#244; In which a Trick is proposed

Comic Transcripts

[[Halloween night. A BOY IN COSTUME speaks to a PIRATE MAN at the man’s front door.]]

BOY: Trick or treat!
MAN: ARR! It be a PIRATE LAD! Terror of the high seas! Tell me, boy, are you a TRUE outlaw sailor?

BOY: All asea TREMBLE at the sight of me black flag!
MAN: Good, good… I was HOPING you’d be the real deal… See, I happen to know that an unmarked shipment of VERY VALUABLE cargo is leaving the port of Lazaro Cárdenas, Mexico at 0500 hours…

MAN: If a pallet or two of that cargo were to mysteriously go MISSING between setting sail in Mexico and dropping anchor in Kingston… Well, let’s say the fells onboard could be convinced to OVERLOOK the shortage. And anyone who CAME UP with those pallets would be rewarded handsomely by certain parties I know.

MAN: Do you have the ship? Do you have the crew? Do you have the COURAGE for an ADVENTURE?
BOY: I’m…seven years old? I’m just looking for some candy?
MAN: O ho HO, boy! I am of an age at which rewards aren’t handed over QUITE so bloodlessly

#244; In which a Trick is proposed 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!