#813; The Tic Tac Treasure

Comic Transcripts

[[Gerald sits at a table, working on a large QR code. Reginald approaches.]]

Reginald: Working on a puzzle?
Gerald: Kind of! I’m engaging with Viral Marketing.

Gerald: It’s a giant QR code puzzle. I’ve been printing out pieces all month.
I got the image files from a bus stop ad for Tic Tacs. Every day while I wait for the bus, I view that day’s portion of the ad through my special Tic Tac Viewer app, which links me to a downloadable puzzle piece PDF.

Gerald: I knew about the viewer because I happened to peel off the label on a box of Tic Tacs. Printed on the inside was a rebus that resolved to an App Store URL.
I love how companies take risks with viral promotions! I like Tic Tacs just fine, but what I like even more are puzzles. I like feeling like someone believes I’m smart enough to figure this out.

Gerald: And that’s the last piece! Let’s see where this QR Code takes us?
It’s a GIF! Animated letters! Y?O?U?A?R?E?W?A?S?T?I?N?G?Y?O?U?R?L?I?F?E?I?T?S?J?U?S?T?T?I?C?T?A?C?S?
What does that spell

{{header: dig deep into WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: Gerard peels back every label on every single thing, each time holding his breath and HOPING a mystery like this is waiting.}}

#813; The Tic Tac Treasure 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!