#647; In which a Spoiler is alerted

Comic Transcripts

[[two men in tall hats looking at some very large birds]]
Hat man 1: Ha, that’s a weird-looking bird.
Hat man 2: Looks kind of like the bad guy from ‘Steel Agent 3’.
Hat man 1: Oh, I haven’t seen the third one. The villain is a BIRD? Isn’t it a JET LI movie?

Hat man 2: Yeah, Spoiler Alert- the villain’s this giant robot, but at the end it turns out to be a bird in a–
Hat man 1 [[interrupting]]: WHOA whoa whoa! THAT was NOT a spoiler alert!
Hat man 1: You don’t say ‘Allergy alert, this chocolate has nuts in it’ and then SHOVE it down the person’s THROAT!

Hat man 1: The purpose of a spoiler alert is to ALERT someone. To make them AWARE of the danger while there is time to AVOID it.
Hat man 1: What if I’d just gotten STEEL AGENT 3 on Netflix and was about to go home and watch it? Give me a CHANCE, dude! Allow me to STOP you if I need to!

Hat man 2: I’m sorry. I went about that whole conversation in a foolish way. I thought you would GET that there IS NO Steel Agent 3 and that I was making a dumb joke about that bird.
Hat man 1: In the last ten seconds, that bird’s opinion of both of us has dropped dramatically.

#647; In which a Spoiler is alerted 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!