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!

The computers tell me it was 20 years ago, June 9, 2006, that I arrived in New York for my first-ever comic convention as an exhibitor, MoCCA.

It was an important trip for me, a milestone in what would go on to become my career.

I wrote a little reminiscence on Patreon (free/unlocked) — including a first-since-then reprint of the photocomics I made at the time, documenting the trip!

Read the rest here: [ 20 Years Ago (In Photocomic Form) ]

The vast majority of Bolted! game shipments are already shipped, but I understand if you don’t have yours yet, who cares. Here’s a progress report:

Total orders | 1052
Surveys completed | 992
Fully shipped | 946

Incomplete surveys

Obviously, if I don’t have your shipping address, I can’t ship your game! Let me know if you are missing a survey link. As new responses come in, they are rapidly added to the shipping queue.

Orders containing certain add-ons

Some of the add-ons proved more popular than expected — which is lovely! But it meant I had to reprint some stickers, make all the individual comic prints, request a shipment of books from offsite storage, etc, etc. So, any orders which contain an out-of-stock item are still waiting to ship.

All that missing stuff, though, is en route to me at this very second! So those orders will be going out pretty dang soon!

Custom items

I’ve already been in touch directly with the backers who ordered custom collages! Those will be created (and sent to you) after all the other shipments are complete. I’m excited for those, they’ll be fun! My pleasant dessert after the hearty meal of all the other orders.

Anything wrong?

I’m very grateful to the few folks who’ve contacted me to report some kind of issue with their shipment! Thankfully, problems are rare, but when they do occur, I would like to solve them. Please don’t hesitate to send me an email (replying to your shipping confirmation works great) if there’s anything about your order I can correct.

Reviews & photos

On BoardGameGeek are highly appreciated!

Unless you hate the game! You are entitled to that opinion, but please send that review directly to me instead of telling anyone else, so I can eat it and bury it in the yard and watch it grow into a twisted, gnarled tree. Or whatever!