Steal Cereal from Children
Steal Cereal from Children
You're a cartoon mascot on a breakfast caper!
GREETINGS, ADVENTURER!
Today’s Quest: Munch into mischief and Saturday morning mayhem! Then join your fellow adventurers for a bowl of Table Talk goodness, plus an update on your mom’s printer.
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 peak your furry head out of a trash can in a dingy alley. A delightful smell wafts into your twitching raccoon nose.
"Is that the sweet, yet nutritious smell of Scarf-O's Cereal?" you ask no one in particular. "With crunchy chocolate morsels and real beef jerky bits in every bite? I've gotta have it!"
But what if the smell leads you to a group of hostile children hoarding the cereal for themselves? It’s happened before – hundreds of times, in fact – but you simply can’t resist. You live for Scarf-O’s and Scarf-O’s alone.
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. We can talk while we paint little metal figures. I’m gonna give my wizard a Joker face, because I like to watch the world burn.
Discuss one (or all) of today’s topics in the comments:
🦝 How did you decide to approach the kids and why?
🥣 What was your favorite cereal as a kid? What is your favorite cereal now? +10 points if they’re one in the same. As a kid, I loved the Nintendo Cereal System, a real food item that could be purchased with money. As an adult, my wife introduced me to Honey Ohs and my life will never be the same.
🐝🍀 Which is the better cereal: Honey Nut Cheerios or Lucky Charms? On the one hand, I think I prefer the flavor profile of Honey Nut Cheerios, but marshmallows are a cereal innovation that cannot be denied. I prefer Lucky the Leprechaun to Buzz the Honeybee (I had to look-up his name), but Buzz raced Sonic the Hedgehog one time, and even though he got his ass kicked, just the fact that he knows Sonic is pretty cool. So I’m not sure which one’s better!
✍️ Bonus Challenge (+50 Points): Become a food mascot! What animal are you ~and~ what food do you shill for? For example, I’m Geoffrey the Gila Monster and I’ve got a “monster” craving for liege waffles with the little pearl sugar balls on them!
🌟 Challenge Winners: In the last Table Talk, adventurers
and Trin earned 50 points each for showing off their fearsome finishing moves!“Tummy raspberries/zerberts. I don't care how tough you are, once you've got 'em pinned down, they're helpless against you.” –Trin
“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.” –William
I don’t care how strong you think you are. Nobody can withstand a zerbert.
UPDATE: FIX YOUR MOTHER’S PRINTER
⚠️ Earlier this year, adventurers voted for me to develop a game concept called Fix Your Mother’s Printer for this year’s IFComp. I’m happy to report that my initial pass is about a third of the way finished, which is on schedule! My hope is to have a playable beta for you in August.
Initially, I thought the game might lend itself well to tech support themed puzzles, but after some design exploration, I came to the conclusion that tech support of any kind felt like work. So I’m going the other way and doubling down on role-playing. There are a lot of dating simulators out there. This is a family simulator, allowing the player to choose what kind of relationship they have with their mother and how they want that relationship to grow. The printer fixing is the excuse for the call, but the conversation is what’s central.
A bit of feedback I got from my last IFComp entry, Use Your Psychic Powers at Applebees, was that the interface was too sparse. In retrospect, I agree. Luckily, thanks to my Spring Fling game Your Post Apocalyptic To-Do List doing well, I earned a terrific prize: the services of game designer and IF fan Josh Grams! He’s doing amazing work and used an image of Miss Piggy in his UX mockup. Needless to say, I went hog wild.
My mom asked me to help fix her printer this past weekend. Art imitates life imitates art?!
My husband and I did this together over dinner and had a blast. We tried to trick the kids by being the old man, and my husband voiced him perfectly and started ad libbing over and above the written dialogue, which was FANTASTIC. We were so disappointed in the lackluster result that we went back and tried every single other combination to see how to come out on top, giving him a chance to also voice the skateboarder. (Did I mention he's a DM, this is probably practice for his next campaign...) Great fun!
I will admit that the thought of putting chocolate and beef jerky in the same bowl made me throw up in my mouth a little. Such a ghastly combination! I work for a company that makes cereal though, so I could try to sneak it into our next round of concept pitches...maybe some undiscovered genius hiding in there somewhere...
I liked Honey Bunches of Oats growing up, but now I don't eat cereal very often. My vote goes to Cheerios over Lucky Charms. They are more homogenous, and I'd rather take a medicore flavor that I can count on over unpredictable marshmallowless disappointment every other bite. Unless the Lucky Charms was exclusively the marshmallow bits, then maybe it would win out.
This adventure ended quickly, but with the fresh taste of young blood on my lips, so it was not all a loss. Now I've turned into a feral racoon vampire.
As far as my favorite cereal growing up, that would be a toss up between Captain Crunch and Lucky Charms. However, I wouldn't pass up Cocoa Puffs or a number of others. Nowadays I don't eat sugar cereal. I prefer all of my sugar calories to be loaded up into a single dessert.