~64 dice and 4 players, but I don’t expect it to be cheap. I know that keeping a laser focus on unit economics will be very important if we want to publish a profitable game.
Ways to Keep Costs Down
A rule of thumb is that board games retail for about 5x their landed cost. This is because games sell into distribution at about 18-20% msrp, which works out to a 50% unit margin. For reference Nut Hunt which we are now selling for $39 (we recently reduced the price from $49) had a landed cost of $9.68. The breakdown was:
Manufacture & Component Testing – $29,415 / 4,000 = $7.35 per game
Freight – $6,154 / 3,732 = $1.65 per game
Customs Inspection Fees – $2,529 / 3,732 = $0.68 per game
This was for a 4,000 unit print run with most of the units shipped Stateside. The $2,529 customs inspection fee was due to our container being pulled for inspection (which is a rare occurrence).
As you can see, we are breaking the 5x rule for Nut Hunt.
Our original MSRP was $49, but the $39 price point resonates more with consumers and is in line with peers (also a family weight gateway game although a bit higher complexity & component skew than its closest comps).
I’m a sucker for a good fishing themed board game. For some reason, fishing of the cardboard variety is far better than the real-life kind. Conservas is a solo bag building game from Scott Almes, a designer that I really enjoy. Even though I’m not a fan of solo gaming, Conservas has its hooks in me and keeps reeling me in.
The Daily Catch
In this game, you’ll run a fishing and canning operation off the coast of Spain. Each season starts with a single boat, some cash in hand, and a bag of tokens that is dictated for that season. Conservas takes you through 12 months of fishing using a spiral bound book. Each month will have a unique win condition, some have special rules, and two difficulty goals to reach.
In each round of the season, you’ll draw five tokens blindly from the bag for each boat you own and the Open Water card on the table. You’ll have to assign the five tokens before drawing five more, eventually filling each available card.
Each boat in the game has a catch requirement that has to be met. You can meet this requirement with fish tokens or the worthless water tokens that are clogging up the bag. All the other tokens are placed at the bottom of the card, showing that they are still in the “open water” and not on the boat.
To Can or Not to Can
As you pull the sea life on board, you have to make decisions on how to use these tokens. Each season has spots in the book that pay cash if you choose to can your fish. Money can be tight in this game and you’ll need cash to purchase new boats to expand your saltwater empire.
The canning requirements can sometimes be a single fish type, or multiples of a specific fish in order to get paid. In some seasons, you’ll earn more money as you can specific types of fish. In other seasons, you can saturate the market, earning less money if you keep canning the same type of catch.
Your fish tokens can also be spent on Upgrade cards which give your operation some nice perks. Conservas does a great job of giving players multiple avenues to solve the puzzle. Some Upgrade cards definitely feel more powerful than others. You’ll start to look for some of these after your first couple games.
Before the end of each round, you can purchase a new boat and wipe the Upgrade and Boat cards to get a fresh set of three on the table. During the night phase of the round, you’ll spend your cash to maintain your fleet of boats as you head into the next day. By the way, the punny boat names in the game are fantastic.
Conservation is Key
The fish you catch in Conservas is almost as important as the fish you leave in the sea. During the night phase of each round, any fish that were in the Open Water (this includes the fish under the boats that were not caught) will spawn new tokens. If you leave three mussels uncaught, you’ll spawn that number of mussels minus one. This is vital to making sure that you have fish in the bag as you move from round to round.
Conservas is all about making sure that you don’t overfish the sea and long term planning to meet the goals of that season. In my first two games, I bought a fleet of boats too early and sold every fish I could. I found myself grabbing water token after water token, unable to fulfill any orders and failing pretty quickly.
Since Conservas is a bag builder, a big part of the game is keeping a mental tally of what you believe is in the bag. Unless an Upgrade card gives you the chance, you cannot look into the bag to survey what’s available.
Trial and Error
While I love the artwork and I’m a fan of the designer, I was immediately repelled because it was a solo game. I’m an extravert that loves this hobby so much because of the social atmosphere that gaming brings. I gave Conservas a try and it’s been one of my favorite gaming experiences this year.
Each game of Conservas takes around twenty minutes and there are times when you know the mistakes you made in round four are going to sink your operation. The game plays quickly and I’ve gotten into the habit of playing back to back games because of it. Also, because I’m terrible at the game.
I only found success after five attempts at the first season of the game. Since then, I’ve crawled my way past three more seasons. The game is tough and sometimes I’m just barely clearing the standard difficulty. Each time I fail a season, I take a look at where I went wrong. Most of the time, it’s a mix of overfishing or not using the Upgrades that were available to me.
