#1061; In which a Cookie is refused

Comic Transcripts

[[A young woman offers a cookie to a man.]]
Cookie advocate: Want a cookie?
Hunter-gatherer: Nah, thanks – I don’t eat refined foods. We didn’t EVOLVE for it!

Hunter-gatherer: Our bodies aren’t OPTIMIZED for any of that stuff. I eat meat and nuts and raw veggies only!
Hunter-gatherer: AND I don’t wear shoes. They make your feet weak!
Hunter-gatherer: I barely wear clothes at ALL! Only NATURAL fibers, of course!

[[The hunter-gatherer has put on a large mask and tank.]]
Hunter-gatherer: And since we evolved to breathe clean, UNPOLLUTED air, I carry around this tank!
Hunter-gatherer: Masks weren’t around in the Pleistocene, though, so I have to constantly inflate and reinflate this SEAL BLADDER
Hunter-gatherer: I basically breathe through a bagpipe

Hunter-gatherer: I can’t wear glasses, since those were invented too late, so I stumble around a lot…
Hunter-gatherer: The TDAP vaccine’s also modern, so I have to hope I never step on a rusty nail. So far I’ve been lucky!

Hunter-gatherer: But I’m pretty happy. Got a healthy lifestyle. In touch with nature. Talk to birds a lot.
Hunter-gatherer: Tried to set up a blog, but blogs aren’t paleo… so now I drum on rocks and whittle spears. It’s a life I chose.

Cookie advocate: Are you sure you don’t want a cookie?
Hunter-gatherer: Okay LOOK I need to be clear that the issue isn’t what I WANT it’s what I ALLOW MYSELF to HAVE because I dearly need the illusion of CONTROL

{{header: just like WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: really instead of any modern devices what I’d rather have is a bevy of single-function birds and dinosaurs coexisting with me in a symbiotic flintstonian utopia}}

#1061; In which a Cookie is refused transcribed by in

The past few weeks have been a frenzy of assembling the very laborious, very bespoke first print run of NOODLE BATTLE, the puzzle game I am releasing this weekend at PAX West in Seattle!

PAX has an event called the PNW Tabletop Game Market (Saturday night ONLY), which is a curated selection of short-run games from local designers. As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I applied for a space in this fall’s event mainly as a way to force myself to finish a new game. And here it is!

The drawings are all by Jason Poland, good pal and cartoonist of My Dad Is Dracula. Jason played an early version of this game at Alaska Robotics Comics Camp this spring, and really liked it!

So I said, “Do you want to help me make it?” And so he has! It was his idea to make all the characters fun little animals, and I think it adds a ton of charm.

Because this edition is limited-run, it has been incredibly labor-intensive to make! The boxes and cards were made by a game factory in the usual fashion, but separately. The blank tiles were made by a woodworker dude out of Connecticut. For each game, we have had to:

Cut a piece of plastic and install the box window
Paint all the tiles, hundreds at a time
Apply a sticker to both sides of every tile
Apply stickers to the box (we couldn’t get the box back printed in time, so the whole back side of the box is a sticker too)
Apply the “Nutrition Facts” sticker, which was a late suggestion by my kid that I just had to run with
Fold up the rule sheet (they come from the printer as big strips of paper)
Put all the components into the box and seal it all up

I knew it would be a lot of work and would require some inefficient, expensive compromises AND I WAS RIGHT. But the final product is turning out great, which is the important thing!!

I will have 50 copies with me (if all goes well) at PAX, and then between now and the holidays we will be putting together additional copies to round out this first edition.

I will announce additional copies on Patreon first, once they are available online!! And here too, naturally, before long.

You can also sign up here if you’d like me to email you once the game is available online!