Beyond the Sun - Playing with Friends

[@snakebyte036]

As someone who's been hoping you'd record some live plays for a while now, I'm so happy you are finally giving it a shot! You did a good job with the camera work, and the banter with your friends is great. Your normal tutorials are good for learning games, but this kind of video serves that purpose while also being entertaining enough that I'd still want to watch for games that I already know. And as you said in the vlog, being able to choose games you want to play instead of only doing what you get sponsored for is a nice bonus. I'm used to playing on TTS so it doesn't bother me at all. Maybe these videos won't be for everyone, but I think this is excellent and I really have no complaints. Looking forward to more of these in the future!

[@JonGetsGames]

Great to hear you enjoyed this, thanks!

[@spr5x4]

I have always been impressed with your ability to realistically simulate three players in the vast majority of your playthroughs. But, seeing you play against your friends is great. Hope you can do more of this type of content

[@JonGetsGames]

Glad you enjoyed it Sean, thanks :)

[@undersci]

I dont usually love live plays because I often can't tell what's happening in the game. But this is so clear and sharp that I'm a convert. More please!

[@iminay]

I started watching this series when I ran across the Anno 1800 play-through and have since watched every single one. Absolutely love the group dynamic and the playhroughs are a ton of fun. Thank you for putting out great content!

[@JonGetsGames]

This is so nice to hear, thanks!

[@fmargueirat]

I loved this new format. They feel like an improvement over your already great playthroughs.

[@ionutsandu2830]

I was initially skeptical about the idea of TTS videos, but this is fantastic. Amazing quality, and great editing makes this so easy to follow. Jon, I should not have doubted you for a second :) Nice to "meet" Anastasia and Nick!

[@JonGetsGames]

I'm really glad you decided to give it a chance!

[@TomHickey]

This is by far the best produced TTS playthrough out there. Great camera direction & editing. I really enjoyed the interactions with your friends as well, was great to see them join in. Look forward to seeing more!

[@JonGetsGames]

Great to hear, thanks Tom :)

[@benw636]

100% agree here. I almost always have shied away from TTS because I never enjoyed watching them. This has changed my mind. Just needed to be done well. Amazed that this is how well it turned out this early.

[@samfarley4770]

Count me as one more skeptical of the TTS model, but it turns out I just didn’t like how others produced videos with it. Having everything clearly visible and having smooth camera transitions made this *gasp* enjoyable to watch. Also, I love this game. Hesitant at first, but good reviews and the option to try it on BGA made me give it a shot. Lots of fun, and I’m excited to see what the expansion will bring, as it seems like something that can add more (techs/systems/etc) without bloating the game much.

[@JonGetsGames]

I'm really glad you gave this a try despite your skepticism, and even more glad you ended up enjoying it :)

[@dodicify]

Really love this new format Jon. I don't even particularly like BtS but this not only made me want to try it again but I feel like I learned a lot about how to play the game better, too. Looking forward to many more.

[@damaddestgamer]

Good playthrough, missed a bunch of things that could have altered the final scores, but in the end fun was had.

[@bensmithxlvi]

Wow, this turned out even better than I expected. I tend to shy away from TTS because the tactile nature of board games is so important to me, but I realized while watching this that the digital nature of watching a playthrough on a screen doesn't feel a whole lot different whether it's a physical or virtual tabletop. Everything was super clear and the editing was sharp, and the thing that draws me most to your playthroughs -- clear, easy-to-read closeups so I can track what's happening -- was just as effective here. Plus, I like to watch your playthroughs because I can't often get my friends to play the types of games I like, and watching you play with your friends felt even more like I was vicariously playing with mine. Great job, and I'm looking forward to more of these for sure!

[@JonGetsGames]

I'm so glad you enjoyed it Ben. That feeling is exactly what we were going for, it's great to see it happening even in our first public attempt.

[@TheAdmiral555555]

I'm a regular viewer of your tutorials, but I loved the addition of a live playthrough with friends. Some humor, but with a similar level of in-game analysis in terms of each of your individual turns...so I feel like I got the best of both worlds! Good banter with a solid foundation of strategy voice-over. More please!

[@davebrown2399]

Really good Jon, very impressed. I was worried the lack of photos would be a detriment, but it didn't seem to be. The 3 of you have convinced me to play 'Beyond the Sun' on BGA again😀

[@trixbunnyman]

I say it every chance I get. Jon is #1. His style can't be beat. Dude is the best at what he does.