There’s an economy to Conservas that works really well. It’s a tight game that rarely leaves you confident that you’ll succeed until the last final round of a season. This is why coming back to the game and enjoying its twenty minute playtime is so enjoyable.
Final Thoughts
Conservas is a perfect storm of theme, art, and gameplay that has me excited every time I sit down with the game. I could never see myself playing solo games on a regular basis, but Conservas has shown me how enjoyable they can be. My time with A Gentle Rain, another amazing solo game, was all about relaxing and finding a moment of peace. Conservas is all about pressing my luck, practicing moderation, and finding a delicate balance to succeed.
If you had told me a couple months ago that a solo board game would be one of my biggest surprises of the year, I would have laughed in your face. But here I am. Sitting alone at my kitchen table, smelling like an old sea captain, playing a board game by myself, and loving every minute of it.
The historical power struggles occurring during the period covered by Baltic Empires (1558-1721) did not happen in a vacuum, but were of great importance to the interest to major powers on the edges of the map of Baltic Empires: England, France, the Netherlands, the Habsburg-controlled Holy Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. Each of these powers were in their own way affected by affairs in the Baltic region, and in turn attempted to influence events there to their own advantage by various means. The scale of this ranged across the spectrum from minor trade deals to outright invasions and attempts at dictating foreign policy. The focus on this article is therefore on these foreign powers and how their interference and intervention in Baltic affairs are represented in the game.
The map of Baltic Empires has many areas that are uncontrolled by the playable powers at the start of the game. These are called Independents, and most can be conquered by the players. Along the edge of the map there are also some special areas that can never be entered or controlled by the players. These are the “Habsburg Lands”, the “Ottoman & Tatar Lands”, and in the North Sea, the “Maritime Powers” – an amalgamation of France, England and The Netherlands. Independent units start in these areas and more can be placed each round by the Prussian player (see my previous article on Prussia in Baltic Empires for an explanation on how and why). During their turn, players may spend thalers (the money resource of Baltic Empires) to ally with Independent units and control them during their turn. This simple mechanism in itself does a great job at representing the minor interventions in Baltic affairs, where rulers could secure outside assistance in their wars.
The Dramatis Personae (DP) mechanism, where players add a card to their Power Mat and gain the abilities of that card, adds another layer of showing the actions of admirals, rulers, and diplomats from these foreign powers that played a major role in the history of the Baltic region. In addition to the DP cards mentioned in this article, there are several other DP cards representing individuals from outside the Baltic region who were not representatives of these major powers, but rather of the major banking houses of Europe or simply individuals whose deeds as merchants, industrialists or military thinkers had a big impact on the events covered by the game.
The Maritime Powers(The Netherlands, England, and France)
The Sound Due was a source of immense wealth to the Danish kings, as the flow of trade between the Baltic ports and England and the Netherlands all had to pass through the narrow Danish-controlled waters. It was collected at Kronborg Castle in Elsinore (of Hamlet fame) and was from 1548 onwards based on the value of a ship´s cargo. In order to combat fraud, the local authorities there were authorized to buy a cargo at the declared price if they had a suspicion that it was deliberately set lower than the market value (the effect of the Sound Due in Baltic Empires, and how it generates thalers for Denmark is described in detail in my earlier article on Denmark-Norway). This toll was a source of immense irritation to the maritime powers who were heavily dependent on their Baltic trade for timber, flax, hemp, grain and various other goods to sustain their fleets and growing urban populations.
In Baltic Empires this trade with the Dutch and English is represented in the “Maritime Trade Phase”, where players may trade a number of their collected goods depending on their position on the Mercantile Hegemon Track, and in exchange draw an equal number of special Maritime Trade Goods. These are either rare Goods types not found on the map (and thus valuable for the players since you pay for things with sets of different Goods) or Thalers (which are even more valuable as they are wild-card goods and are the only resource you can use to pay upkeep and repay loans). Besides its economic importance, the Baltic region was an integral part of the European balance of power. As such the region was of interest to major powers such as France, whose very active policy of subsidies and alliances meant that several of the wars fought in the Baltic during the period covered by the game (1558-1721) were to a large degree proxy wars or parallel wars to those fought by Louis the XIV in western Europe.
