#719; The Background Check

Comic Transcripts

BONNIE: You gonna say hi to the new kid?
GLEN: Nah. He’s got nothing to offer.
BONNIE: What makes you think so?
Glen: Well?

GLEN: First I googled the slogan from that crazy patch on his brother’s backpack. It’s some obscure band with only like a hundred Facebook fans. Found his brother there, and of course he’s friends with his brother.
GLEN: Now I got the correct spelling of his name: Guenters Kreiberscht. Googling that reveals an old Myspace blog.

GLEN: His Myspace username “Guent-To-The-Choppa” also shows up on an old Yu-Gi-Oh forum. That isn’t online anymore, but the Internet Archive has a cached version.
GLEN: His posts there inform me about a new username: “Krei-Me-A-Riva,” which has a Livejournal – and that has a link to a newish Tumblr.

GLEN: None of it gave me the sense that Yu-Gi-Oh McGee over there is anyone worth bothering with. I don’t need friends who’re less cool than I am.
BONNIE: ?I guess I should feel flattered?
GLEN: Well I mean
GLEN: You were grandfathered in

{{header: check out WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: i.e. your grandfather is WAY COOLER than me, and I like spending time with him!}}

#719; The Background Check transcribed by in

BONNIE: You gonna say hi to the new kid?
GLEN: Nah. He’s got nothing to offer.
BONNIE: What makes you think so?
Glen: Well?

{{header: check out WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: i.e. your grandfather is WAY COOLER than me, and I like spending time with him!}}

#719; The Background Check 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!