G Potato is producing an online skating game called Street Gears that looks a hell of a lot like Jet Set Radio Future. This is what I've been wanting for years! I'm soooo fucking excited about this. I just hope the music is better then what the trailer suggests.

Screenshot and Trailer:

Page 24 is up. Read it here or click the link above.


That's 2 pages in two days. never mind that the last one was a week late.

Page 25 starts a new scene (and new installment block) where we finally start to get to what the comic is about. I'm pretty excited.

Nick and I are looking for 2-3 players for a new Yeld game. I think Monday would be the available day, so the starting date would likely be June 2nd or 9th. We're looking for people who can commit to a 6-14 session run. If you live in Portland and are interested in trying the game, please let me know!

You can find out more about the game at the Yeld play test forum.

You can download the current version of the play test document here.

This post won't make a lot of sense unless you've red the Yeld Play Test PDF.

I've been thinking about ways to make the selection of Friend type more important to the game.

Page 23 is up. Read it here or click the link above.



This page took forever. The drawing was fast, but I've been trying to figure out the dialog since last week. The original purpose of this scene was to get a bunch of the characters together and set up the next scene. I realized  with this page that the scene had already accomplished that purpose and needed to end. But I had already planned out another short sequence in this scene where Devachi, Angry Horse and Billy Jones unpack the crate they've hauled onto the boat, and discuss it importance. I thought about it for awhile and decided that small scene just wasn't important. The next page will be that last page in this section of the story, and page 25 will start a new section where we start to get to the meat of the story. Which is exciting for me, at least.

I think one of the reasons this has gotten away from me a little is the way I've been working on the story. When I started this project late last year I would do three or four rough pages in a row, complete with dialog, before sitting down to draw and color the final pages. That worked well. Since the comic has gone live I've been doing about a page a week. This was the schedule I set for myself, but I realize now that in spreading the work out like that I'm losing touch with the flow of the story. It's not as smooth as I want it to be.

I think I'll be returning to my original method of doing three or four pages at a go. I'll still try to post a new page a week, but it may end up that I do a few pages at a time, once or twice a month. I guess we'll see. In any case, it should make the comic better. Plus, I'm heading into an exciting part of the story, and I don't want to fuck it up. I can see it in my head pretty clearly, so if I can concentrate and take the time to do it right, it should come out well.

Anyway, page 24 is close to done. I'll probably put it up within 24 hours.

Jake

I thought this looked fun. Here's mine. Now that I look at this, it really doesn't look like me. And that's not really what I looked like when I was a kid either. Actually, that kind of looks like my brother Will. Oh well.

Andres over at Spanish language game site Templo de Hecate always goes out of his way to review my games. Thanks! He posted some nice stuff about the Yeld play test document. This probably isn't really a review, but it's still nice. Here's a chunk of the article in English. You can read the original Spanish version here.

" The atmosphere is very Nintendo video game, with several very curious details on how to spend the money, travel the world and things like that (what the postman carrying a special gift given on the day of the birthday of character, I was delighted:) The system reminds me a lot of the Agon on the Director of Game has a number of dice with which to compete against players but with some mechanical gaming adapters for moving events of the game (the schedule, map, or spending coins) and make you feel like you're inside a video game in which you have complete freedom of action.  All of them with some very good drawings by Jake. The truth is that I think this is a fantastic role-playing game to start young people and certainly suitable for Zelda fans.""

Left Hand Miniatures has released some excellent new Japanese Schoolgirl miniatures. Graydon Gorby produced these miniatures specifically with Panty Explosion and Classroom Deathmatch in mind! This set comes complete with four different schoolgirl miniatures, each with 3 different weapons or accessories! These are perfect for players who want some awesome visual aids for their Classroom Deathmatch and Panty Explosion games! You can buy the full set here for just $13.00! This is just the first of 3 planned sets featuring girls from different schools!



Matt, Nick and I will be using these miniatures in all our Panty Explosion and Classroom Deathmatch demos for the rest of the year. We'll have a limited number of sample miniatures to give away at demos as well!

Page 22 is up. Read it here or click the link above.



I some how missed a week. I swear, I didn't even notice. I knew I was late this week, but when I checked the dates I realized I didn't post last week. Fuck me.