Cornelis Tromp(1629-1691)
Tromp was a Dutch naval officer sent to Denmark during the Scanian War against Sweden (1675-79) to serve as an admiral in the Danish Navy. He performed well in this role and was instrumental in the victory in the battle of Öland in 1676. As an officer Tromp was infamous for his insubordination. He was a very aggressive commander who relished the fight, and as a result often had to change ships during battle, but he was nevertheless popular with his crews despite the danger he put them in. At home, without fighting to distract him, he had the reputation of being a heavy drinker, so much so that many inns at the time were named after him.
In Baltic Empires, the Tromp card represents an alliance with the Dutch, rewarding you with a special Leader unit. Leader units move and fight as normal units of their type (in this case a Ship of the Line), but with some benefits that either effect the unit or all friendly units with it, as detailed on the card. Tromp´s skill as a successful naval commander is represented by an ability which transforms one enemy “Probably Hit” result into a “Miss”, thus potentially reducing friendly losses when Tromp. This might seem counterintuitive considering Tromps record of daring and danger, but these exact qualities also ensured that naval battles would be decided far quicker and in a more decisive manner, which ensured overall lower losses than those seen in a protracted battle.
Another benefit to this Leader unit is that, for most Powers, the cost of a Ship of the Line unit is higher than the cost of a Dramatis Personae card, so if you were considering building ships anyway, the draw of a card that gives you an even more potent unit for a lower cost is often a welcome bonus.
A painting of the battle of Öland (1676), showing Dutch and Danish ships fighting against the Swedish navy
Coenraad van Beuningen(1622-1693)
Van Beuningen was the Dutch Republic’s most experienced diplomat, burgomaster of Amsterdam for many years, as well as the director of the Dutch East India Company. He keenly understood the importance for the Dutch Republic of not having a single power controlling the entrance to the critical Baltic region and is credited with saying that: “The keys of Öresund lay in a dock in Amsterdam”. Van Beuningen was a highly intelligent man with interests in art, theology and natural sciences, but also with a strong interest in mysticism, astrology, dream-interpretation, and supernatural wonders. The shock of losing his fortune through speculation in shares in 1688 made him bipolar, and he was locked up after writing letters to the ecclesiastical authorities about the coming apocalypse and painting Kabbalistic signs on his house. He died in poverty, leaving only a cape and two dressing gowns, a few pieces of furniture, and “a man’s portrait” by Rembrandt valued at seven guilders (three dollars).
In Baltic Empires, Coenrad van Beuningen directly reflects Dutch foreign policy and the goal of opening up the Sound to Dutch trade. This would happen by creating a situation where no single power held both shores of the Sound. By aligning your Power with the Dutch views on the Sound (in game terms, having van Beuningen in your Court) you are rewarded with beneficial trade deals and access to lots of capital. This is represented with the +2 modifier to the Mercantile Hegemon track, as well as increasing your Loan Limit. Should the situation in the Sound be resolved in favor of the Dutch you are rewarded even further with annual subsidies.
Van Beuningen can be useful to all players, as there is no requirement for your power to be actively part of events in the Sound, although he will likely appeal more to those powers who are already heavily committed to the affairs of the Sound: Denmark and Sweden. For the former, Beuningen is obviously mostly interesting if you fail to keep your control of Scania, in which case he helps cushioning the blow of losing the Sound Due Thalers and let you pursue other paths to victory – which is more or less exactly what happened in the Baltics after Sweden acquired control of Scania in 1658 and Dutch policies shifted from supporting Sweden to one of supporting Denmark defend their islands from the Swedes.
George Rooke (1650-1709)
Goerge Rooke was an English naval officer who saw extensive action against the Dutch, French, and Spanish during his long career. In the Baltic context he is mainly known for commanding the Anglo-Dutch Squadron that cooperated with the Swedish fleet in 1700. This squadron attacked Copenhagen and made it possible for King Charles XII to land and knock Denmark out of the Great Northern War (1700-21) in its opening phases. After the short Danish campaign Rooke would fight in the War of Spanish Succession (1701-14). Here he would capture the Spanish treasure fleet in the Battle of Vigo Bay in 1702 and command the Allied naval forces that captured Gibraltar in 1704, where a statue of him was raised in 2004.
The Baltic Empires version of George Rooke closely mirrors the historical Rooke. He is represented as a Ship of the Line Leader unit that gives you control over Independent units in the same sea area and must enter the game in the in the North or Norwegian Sea. Due to his entry restrictions Rooke will likely only be interesting for the Danish player, or for Powers that want to contest Denmark’s control of the seas. His benefits are highly situational, and if the North Sea is empty of Independent ships or if Denmark´s naval situation is too strong and secure he will likely be passed over for the other four cards available that round, or any other pressing concerns troubling the players at the time. But if the English offers of naval support come at a critical time and the conditions are right the questions of who gets George Rooke will cause lots of angst in the Production Phase, and will be one of the most talked about events after the game.
