#461; All are Shaped by Circumstance

Comic Transcripts

CALVIN: The Internet is the GREAT CONNECTOR!
ISAAC: The Internet is the great POLARIZER.

CALVIN: Here’s an example. JOE-BLOW WEIRDO had a traumatic childhood. Saw too many “Leprechaun” movies in strange contexts and now he’s got a mild fetish for DWARVES IN HORROR MAKEUP.
Before the Internet, he’s alone and miserable…but NOW he’s on a message-board FULL of friendly, like-minded freaks reassuring each other that they don’t need to conform to some marketing-driven farce of “NORMALITY” to be HAPPY!
ISAAC: That’s JUST the danger! Before, his “mild fetish” might have ATROPHIED as he was forced to interact with society at large.
But instead, a chorus of encouragement from other lunatics STROKES his quirk into an OBSESSION that TAKES OVER his identity!

JOE: It’s very RUDE talkin’ about someone who ain’t PART of the CONVERSATION!
ISAAC: Joe we are just using you as an EXAMPLE.

{{Header: find your place at WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{Alt-text: Wrote this comic first, then went looking for images…found this one right away and was all like ‘YESSSSSSSS’}}

#461; All are Shaped by Circumstance 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!