#710; The Cracks Widen

Comic Transcripts

ROBERT: See, here’s the problem. The Haircut Value Index isn’t an index at all! In fact you can realize this just by looking at the units. The more you spend, the higher the H.V.I. – and the more time you spend looking good, the lower the H.V.I. So really I think what you described is more of a Haircut COST Index.
KEN: I just wanted to help people
KEN: Now it’s all
KEN: It’s all falling apart at the seams

KEN: I take pride in my haircuts! I want to get good value from them! I’m not a mathematician, Robert! I barely an aesthetician. But now I’m ruining people’s lives! I inverted a fraction and people are dying. They’re DYING in the STREETS! I don’t know how to stop it! I DON’T KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT RIGHT!

ROBERT: Come on, Ken. Nobody’s DYING from a haircut
KEN: They’re not dying from a haircut they’re dying from a SEVERE STAB WOULD THAT I INFLICTED

{{go too far at WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: t-this isn’t really about haircuts anymore, is it, ken}}

#710; The Cracks Widen 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!