Thomas Roe(1581-1644)
Thomas Roe was an English diplomat whose voyages ranged from Central America to India, and who worked as ambassador to the Mughal Empire, the Ottoman Empire. and the Holy Roman Empire. During the Thirty Years War (1618-48) he brokered a peace between Sweden and Poland and strove to get Denmark and Sweden to join the Protestant anti-Habsburg coalition.
In Baltic Empires, Thomas Roe is shown more as an abstract representation of British diplomatic and economic pressure in general, and less as a representation of Roe’s personal achievements specifically. He allows the Power allied with Britain (represented by having Roe in your Court) to choose any one of the other powers in the game and effectively cripple their Maritime Trade Phase by limiting them to only trading a single Good. As a side benefit, he also increases your Power’s position on the Mercantile Track to represent increased trade with England. During a game the former is a hugely interesting power to wield as it can be used both to hurt enemies but also as a tool for diplomacy/blackmail, and it is my experience that Thomas Roe is a card that increases the intensity of the table talk.
King Louis XIV(1638-1715)
Louis XIV, the “Sun King”, was king of France from 1643 and his reign of 72 years is the longest recorded reign of any monarch in European history. Louis’s France was emblematic of absolutism as exemplified in the quote: “L’état, c’est moi”(“I am the state”). His revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685 abolished the rights of the Protestant Huguenots and the resultant stream of Huguenot refugees to the Baltic region brought with them valuable technical skills. In the Baltic context he is mainly known for thoroughly intertwining Baltic power politics with the greater European power politics, as he sought to distract his Habsburg enemies by subsidizing the standing army of his ally Sweden.
No game on early modern power politics and war would be complete without Louis XIV! In Baltic Empires, the Louis XIV card reflects the massive impact on the Baltic scene of the Sun King’s many wars against his English, Dutch, and Habsburg rivals. His effects are two-fold, and one of only a handful of multi-category cards (Immediate and Permanent effects in this case). Upon getting Louis in your court the strong French armies will cause an abrupt diversion of Habsburg attention away from the Baltic and towards the borders with France, as represented by the removal of all independent units in the Habsburg Lands at that time. As with George Rooke above, the impact of this effect is largely situational. His other effect, representing the substantial subsidies Louis offered Sweden to maintain a large army at all times (so France’s German opponents would always have to watch their back), is a permanent effect. A -2 reduction of your Power’s upkeep costs is a significant boost, and especially so since upkeep costs can only be paid using ever scarce Thalers. Just as in history, an alliance with Louis XIV will allow your Power to maintain a far larger army without going bankrupt.
That’s all from the Netherlands, England, and France! In the second part of this article we will look at some personalities from the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire who played an important role in Baltic affairs.
In the game of rubamazzetto the cards are shuffled and four are placed on the table and then distributed among the players to the left, so each player has three cards. Each player takes a turn. When a card on the table matches the player can sweep it by placing their card above the card and taking it. Same goes if a sum of cards on the table sums up to a player card. The player can also take the other player’s pile if the top card matches the player card by placing the card on top of it and taking it (hence, the Italian name, ruba mazzetto AKA Steal Cards). There cards are placed back on the table when they finish and each player keeps on taking a card until all cards on the table are gone. At the end, the player with most cards wins.
Basically every single year I’ve worked for Shut Up & Sit Down, I’ve typed out the words:
“it’s been a weird year”
…and 2025 is proving to be absolutely no exception! We’ve just put out a sponsored video onto the channel, and that feelsweird. I’ve taken some time, below, to chat about why.
The unpredictability, the volatility, the pig-headedness of these tariffs create a huge amount of uncertainty for just about everyone. We’ve been asked about what we’re going to say about it all, but the pace of change makes it tricky! Are they here to stay, or will they be scrapped once cooler heads prevail? Either way, the livelihoods of those affected will have changed significantly for the worse. It’s horrible. We want to help, where possible, and we’re putting together a bit of a plan should the situation stick around.
