Earn Your Planet Destroyer License
Begin a career in civilization obliteration.
GREETINGS, ADVENTURER!
Today’s Quest: Take a quiz to determine if you have what it takes to wipe out ecosystems with the push of a button. Then you *will* join us for a special May the 4th Be With You Table Talk (makes wavy hand gesture) and I’ll guide you through interactive fiction’s spring spectacular.
First time here? Adventure Snack is a game series I email to subscribers. Play quests for free, twice a month, and turn your inbox into an adventure!
TODAY’S QUEST:
The Galactic Menace congratulates you on completing your 8 week Death Laser Operations course at the University of Photons Online!
To prove you have the technical knowledge, sound judgement, and boot-licking propensity necessary to become a Planet Destroyer on the Murdersphere Starship - capable of blowing up an entire homeworlds in seconds - complete this short quiz.
A perfect score will earn you a print-at-home certificate!
LET’S CHAT!
When your quest is complete, it’s time to debrief. Join your fellow adventurers at the virtual D&D table we call the comments section. No, we’re not gonna start playing the Star Wars TTRPG. We’d all have to learn new rules and buy new miniatures and no one’s got time for that. Now, let’s begin our 14 hour play session…
Discuss one (or all) of today’s topics in the comments:
🚀 What’s your favorite Star Wars movie? If you’ve never seen a Star Wars movie, what’s your secret? People are surprised when I say my favorite is The Last Jedi. I liked the movie’s sense of humor and fun, the theme of struggling to find one’s place in a changing world, and the critique of the capitalist realities of war. It’s the first Star Wars movie that got me as excited about the franchise as I was when I was a kid. My second favorite is Return of the Jedi, which has many kickass puppets.
🍻 If you could have a space beer with any sci-fi character, who would it be?
👩🏫 What’s an important test or exam you’ve taken? Did you pass or fail?
✍️ Bonus Challenge (+50 Points): Describe your sci-fi dream job. Here’s mine: “I’d like to be an emcee at a space cabaret, where I’d introduce weird acts and make fun of audience members who drool slime on their dates.”
🌟 Challenge Winners: In the last Table Talk, adventurers
and Michael Rostig earned 50 points each for their 1980s store concepts! Congrats to you both! Here they are…“Game N' Play, a combination library, video game store, and arcade. There's a special section for video game related books and video games based on books, you could get The Hobbit (as in the video game for the Gamecube) and the Hobbit (as in the book) in one go.” –William
“My shop would be a boutique-y place called Walkman's, with classy cut outs with the kinds of geometric abstraction reserved for T-shirts of the era and the Saved By The Bell opening. We'd sell anything related to walking; leg warmers, giant clunky pedometers, jellies, those shoes that used to pump up for some reason... and the titular Walkman.” –Michael
I think this is the first step towards building a mall? Let’s build a mall!
SPRING INTO INTERACTIVE FICTION!
Your Post-Apocalyptic To-Do List is doing well in this year’s Spring Thing competition for interactive fiction! The game’s been getting great reviews from IF fans and critics. I especially liked this one, which described the game as “highly entertaining” and “bonkers.” My games are nothing if not totally nuts.
But at the end of the day, it’s your vote that matters. Anyone can be a judge for Spring Thing. You don’t have to create an account. Just click which game you think deserves Best in Show, and if you like, you can make up your own ribbons to award a game. For Your Post-Apocalyptic To-Do List, I’d love if our game received ribbons like “Best Humor Game” and “Wildest Hogs.”
The rules state you should play more than one game before voting, which is super fair and also very fun! Here are a few games I recommend playing.
Insomnia: Twenty-Six Adventures After Dark by Leon Lin - This is a funny and well-designed text adventure where you can go out into the city at night and explore. Your choices lead to many unique and sometimes unexpected endings. You’ll want to play it multiple times to explore all the possibilities.
Elftor and the Quest of the Screaming King by Damon L. Wakes - I laughed out loud playing this 4th wall breaking fantasy adventure, where you try to solve a curse that’s got a whole town shouting involuntarily. There are clever gags about stat blocks and leveling up, and wonderfully liberal use of all-caps text that shakes up and down.
Beam Me Up Scotty by Jkj Yuio - I’m not into classic parcer games, and this one confounded me like all of them do, but I appreciate the nerdiness and unique mechanic at the center of the game. Here you’ll be faced with a series of Star Trek word puzzles, instead of figuring out whether or how to “get lamp.”
The Kuolema by Ben Jackson - Admittedly, I haven’t had a chance to venture too far into this one, but the game deserves a shout-out for its immersive writing and inventive use of Google Forms to create a full length text adventure. I love when developers build games into systems that weren’t intended for them. Rad stuff!
Welp I’m afraid I’m not cut out for destroying planets. I believe I got strangled twice and made friends with someone I shouldn’t have and spilled coffee all over expensive things.
Ah well, there’s always writing.
My favorite Star Wars was for sure Empire Strikes Back since I got my first crush on Luke during the whole Yoda training montage. I’m not proud of it but there we go.
My beer with any character is a toss up between Captain Mal so I could be flustered and try to join the Firefly crew, or General Adama so he can tell me what I’m doing wrong in life.
Im seeing a trend in my type...
Also I don’t mean to brag but I might have something close to my sci-fi dream job and it’s not far from what you described?? 🤣
What’s your favorite Star Wars movie? If you’ve never seen a Star Wars movie, what’s your secret? This is a tough one for me. I want to say Empire because that makes me sound like a sophisticated guy who appreciates the classics, but the truth is that the original movie is probably my favorite since that's the one I've watched the most (on Beta, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, in theaters, and on streaming!), and it's the one I keep coming back to when I need my Star Wars fix. That said, I have a friend who had never seen Star Wars, so one night her husband and I convinced this 30-something woman to give it a try. Guess what? The original really drags. And OK, there's some stuff in there that really owes a big debt to John Ford's The Searchers, but that film, while a classic, also drags. So maybe I'm not the best one to answer this. I also really enjoyed Solo, but than afterwards, everyone told me I was wrong, and if you get enough people doing that, there's this peer pressure / Jedi mind trick thing that happens where you convince yourself that you didn't enjoy Solo.
If you could have a space beer with any sci-fi character, who would it be? I don't drink beer, so I'm going to choose three characters. First, Yoda. Duh. Second, Mr. Spock. How cool would that be? Third, Grig from the The Last Star Fighter.
What’s an important test or exam you’ve taken? Did you pass or fail? A long time ago, in a career far, far away, I took the California Bar Exam. I passed that sucker.
Bonus Challenge (+50 Points): Describe your sci-fi dream job. I'd like to be the Seymour Hersh of the Starship Troopers universe, but I probably won't last long because truth tellers don't have great career opportunities in fascist regimes. But yeah, I'd like to be in the shit with Rico and the rest of the squad.