We will be bringing a brand new version of Thornwatch to PAX South this week and I’m really excited for you all to see it. You might remember that at PAX Prime last year we announced a collaboration with the folks over at Lone Shark Games. The scope of the game immediately changed from a single game focusing on the Thornwatch, to a series of games based on Thornwatch, Lookouts and the Daughters of the Eyrewood. We revealed the new Eyrewood Adventures plan during a panel and you can watch the entire thing right here if you like:

I didn't actually call, but there's a case to be made. I wouldn't let any adult care for children, if it were up to me. No fucking way. Adults are just really tall, really weird children. They don't know shit.

BEHOLD.

More great advice from me. The strip started out being about some of these weirdass monsters in Xenoblade, alien monsters, alien space unicorns, fongroids (?), and assorted other quadruped a-holes where the A does not stand for ass, but Alien. There are a few "arts" we have, special attacky things, that do extra damage from certain positions - backstab or flank type stuff. Except there are a couple of these Goddamn things that are so weird it's not super clear what even constitutes the "back" or "front." Luckily, they foresaw this, and included a text indicator near the lower right.

We have always called the villains you get matched with Randos of various stripes, and for some reason we assumed that everyone did, but I can't find a lot of evidence for this connotation generally. Urban Dictionary, a wretched hive of scum and at least one other thing, suggests that it means anything from a "random person or thing" to "a nickname for Randy" which I feel like covers the entire ragged spectrum of meaning. There is nothing which cannot be called a Rando, apparently, which at the very least makes it easy to incorporate into one's lexical rando.

Robert mentioned this on Twitter: there's, well, a PAX Aus Sales Position Open, to coin a phrase. Check it out.

"The die is cast" is roughly synonymous with "this is the point of no return," like "crossing the Rubicon." And I knew that's what it meant, but the imagery I used to get there was different.

A game called Tharsis just come out from a group called Choice Provisions, which I'd never heard of. Game development at the "triple a" level creates tons of human shrapnel, though, and I assumed that it was another ill-used cadre fleeing the mothership - but "Choice Provisions" is just what Gaijin Games is calling themselves now. If you ever liked a game whose name started with BIT.TRIP, then you like their stuff. They've allied themselves with designer Zach Gage, who has made at least one game you like. But it won't prepare you for Tharsis.

IF you're going to PAX South and you've got the pin bug, then I have exactly what you need. BEHOLD!

Hey, I thought you would think these were really cool. Filming just got underway, but right before that Dabe did some cool promo shots for you to savor. Check it out!

I feel like we've established an immutable truth here. The only distinction between instances of this are how long it takes for you to realize that what came out is bad. For example, some kind of resplendent elven-type motherfucker comes out, and you're like "God Damn!" but he keeps coming out, and his whole cape is made out of screaming faces. Right? Seems good up front, then, face cape. It's things like that.

I'm sort of slowly easing my way through That Dragon, Cancer, both because that's the only way to do it for me probably, and also because I spent a bunch of yesterday at an actual hospital myself, doing some deliveries for Child's Play. The combination of these two things made for a pretty brutal day.

I told him this for real, as a joke, and he seemed to think it was really funny. Also, I felt like there should be a band named Star-Elk. And I know exactly who else is in this band. I can see the logo, too. It's got to be one of those inexplicably rendered things that only members of the band can read. Or, maybe something more like the indomitable paraph of Queen Elizabeth I. It could go a couple ways. I'm open to interpretations of this imaginary band founded by imaginary teenagers.

I think autocorrect is actually getting worse.

I keep grabbing JRPGs and not liking them, and it's got me worried, because I've always thought of myself as someone who liked those. Even when one worms its way through my ventral guard plates I almost never actually finish them. The more inviting they've gotten to a mainstream audience, the less I've enjoyed them I guess. I'm not trying to adopt a pose, here. I liked them more when they were "boring." I really did like watching a bunch of people stand stock-still while I fucked around in some menus.

Dogs are a theme that runs through a lot of my favorite strips in the archive. Apparently? I just found this out. Like, the one with the Canid is big with Tychos in every demo. There is an old New Year's Resolution type strip which also features dogs that I like a lot, and today's strip is the sequel. I know what you're thinking! How do you top that. My answer: even more dogs.