The tariffs have had a knock-on effect on us, too. Many of the fine folks who have helped us out financially over the years have understandably had to pause their support of the site; as with the potential for huge economic pressure looming, we are a luxury atop a luxury! With board games potentially becoming a far more expensive hobby within its largest market, this drop in interest feels inevitable. And tariffs are not the sole factor, here. The gradual erosion of folks’ disposable income over the last few years is the reason you’ve seen us explore other ways of maybe keeping the lights on – though it didn’t feel like there was any way of communicating this change without feeling like we’d also be pressuring folks towards donating.
I don’t want to play a tiny violin and make this massive, scary shift about us; the publishers with far more on the line, with funds tied up in product? They have got it far worse off, and we want to put our energy behind helping them wherever possible – we don’t exist, and our hobby doesn’t exist, without them. But I wouldn’t be showing the whole picture here if I didn’t acknowledge the immediate effects on us, and how they are affecting our decisions.
That’s the thrust of it – we want to make sure that we’re sustaining ourselves as a platform that might get people to the table, when the industry needs folks playing their board games. We want to be making great videos about those board games until we’re old and grey, and the occasional sponsorship will keep us afloat to do just that.
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Speaking personally, I am immensely grateful for this job, because it’s something I love to do. We are all salaried at a reasonable wage, but the job itself is a lot of the reward. Whilst I personally was pretty hungry for growth, and numbers getting bigger… right now? I will have lived a contented life if this channel stays exactly as it is, with a community as lovely and easygoing as you lot. Making mostly dumb, occasionally smart videos about board games? It’s a joy, and a great privilege!
If you have supported the site over the years – Thank You, Thank You, Thank You. It’s because of your generosity that we get to make sometimes goofy (and sometimes quite serious!) videos about cardboard, for everyone.
Donations make up the vast majority of the revenue that keeps us going. To have the time to really take care with every video and podcast – to make them special, and weird, and honest? We take that honour and obligation very seriously, and as our “boss” I hope you can continue to be proud of our direction, and the work we’re doing.
Growth is neat, profit is cool, but stability is a lot more valuable to me – to us! The odd sponsored video now and again is not to line our personal pockets and juice our platform for pennies, but to stabilise the channel against instability in all forms. We wouldn’t be taking it on if it wasn’t necessary for that purpose.
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So, importantly, what are our big picture policies regarding this stuff?
First off – we’re never going to put anything in front of you without absolutely screaming it is sponsored. I think that we’ve done decently well with this in the past, but we’re going to make sure it’s clear as crystal where the lines between coverage and promotion lie.
Secondly – any sponsored videos we make are in addition to, not instead of, our regular reviews. We don’t want to be committing time to these projects at the cost of our regular review output, and those videos will still be the same as they ever were.
Thirdly, and more vaguely, I suppose; we want to feel good about the thing we’re actually being sponsored by. We want any of these kinds of videos to be honest, because honesty is a core part of what we do!
It’s important to us that we’re able to chat openly about the thing we just played afterwards, and we won’t lean into anything that we wouldn’t normally bat for. We also don’t want to take sponsorships for completely irrelevant things, either – we’ve turned down a lot of sponsorships for your classic Nord VPNs, your Skillshares, your Raid: Shadow Legendses! We don’t want to waste your time with things that we don’t think would at least be of passing interest to you, because they will be things that are of passing interest to us!
Finally, we are not going to be doing sponsored videos for individual board games, or publishers, that could be mistaken for reviews. It’s important to us that our editorial voice is clear as day in our bread-and-butter coverage, and that’s not going to change. SHUX Previews, that we’ve done in the past, are a slightly different bag – those were deeply important in making SHUX a reality, and we think there’s no confusing them with a standard review.
Of course, this might all be a little hypothetical – we’re only going to take sponsorships that seem like they fit, and that let us talk about the thing we’re covering pretty openly! That might be a sufficiently irritating combo of things that this could be our first and last foray into this world! And, ultimately, we do want to return to the simplicity of donors, ad revenue (it’s much less than you think), and side projects like Wilmot’s Warehouse and SU&SD Presents to be our ways of making a living.
But to get to that future, we need to keep pottering along now.
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That’s a lot! Reading back through it, some of the language almost seems a little melodramatic for a pretty simple tweak to the channel – “YouTube channel contains Sponsored Content” isn’t a headline you’d expect to turn heads, but for a bunch of folks – including us – this will feel like a bit of a surprise.
I think of SU&SD as a channel that’s broadly been steered by real principle and transparency. We’ve been quite unique in entirely sticking to videos free from publisher influence, and have remained trustworthy over the years that we’ve been active in the space. We’re honest about what we like and why, and I think that makes us useful.