[@JonGetsGames]

Thanks :D

[@zomborya]

Excited for this new series Jon. Thanks for producing it. At first, I was disappointing when you mentioned tabletop simulator would be the vehicle to deliver the playthroughs but your explanation of why that is necessary in your VLOG makes a lot of sense and I think you and the group did an outstanding job of making the most of the medium. Part of why I love boardgames so much is the analog and tactile nature of all the boards and bits and stuff, but I get how convenient and more cost effective TTS will be for this type of content so go for it. I'd say 10 stars on your first video. Awesome work and looking forward to more.

[@JonGetsGames]

I'm so glad you ended up enjoying it, thanks Ryan :)

[@hassanlopez4621]

love this format. the editing helped so much, because normally watching people play on TTS is a terrible drag. you're a pro, Jon!

[@zhivik]

This was really great and I am glad you are moving on towards playthroughs with other people - it is much more fun this way :) I personally don't mind the length, but I am following a lot of other peoples who do playthroughs, and this one is actually of average length in comparison. Furthermore, it illustrates very well that Beyond the Sun takes 30 minutes per player if they are familiar with the rules. By the way, this is my favourite debut for 2020 and a great game overall, so I am very happy you chose it to kick off your playthroughs. I am definitely looking forward to more, I enjoyed it a lot. I don't believe you lose that much from the teach, as you can illustrate the rules through gameplay. If more people complain, I'd recommend repeating a rule to emphasise on it during gameplay, I believe this will make it clearer for everyone. Also, you might not need to explain every single rule, only the goals of the game - what strategy allows you to win, what brings you victory points - and explain smaller things as you play, it will speed up things a lot, in my opinion. Anyway, great playthrough and I wish you good luck with your future videos.

[@JonGetsGames]

Deciding how comprehensive to be during the teach is something I'll be exploring as time goes on I think. I never want to have a 40+ minute rules teach before one of these, for example, and for some heavy games that would be what happens if I go too comprehensive. I'll be tweaking this over time I imagine.

[@willem2232]

Love this format! I'm a big fan of complete playthroughs instead of just a couple of rounds, and I imagine this is both easier and more fun for you to produce. Great game as well :) Hope to see more of this, and thanks to Anastasia and Nick for helping to entertain us!

[@JonGetsGames]

These are WAY more fun to produce, but so far also take significantly more time. For context, Beyond the Sun + the podcast discussion took 16.5 hours total to make whereas the tutorial video I made last year took almost half that. There is a lot of "new" things I'm doing here though, so I'm not familiar and have lots of learning to do. I hope to get the overall production time down by at least 30% as I get more experience.

[@PauloRenato23]

Love this video Jon... very fun to see everyone play the game and talk about what they were doing and thinking... also couldn't believe that Anastasia thought you were more of a threat at the end of the game than Nick :p Please continue with this series... and doing it like this on TTS is probably even better than with the physical game because you don't need multiple camera setups and it's clear you have an excellent handle on jumping from one saved camera to the other and on doing zoom in's and zoom out's. This was done fantastically! Congrats to everyone involved!

[@JonGetsGames]

I'm so glad to hear you enjoyed this Paulo :)

[@PauloRenato23]

@@JonGetsGames will be listening to the podcast later today :)

[@JonGetsGames]

CORRECTIONS: 1:38:47 - Anastasia forgot to return her ships from the colonized planet to her board. 1:42:50 - I didn't notice the "take control" effect on this planet. It would have let me gain ore until I had 3 total, so I should have gained 2 ore but didn't.

[@tknpickle]

I loved this. Well made and both guests were enjoyable to watch.

[@nick16characters]

I enjoyed this playthrough a lot. I usually don't like tts videos but you clearly did your homework with its tools. Camera transitions are smooth and using the colored straight line (I think it's to measure distance) to point at things is a very smart move

[@JonGetsGames]

That ruler function has been a godsend for teaching games in TTS over the last couple years. It's second nature for me to use it often these days. I'm glad you enjoyed this!

[@sopota6469]

Great editing Jon, this was a pleasure to watch

[@whothennow24]

Suuuuper awesome video (and playthrough/video format; I agree with the consensus: more, please).

[@peterfleming9365]

Enjoying this video. Thanks Jon.

[@DarrinLauritzen]

I like this style. Other playthroughs don't edit out AP stretches, and the players in snother one will be reminded of a song and be compelled to sing it aloud.

[@DragonPhlyy]

Love the TTS setup, one quick critique is to enable the in game overlay found in the discord settings under "overlay", this gives you an overlay in game in the top left corner that shows when and which player is talking at any given moment.

[@JonGetsGames]

I'd never heard of this so I just looked it up. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be an option when using a Mac, and I only have a Mac to use for recording these. Thanks for the suggestion though, I'm glad you enjoyed the setup.

[@amberbrenchley4748]

Literally out of all of your videos these are the best!!! I love watching these. All your other content is amazing also.

