Smile! You're on Alien Deathmatch TV
Either you win or Earth loses!
GREETINGS, ADVENTURER!
Today’s Quest: Beat up an intergalactic grappler in a gladiator ring. All of Earth is at stake. (No pressure!) Then join your fellow adventurers for Mortal Kombaaaaaa– er, Table Talk, plus step into the ring and make your own games.
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:
You burst into the laboratory of the insidious Doctor Uncle! He's about to fire a laser that will turn half the world's population into comfortable, though difficult to assemble furniture.
"This here, everything you're doing," you scold the mad scientist as your fists glow with powerful light energy in what would be a very cool effects shot, "it's all very bad."
The panicky, highly educated uncle starts pressing buttons wildly, so you blast him into a brick wall. As long as you're around, justice will prevail.
Then, suddenly, you begin to dematerialize! Your hands, once glowing with power, now break down into tiny particles before your eyes...
👏 This quest was co-designed by
, who writes The Warthog Report newsletter. Check out his fantasy writing, thoughts on game design, and a serial pretending to be a fighting game. We were talking about fighting games in Table Talk and it led to us becoming a Marvel vs. Capcom-esque development tag team!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. Yes, you’re allowed to bring your character’s dog on the adventure, but no, you’re not allowed to bring your actual dog to my house. Not after what he did last time…
Discuss one (or all) of today’s topics in the comments:
👽 Which alien warrior did you choose to fight and why?
💪 Which franchise is superior: Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter? As much as I love the FMV-ness of the original Mortal Kombat games, I’m a tried-and-true Street Fighter fan. Growing up, I wanted Guile’s gravity-defying blonde hair, but when I showed a picture of him to my dad’s barber, he looked at my Jewish curls and was like, “Not a chance, kid.”
🤺 What’s your favorite combat sport? Yes, for the purposes of this discussion, pro wrestling counts, and yes, it’s what I’m choosing. Most people my age who are wrestling fans started as kids, but I started watching regularly after seeing the objectively depressing movie The Wrestler. The film made me appreciate the artistry and how much of themselves wrestlers invest in their matches.
✍️ Bonus Challenge (+50 Points): In a fight, what’s your signature finishing move? For example, I grab my woozy opponent, toss them high into the air, then pretend my arm is a laser cannon and shout “PEW PEW PEW” as they slam unconscious to the floor. I call it the Mega Man Fan Slam.
🌟 Challenge Winners: In the last Table Talk, adventurers
, , , and Trin earned 50 points each for describing “merit badges” they earned this year! Congrats to you all! Here they are…“My merit badge is for pointing my friends to the good stuff at PAX East, the expo game recommender badge.” –William, for recommending Gigabash and Shot One
“My merit badge is going to be ‘Stepping Waaaaaay Outside of my Comfort Zone in the Weirdest Way Possible.’ […] Over the last year, I've been volunteering as a religious education teacher at my congregation. I'm kind of an oddball, being the atheist who was raised Catholic at a Unitarian Universalist Congregation where I'm one of the few who was raised in any form of Christianity. I've been teaching 5th-8th graders, and it's been one of the highlights of my year.” –Trin
“My merit-badge moment this year was probably tackling my girlie chainsaw phobia and finally learning to use one. As you might imagine, there are occasionally downed limbs and trees around the farm that need cutting up, and hiring someone to do it gets expensive.” –J.M.
“I can't think of a reason to give myself a merit badge, apart for perseverance. I was told that there is a guy who lives in the same village as me, but is twelve years younger, has also lost a leg, and has just given up! […] On the other hand I have a carer to come in at around six thirty, who takes my commode upstairs and empties it, everything else I do for myself.” –Ian
I also awarded adventurer
10 points for striving to grow as a person, and when she does, I’m taking all the credit!UPCOMING GAME JAMS AND COMPETITIONS
When people ask me how to get started as a game writer or narrative designer, I tell them to participate in game jams. They’re like 24 hour film festivals, but for game design, and have nothing to do with tasty jams or jellies. (Though I’m guessing there’s a Jam Jam where everyone makes an adorable game about a little bottle of jam and oh no he missed the jump and his jar is cracked what did I dooooo?!)
In a game jam or competition, you learn how to take a project from vague idea to playable game in a short window of time. It’s an incredible experience IMO! Here are a few coming up or happening right now that may interest you…
ParserComp 2023 (April 30 - June 30) – “ParserComp is for previously unreleased, parser-based text games: games which take a free-text input, parse it, and produce an output which typically is more text.”
Adventure Jam 2023 (May 26 - June 9) – “We want you to make whatever an adventure game means to you. Text adventures, modern 3D environments, point-and-clicks, hybrids, everything in-between, or something entirely different. We love it all!”
GMTK Jam 2023 (July 7-9) – "The GMTK Game Jam is an annual game making marathon, where individuals and teams try to make a game that fits a theme, in just 48 hours.”
Summer Slow Jams 2023: Narrative (July 10 - July 24) – “Make a game that focuses on story, character, world, and the interaction between those elements!”
If you make a game for a jam, email it to me. I may share it to your nearly 2000 fellow adventurers to see in an upcoming newsletter!
 | A guest post by
|
It was a lot of fun working on this and learning how to use Ink for it. This also makes me specially qualified to make this the first of the Adventure Snack Guide Comments, which is one of the funnier ones to start it on.
The secret to the combat in this quest is that it's fundamentally rock papers scissors, while the final showdown with two choices is a coin flip. So trust your luck with this, or exploit the save/load feature. There are six possible endings for winning or losing against each opponent. And each opponent has different names for their attacks. Guide over.
I went for the robot chicken for being the funniest sounding option, both in playtesting and full release. Mortal Kombat isn't for me with all the gore, can't handle it. I heard one of the recent ones actually gave some developers PTSD from making the fatalities, like the research they had to do for animating them. Though I'm not super into Street Fighter either, but 6 has me very interested. My fighting game franchise allegiance is to Smash Bros and Soulcalibur.
Not into combat sports either, but I feel like I'm adjacent to wrestling fandom due to having some wrestler fan friends. I prefer competing in video games, no physical injuries there unless people get really salty.
My signature finishing move? Hmmm. If we're being strictly realistic I guess it'd be jabbing my elbow into someone really hard, the Warthog Elbow Blade. Maybe with a jump at the start for more drama. If we're going full 'what if you were in a fighting game' it'd be followed up by taking out a small obsidian mirror and firing a laser beam from it.
I've only really done one gamejam, but it was fun, got a full VN and knowledge of Ren'py out of it. Right now I think the Warthog Report keeps me a little too busy for gamejams. But I might play more with Ink when I have the time.
👽 Which alien warrior did you choose to fight and why?
All three of them, clearly. Got to make sure I'mn equally awesome against all types of antagonists!
💪 Which franchise is superior: Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter?
I've only ever played Mortal Kombat, and that's because my kid brother loved it. Who needs face punching, when you can become a snarky hero (Quest for Glory), or an amateur detective (Laura Bow), or a pirate fighter (Curse of Monkey Island)?!
🤺 What’s your favorite combat sport?
Hockey. And yes it is so.
✍️ Bonus Challenge (+50 Points): In a fight, what’s your signature finishing move?
Tummy raspberries/zerberts. I don't care how tough you are, once you've got 'em pinned down, they're helpless against you.