But the site began in a fundamentally different media landscape, and things have changed a hell of a lot. We’re still a very small fish in the grand scheme of YouTube, and fighting for that same level of exposure and support gets tougher every single year.
I’ve gone from starting at the site to heading it in what feels like a blink of an eye. I don’t want to ruin the thing that I fell in love with, and I don’t think I am! SU&SD fundamentally wants to do the best by the people who support it – and to do that it needs to exist. But, please do make your voice heard below if you have questions or concerns with anything I’ve rambled about here.
I’m hoping that you can see this as what it is, to me; that anything sponsored on the channel will be a fun little extra, with our bread-and-butter tabletop coverage remaining much the same as it’s ever been, come rain or shine.
Thanks for reading! Next week’s video is our regular, daft stuff.
7 Days to Live is a very simple survival game where you need to craft and survive an onslaught of enemies for a whole week. If you’re having trouble surviving in this game, don’t worry because we’re here to help with our 7 Days to Live Walkthrough.
What to do each day in 7 Days to Live
Currently, there really isn’t much you can do during the day in 7 Days to Live. Regardless, each day, make sure you do the following:
Kill at least 2 deer (and gather their meat)
Gather as much Wood as you can
Make sure you are back in your base before nighttime
Screenshot by The Escapist
You can also gather Scrap along the way, but it’s not necessary if you just want to survive. It’s extremely important you get back to base before nighttime because if you’re out in the wild, you’ll be cooked. For some reason, as soon as nighttime begins, your character will fall asleep (even if you’re climbing a ladder). When you wake up, you’ll be where you fell, but if you’re out in the woods and can’t see your base, there’s a good chance your game is going to end there. So, keep an eye on that watch (second slot on the hotbar) and get back to base before sundown. If you’re feeling bold, you can also try to take advantage of the events that occur each day, but don’t make it your priority. Keep this up for 7 days, and you should be a-ok.
What to do each night in 7 Days to Live
Screenshot by The Escapist
Just like daytime, nighttime also has it’s own routine. At nighttime you should do the following:
Use all your wood to craft walls (either wall is fine, but we prefer the smaller one)
Eat until your hunger is full (Cooked Deer Meat)
Place your newly crafted walls
(During nights 1 – 3) Get to higher ground
Kill any monster that pops in for a visit
At night, it’s important to stay at your base because your view is limited, and, more importantly, you’re going to get some nasty uninvited guests. To welcome your guests, you need to place proper barricades. During the first few nights, simply climbing on top of your base is good enough to make it until thenext day, but when night 4 rolls around, this won’t be enough.
A great strategy to work towards is to take two walls and build barricades with a gap that’s big enough for you to fire your gun through. A simple fence also works on the first few enemies, but not for the stronger ones. You should build one such structure by night 4. If you’re running low on wood, remember you can always take apart your main base and use the materials for the barricade.
All this aside, don’t forget to eat and stay warm. If you hold Raw Deer Meat next to a fireplace, you can turn it into Cooked Deer Meat. If you place a simple fireplace in your barricade, you’ll be golden. Personally, we always buy the Warm Coat before each match so we have one less thing to worry about, but you can do just fine without one.
Once you’ve built a structure you’re satisfied with, you should spend the rest of your time reinforcing the barricades with more layers, for extra protection. We know it seems like a lot, but if you follow this simple formula, you should have no problems making it until day 7 (at least until the game gets updated).
7 Days to Live Days 1 – 7 Walkthrough
Screenshot by The Escapist
Here’s a quick summary of what to do each day:
Day 1: Daily routine, Night: start crafting a simple fence (place a wall so it’s up to your character’s neck) around where you’d like your barricade to be, then head for the roof of your house and survive the night
Day 2: Daily routine, Night: try to finish the fence around your barricade, and again, climb on top of your house to survive the night
Day 3: Daily routine (and replace any damaged walls if any), Night: start building the top fence (above your character’s head; it should look like in the images), survive the night on the roof
Day 4: If you think you won’t be able to finish your barricade, ditch the daily routine and take apart your base for materials. Otherwise, do the daily routine, Night: Hide in your barricade, which should be finished by now, and survive the night
Day 5: Repair your barricade and daily routine; Night: Reinforce your barricade and hide inside it until nighttime
Days 6 and 7: Repeat Day 5 (fix broken walls, reinforce barricades, survive)
That’s all there is to it. Have fun surviving the week until that chopper arrives. Stay up to date with The Escapist for more 7 Days to Live guides.