[@joannarichmond7166]

Thoroughly enjoyed this playthrough.

[@andreamacpherson5506]

Really enjoyed the banter between you and your friends; felt like casually hanging out with other gamers.

[@JonGetsGames]

That was the goal :) Glad you liked it.

[@Krashwire]

I'd love to see you guys play more in this format.

[@JonGetsGames]

We are planning to do at least 2 of these a month. So far 4 have been made and the 5th is coming out next week :)

[@JohnWbechtel2]

This is good. I watched all the way through. I would watch again. You & Dice Tower are my two main board game KZbin channels. Hope to meet you someday!

[@JonGetsGames]

I'm glad you enjoyed this John, thank you for the kind words :) In the future I hope to attend conventions again, so it's very possible.

[@jacobmartin9679]

I really enjoyed this playthrough, thanks to everyone for the game!!

[@tc3p]

Really enjoyed watching this! Camera switches were very smooth. 1:43:01, I think you forgot to take the bonus for controlling the planet where you could refill ore to three.

[@JonGetsGames]

I'm so glad you enjoyed this TC :) I put a LOT of work into making the camera changes smooth in the edit vs zooming all over the place. Good catch at that timestamp, I've added corrections about it to the video, thanks!

[@the_luggage]

Ooh, exciting! Multi-player play-throughs were an obvious omission on your channel and I'm glad to see you doing them now. No constructive criticism here, I loved it! Player cams is an obvious suggestion, but don't think it matters too much |:)

[@brazillb2]

I was definitely iffy about how it work on TTS but you pulled it off. A nice change of pace to hear some banter.

[@JonGetsGames]

Awesome to hear, thanks :)

[@Dragonswiftx]

Nick getting Multi-colony symposium after already committing to a colonizing game is HUGE. Churning out T3 tech with a single coal is hilariously efficient. I wonder if he lucked into it or if he's just familiar enough with the game that he knew to hunt for that tech?

[@JonGetsGames]

Nick is the kind of player that plays in such a way to usually be ready to capitalize on a bit of luck. He had played several times before but I'm sure he wasn't hoping for that specific card.

[@stevegeorge7773]

What a great and civil,,,, ish game. I liked it! Thank you. I don't see how you could improve the game play.

[@reed4764]

Would love to see a TTS playthrough of Anno. There's very few of them out there.

[@JonGetsGames]

That is right up at the top of our list. We ALMOST filmed that one for our initial episode, but I pushed for BtS instead due to it being slightly more interactive. We really want to play and film that one, though it'll likely have to wait a month or so at least till we can slot it in. We have a ridiculous list of games we want to play for these already and new games are coming out all the time we want to add!

[@tamiraloush7236]

This was great! I'm in for this type of videos, if those make more sense to you I won't mind a bunch of them:)

[@pierrewhite2062]

great great good job everyone

[@PentaHousen]

Great video

[@henrikc79]

love the content! how do you set the dice to the face you want? any hotkey hot tips? :)

[@rpesel]

If you press numbers on the keyboard while hovering over the die , it will rotate it .

[@Ogrecrusher]

Around 1:39:00 Anastasia leaves her ships on the planet after colonising it. Doesn't really matter maybe but worth a note :)

[@JonGetsGames]

Ah, yeah good catch! I've added a note, thanks.

[@alexanderolferuk8496]

I think it's wonderful: you guys are cheerful people, and with all the emotions, jokes and the convenience of TTS it is a pleasure to watch. Please do more, I think that it's less time consuming to make a TTS vid, right?

[@alexanderolferuk8496]

And I see you anyway left some corrections on screen and added some fast-forwarding. What a nice person you are! :)

[@JonGetsGames]

My data set is small, but I think these Playing with Friends videos will in general take about 50% more time than my tutorials. That being said, my tutorials take half the time of my old full playthroughs, so Playing with Friends is still faster than those and SO much more fun to work on since I get to actually play the game with friends :)

[@rafaturniak7068]

Bit late to comment, but I just watched it and wanted to say I enjoyed it thoroughly, even though I despise all digital platforms - I feel that in general they deteriorate the viewing experience for me. Maybe it's because BTS has a very minimalistic look and the game did not look much different than the physical copy, or maybe it's because of the way all of you interacted and seemed to have fun as opposed to just making a recording, but would like to see more.

[@JonGetsGames]

We worked hard to make it as analogue as possible despite being a digital space. I'm glad to hear that you ended up enjoying it despite your reservations.

[@timoseppa9124]

This seems a lot less clunky (it's unclunky) than other tabletop simulator playthrough videos I have watched.

[@JonGetsGames]

Great to hear!

