Fourth Wall

I am actually very fond of the first game mentioned here; Lugaru.  Joyous, non-gorey fighting with martial artist bunnies?  A game that requires both skill and reflexes?  Struggling on certain maps for 20+ tries even on the “easier” setting?  Sign me up!

Well, I signed myself up, really.  I bought it, enjoyed it immensely and re-discovered Wolfire games in the process.

Damn, that felt good!  I realized upon finding their blog that I’d been there before (years ago) and had resolved to keep track of their progress because their project looked kick-ass.

That bit didn’t really go as planned.  Perhaps “remembered” is a better word than “realized”.

At any rate, now, two years later, Overgrowth is shaping up, has entered Alpha, and is pre-orderable.

It was like realizing I’d had an itchy spot for years, and scratching it, all in the space of a few minutes.

Overgrowth is easily one of the prettiest indie games I’ve had the pleasure of watching in action.  The physics, the animations, and perhaps more than anything, world design/concept art is all super-shibby.  And this is all to further the goal, nay, the dream of bunnies and wolves beating the crap out of eachother with leg sweeps and roundhouse kicks.

Consider me thoroughly enamoured.

(Also, thank you, Apple, for letting me borrow Mollie’s commas.)

I absolutely adore Aymee’s choice in clothes for Mits in this comic.  Furthermore, last panel Ayms made me grin out loud. (Oh yes.  That’s hardcore grinning.)

Oh, and Batman is pretty awesome, but really, we all know that.  Ayms spent the better part of five minutes explaining to me how she did artist magic with the smoke and layers and lighting.  I diplomatically agreed that Batman is cool.

Still collecting info on whether or not to actually try DCUO.  The arrow points at “probable” now, if Operation Fix My God Damn Computer succeeds, for the exact reason up there.  Top hats, nature powers, Batman; Yeah, I’ll try that!

We have a lot of fun making this comic.  Granted, I haven’t heard of many people who hate these kinds of projects – though I’m sure it’s a drag every now and then.  Oh, and Ayms might secretly hate it.

What I’m getting at is that I have a lot of fun, okay?  Bah!

So yeah, this sprung up from a conversation we had, remarkably similar to the one in the strip up there.

Funny, that.

Oh.  And if you don’t get it, here’s another layer.  Just in case you missed it.  This isn’t a double strip.  It’s entirely normal in length.

Thank you, thank you.

..I truly hope that this strip made any sense, at all, to people who aren’t me and Ayms.

This is a little premature, but since we stick to our schedule and thus won’t see each other again on this side of the explosionfest that is new years eve:

Thank you all for sticking with us here at 4th Wall, and we hope you’ve enjoyed our comics thus far.  Even more so, we hope you will enjoy the comics to come as we learn and grow; we have no intention of stopping!

2011 will be our first full year, and we’re shifting into gear, getting ready for January.  We exist because of you, gentle readers, because you give us purpose.  For that, you have our gratitude.

Whew.  How’s that for official-sounding stuff?  It’s not that it’s not heartfelt and sincere, I’m just terrible at this speech-like stuff.

So instead, let me tell you about how my subconscious is mocking me.  In my dreams.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I am a terribly indecisive person.  I like to think of this as empathy and a diplomatic inclination, but fact is, if you ask me whether I want to go eat a burger or a pizza – and refuse to take “you decide” as an answer – I will actually disintegrate.  It’s not pretty.

So tonight, the bastard part of my brain (the bigger part) conjured up some sort of game show where people dressed up as superheroes.  Well, one guy was Captain America (though he was all bronze, what?), and another guy was dressed up as a NES.

Nintendos are practically superheroes in my world, so let’s stick with the idea of a superhero-themed dress-up game show.

First, the initial rounds, which seemed to consist of people displaying their costumes and doing weird dances.  Oh how I wish I could project the image of the dance the NES did so you could see!  The bronzed Captain America was a terrible dancer, for the record.

Then, bonus round time.  Oh dear gods, ancestors, spirits and bears, the bonus round.  It was a special hell devised for me and me alone.

Between all the tables, in a meandering pathway, carts started rolling.  Fairly nondescript carts in and by themselves, rolling of their own accord to psychotic clown-murderer circus music.  They were laden with everything.  No really, there was nothing that wasn’t on these carts, up to and including refrigerators.

The lighting dropped, and only ghostly lights from the far end of the stage provided a semblance of illumination.  Like a dark, smoke-filled stage before the band starts playing.

The game show host proudly announced; “If you but name what you see, it is yours for the taking!”
People around me started yelling, and a childhood friend of mine at once yelled “Refrigerator!”.  Indeed, the refrigerator was his to own, then.

Me?

I sat paralyzed for half a minute.  I didn’t even know whether or not we only got one shot, but it seemed to be the case.  Did I want to opt for the most expensive or shiny one?  A jar of emeralds rolled past, and there, a really neat chair!

I spent an eternity simply staring at the prizes that rolled past, unable to decide.

Right before I woke up, I dejectedly named and made off with a napkin, waking up with a terrible sense of loss.  I hate my brain.

I do not pretend to have a perfect grasp of the English language, as it’s my second language, naturally.  What I do know, however, is that studying language – and in particular, language change – while already being possessed of an extraordinarily indecisive mind is a recipe for failure.  Or confusion.

In my defense, I like to think of myself as merely “diplomatic”.  Or a devil’s advocate.

I find the interaction between those two terms very interesting, too, for the record.