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The cozy, rural life sim formula that the likes of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley have mastered continues to be the foundation for a steady stream of new games. All trying to tap into a more relaxing reality where fishing, farming, and flirting with your neighbors is all you have to worry about, they remain hugely popular. Dinkum, which puts an Australian spin on this core experience, has been building itself up in early access for quite some time now, but it’s now finally out in 1.0.
Just like Stardew Valley, Dinkum is the endeavor of just one developer – James Bendon – who’s been toiling away at the life game for many years. It launched in early access in 2022, but we were intrigued by it even earlier than that. It’s shown a lot of promise, and its 93% lifetime user score on Steam is a testament to that. So much promise, in fact, that Inzoi and Subnautica publisher Krafton has got behind it.
It’s set in a world inspired by Bendon’s homeland of Australia, so even though there are resources to gather, crops to grow, fish to net, and insects to catch, there will also be some typically dangerous Aussie animals to steer clear of. Or you can hunt and trap them, if you’ve got the right tools for the job.
Whereas Animal Crossing has you funneling repayments to a tight tanuki in your early hours, Dinkum gives you control of your town by not only letting you expand it to attract new residents, but charge them rent for staying there and earning a passive income alongside your farming, foraging, and other side hustles. Interior design fans will be pleased to hear that they’ll be catered for in Dinkum as well when it comes to home building and customization.
After years of updates, Dinkum has just received the biggest of them all – the update that pushes it into 1.0 – and it’s full of new features and improvements. The Creative Mode takes down pretty much all guardrails and restrictions, allowing you to free-build whatever you want, spawn in items, and change the time and weather. When it comes to putting guardrails back up so that you can make it a controlled co-op experience, there are loads of new island settings that will let you set custom permissions. The amount of stuff you can craft has also been expanded – Bendon says that you can now build two-seater planes that you can fly around your island and display cases for the bugs you catch.
Dinkum’s 1.0 update is now live, and if you want to try before you buy, a free Steam demo is available too.
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The F1 series’ Braking Point modes have always been an interesting thing to dip into, getting more refined as the TV-drama elements of the sport itself become more prominent. The mode may not be what you’re looking for if you’re in the mood to go all-in on the real-world simulation aspect of the game, or just stick to being out on track as much as possible, but there’s a place – and an audience – for it.
Drama’s always been part of the draw, don’t get me wrong, but it feels more central to how we all interact with our watching of cars going round in circles today. That’s for better or worse, depending on who you are, but if you’re looking for a bit of the dramz to spice up your Sundays, the third instalment of Braking Point in F1 25 sounds pretty promising.
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“When we introduced characters of Braking Point in ’21, and then when we introduced Konnersport – the team – back in ‘23, it was kind of really important to us that it felt authentic,” creative director Gavin Cooper explained when introing this year’s mode. “It didn’t feel realistic that those characters could come in and start winning championships right from the outset.”
Braking Point 3 changes that. Konnersport is now at the front following a winter with some fresh investment and a strong opening test, set to take on the existing real-world frontrunners of F1. Cooper alluded to a “key event that happens early in the story which throws the team into chaos”, and from the brief bit I played, it looks like the ongoing drama of the Butler family long-time players’ll be familiar with is set to still be a key cog this time around.
Following the events of Braking Point 2, Aiden Jackson and Callie Mayer are the driver pairing, and you’ll be able to choose which of them to race as for key races and events in the story.
Codemasters says it’s put a bigger focus on this offering more player agency this time around, with some “different on-track objectives and narrative elements” popping up depending on who you pick. You’ll also get an “alternative ending” to the story depending on which you’ve raced as more often, so we’ll have to see whether those feel distinct enough to be worth trying both.
Jackson or Mayer – it’s your call. | Image credit: EA/Codemasters
I picked Mayer for the first two events I got time to play through, one of which was just testing in Bahrain and took the form of your standard ‘do a few laps to get comfortable with the car and nail a certain lap time’ affair. The first proper race at Imola was a bit more exciting, with you being plunged into the action mid-race after losing ground in a turn one collision with a certain Dutch Red Bull driver (points for accuracy to Codemasters there).
Starting from about seventh, the goal was to get back the podium by the chequered flag and earn some additional points by getting back past Verstappen prior to a certain lap in the process. Since this was the first bit of the game I played, I wanted to get a feel for the car and so opted for about the most minimalistic level of driver aids I can generally cope with alongside a pretty steep difficulty.