[@Skycroft1000]

Loved it! Great editing. I'll admit I skipped the tutorial at the start. Feels a bit like a duplication of effort though, why not just refer people to your already existing tutorial? It makes sense for a game you don't already have a tutorial for but this isn't one of those.

[@JonGetsGames]

We did discuss that. The issue is that my tutorial style is long, I teach while playing so for a game like Beyond the Sun you’d need to watch at least an hour of the tutorial to learn what I could instead teach in 18 minutes here. Also, many of these vids in the future will be for games I haven’t made tutorials for.

[@whothennow24]

Why is it called the Automation Track? What does it mean to automate in this game? What is happening "automatically," thematically?

[@JonGetsGames]

You permanently remove the ore or food token from the board, so this essentially automates the production of that token so that it's easier to create more of that type of resource as the game goes on.

[@whothennow24]

@@JonGetsGames Thanks. Hmm. Seems like a better word than “automation” is out there somewhere.

[@cornichon2580]

This is really late, so I have no idea if you’ll even see it, but I wanted to say, while I like the format, I wish you would be more careful and focused on doing things in order. I counted three turns where Nick did not pay his full ore costs, which could have made the difference in the end, especially if he had to take an extra turn to just build his supplies back up. His last turn got 4 points for an achievement + whatever he got for the final colonized planet, and the victory margin was only 6 points. I know those kinds of mistakes always occur, but it is frustrating to watch a whole video and see the game potentially turn on them.

[@JonGetsGames]

We are trying to get better at that, this was the first published video of this type that we filmed and only the second of this type that Nick had participated in with us. We are all learning how to be more structured and thorough in these videos.

[@fabricedelorme8836]

You asked for, si I leave you a Feedback. I love thé relationship in your playthrough and it's really more "living" than your solo ones. But sometimes you're not Always zooming on tech cards after choosing and that's an issue on smartphone (too small to read). It's Dynamic and I think a little faster, that's good point. I think it's also less work on vidéo. There is play mystakes and it's not very fun even it's not big ones (If you had play on Board game Arena the rules are protected). I like it but ... I prefer real games. I appreciate all the ideas you're developping, well done. Fab (from France)

[@JonGetsGames]

I do forget that many people watch these videos on mobile, thanks for the feedback. I'll try to keep that in mind and do more zooms on cards consistently while filming future videos.

[@timoseppa9124]

Is this game fun? The theme is something I should theoretically like, and it's got some cool mechanisms, but God, does it look like an extremely dry Euro.

[@JonGetsGames]

We certainly love it, it was one of my favorites from 2020.

[@jeffhiatt1682]

interesting play. it was more entertaining than i expected. the only thing is its 2 hours. its hard to get that much time.

[@jeffhiatt1682]

However, i do like that these will be entire play throughs.

[@JonGetsGames]

@@jeffhiatt1682 I'm glad you found it entertaining :) It's true that 2 hours is quite abit, I know historically I've put out many 2+ hour playthroughs using my older style and this is I think the longest video I've published since I stopped making them all full playthroughs. As I said, this is the start of a new thing and we fully expect to find ways to do all of this better as we get more experience and feedback.

[@jeffhiatt1682]

@@JonGetsGames I have no complaints about the format or presentation. it was well done, especially given this was the first multiplayer video. The two hours is long, but I am retiring soon, so i guess that wont be a problem in a couple months. I like that each player describes what they are doing. its clear you have been doing this for a long time, as your descriptions are more polished. The others will grow into it.

[@Ogrecrusher]

@@jeffhiatt1682 Get used to playing videos at 1.5x or 2x speed! It's worth it!

[@YuVW]

I definitely like the idea of seeing games played out, but the tutorial at the start definitely loses its effectiveness. The main thing making your videos so great in my opinion is that you explain the game while playing it, as opposed to a long teach at the start followed by the actual game. It's still a fun video to watch, but it's more similar to what others are already doing

[@JonGetsGames]

Yeah, teaching up front vs while playing is a big difference, but this is also a very different type of playthrough as well. I mentioned in the Update Vlog that we experiment with teaching-while-playing but it just didn't work at all with other people there. I imagine over time things will be tweaked, but I do see why so many teach before playing now that we've tried other options.

[@jeffhiatt1682]

@@JonGetsGames I just want to add the your pre-game teach was really good. I think Rodney does the best "full teach", but that is all it is. and they run long. As for a "teach before you play", Monique is REALLY good. Your BtS teach was right up there with hers. good work.

[@JonGetsGames]

That's great to hear, thanks Jeff. I tried to be comprehensive but also quick. I didn't dwell on examples because the playthrough is going to be full of them.