It’s fair to say that with the cars up ahead already well strung out given the late stage of the race, I really struggled to make any ground. Knocking things back down made it thoroughly doable though, so more than anything, this was a lesson in how much the higher-level AI is tuned to face either folks running on rails with plenty of aids, or the elite of the elite.
Codemasters says it’s rebalanced the difficulty levels this year, with the addition of a fourth hardness rung to the existing three supposedly having the aim of making it easier for everyone to find their ideal setting. However, in this brief hands-on, the cut-off between too hand and too easy did still seem to be missing in-between that’d constitute the exact best match for my pace. That said, such a thing is nearly impossible for developers to help you nail down without endless tweaking, since everyone’s pace will vary from track to track and condition to condition.
Where will Callie’s story lead? I’m quite keen to find out. | Image credit: EA
Going back to the off-track drama of Braking Point, that new investment I mentioned has come from the mode’s long-time rich guy Davidoff Butler, father of both Callie Mayer and Devon Butler, the latter of whom is now a sort of team advisor after being forced to retire from racing in BP2. Jackson’s in there too, as is team boss Casper Akkerman, but it looks like the relationships between Davidoff and his kids are going to be key to a lot of the drama.
While I’m not all that invested in the tale Braking Point’s been weaving to this point, I’m at least interested to see how this year’s edition advances Mayer’s story as a fictional first female F2 champion; now stepping up for a full season in the big time. Real-world F1, lest we forget, hasn’t had a female driver actually be entered for a full race weekend since Giovanna Amati back in 1992 (though there has been testing and development work done for teams much more recently by the likes of Jamie Chadwick, Jessica Hawkins, and Tatiana Calderón). Shout-out, also, to the all-female F1 Academy series that’s been a part of the F1 support series package for a good couple of years, now.
To bring the tale to life, Codemasters has invested in some Nvidia Audio2Face facial animation tech, which feeds into a more detailed and realistic setup for press conferences and interviews, allowing you to actually watch your driver deliver the answer you’ve picked. Plus, once you’ve run through the story, you’re now given the option to import your Konnersport team into the MyTeam 2.0 mode, so you can carry on beyond the single season of Braking Point, though obviously in that mode’s regular team management fashion.
Though, whether you’ll be engrossed enough to want to do that once you reach the end of Braking Point 3, or whether you’ll have had your fill of the Drive To Survive-ish drama, remains to be seen.
Bringing a game to market is an expensive and time consuming proposition (follow along as we take Froggy Bazaar from an idea to publication & beyond). It’s easy to over-estimate the value of your game idea, and underestimate the value of the rest of the process of bringing a game to market.
In short, even if your game rocks it isn’t worth it for anyone else to steal it.
Stealing a game would also come with a lot of risk. The indie design community is small and close-knit. And indie game consumers likely wouldn’t be forgiving towards a publisher who stole another designer’s game.
You do occasionally see successful games re-implemented like Cards Against Humanity broadly re-implemented Apples to Apples with NSFW content. But, I don’t know of any instances where an indie design was ripped off especially before publication.
So, get to playtesting!
Where to Find Playtesters
I like to think of playtesting in a couple of categories each with a different audience, and with different goals. Where you go to find playtesters in each stage will vary. And, as you playtest more you’ll be sourcing playtesters more broadly outside of your immediate circle.
Early Stage
The earliest stages of playtesting you’ll be figuring out whether your game is fun and functional. This will mostly be playing by yourself and roping family and friends into games while you iterate on rules.
Where to find early stage playtesters:
Mid Stage
As your game progresses you’ll be focused on developing the game, balancing it, and finding your audience. In some playtests you’ll be focused on getting feedback on specific mechanisms or interactions, in others you’ll want broad feedback, and in others you’ll be focused on what gamers your game gels with.
Before I draw a new card, there are two lore counters on it.
I draw the card, and a new lore token is added, causing the third ability of the saga to trigger.
This third triggered ability goes on the stack.
Before the ability resolves, I cast Clockspinning, indicating that I intend to use it by removing a lore counter (the third one, obviously) from the Saga.
The stack should therefore be formed as follows:
On top, Clockspinning, causing the removal of a lore counter, which resolves first;
Below that, the trigger of the third ability of the Saga.
When all of this will be resolved, finally there is the check of the exact number of lore counters on The Saga.
The Saga will not be sacrificed, because after the check the number of the lore counters is not three yet.
This way I think I will be able to use the third ability of the Saga a second time.
Published: Apr 24, 2025 09:15 am