Anyway, I'm trying to get back in the habit of drawing my page on Sunday, and coloring and lettering it on Monday. I've been missing my Monday night deadline way too often!

Nick, Joel, Matthew and I got together for the third episode of our ongoing "Tournament of the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven" game, loosely based off the excellent Immortal Iron Fist comic by Brubaker/Fraction/Aja. We've been using a drifted version of the Panty Explosion/Classroom Deathmatch rules, and it's been a lot of fun. We're not playing out the current tournament portrayed ion the monthly comic. Rather, we're exploring a past tournament, with the 19th century Iron Fist Bei Bang Wen.  besides the Iron Fist, our cast of Immortal Weapons includes a Korean Skrull and a half Chinese agent of Senator Abraham Lincolns S.H.E.I.L.D. Good stuff! You can read about our game here.

Anyway, I get to add Matt Gagen to my total!

Jakes total: 56
Ryans total: 89

I decided to create a Yeld themed user pic for myself. Then I decided that I'd create a bunch, in case anyone else wanted one. here you go!

I played Victorianna with Skull, Kam and Nathan at Empire Games' tonight for our third weekly Indie Games Night. That ups my score by one!

Jakes total: 55 
Ryans total: 89

I'm catching up slowly, but it is happening.

I'm surprised. Superman? I find this pretty embarrassing. Not because i don't value the ideas of helpin others and... all that shit. Superman is just soooooo boring!

And my runners up are an alcoholic and a prostitute. What the hell?

Take the quiz here.


Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 60% Catwoman 50% Iron Man 50% Spider-Man 45% Robin 45% Green Lantern 45% Hulk 45% Supergirl 43% Batman 30% The Flash 25% Wonder Woman 18%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Apocalypse 56% Dr. Doom 54% Magneto 45% Juggernaut 45% Dark Phoenix 43% Lex Luthor 43% Venom 40% The Joker 40% Kingpin 34% Mr. Freeze 33% Catwoman 31% Riddler 29% Mystique 29% Poison Ivy 27% Two-Face 25% Green Goblin 13%

You believe in survival of the fittest and you believe that you are the fittest.

Go Play SE PDX # 10 brought my total up by 4 people! We had 5 games this time, 2 separate sessions of Dogs in the Vineyard, Deaths Door, Intergalactic Cooking Challenge and Cold City. Great stuff! That brings my total up to:

Jakes total: 54  
Ryans total: 89

I still have a long way to go, but I'm getting closer! The next Empire Games Indie Night and the upcoming Rainy Day Games event should bring me into the 60's before Ryan and I meet again mace to face at Go Play NW.

The battle continues. I got to test Tyler Tinsley's new card based rpg at Empire Games tonight. I played with Tyler, Chris and Chris. That brings my total up to:

Jakes total: 50    
Ryans total: 89

I'm hoping to raise that score at Go Play SE PDX #10 this Saturday.


Tyler's game was pretty cool. Ask him about it if you get a chance.

Page 21 is up. Read it here or click the link above.

I find that I'm posting pages on Tuesday morning instead of Monday. I think I'm going to change the official post day to Tuesday. Or does it matter?

Ryan was bragging about all the people he's played games with so far this year. Fine. I challenged him to a face off. Who can play with more people before the end of the year? Quantity over quality! One rule only: we can't count the same player twice! You can see Ryans list here. Here's my own revised down from my post on Ryans LJ to only count each person once:

Go Play SE PDX #9: 5

GameStorm:  28

Empire Games Indie Night: 3

Pacific City Game: 1

Yeld playtest: 2

Immortal Iron Fist: 1

Home Game: 7

Jakes total: 47    
Ryans total: 89


Clearly, I need to catch up. I'm hoping that Go Play SE PDX #10 and the Empire Games Indie Night will help push me over the edge. Help me beat Ryan! Come play games with me!

I decided to try something new. I've been passing the Yeld play test document around, trying to get people interested in the game. So far I've had some great responses. It occurred to me that I could make the document available for sale (just $1) at RPGNOW. I thought a few people might check it out who otherwise would never find it. I didn't think it would hit #7 on the top 100 list in less then 24 hours!

I'm pretty happy about this. I hadn't really considered RPGNOW as a method for spreading a play test document, but this seems to be working pretty well.

Sea Dracula is doing pretty okay as well, chilling at #80 on the top 100.

A few people have been asking about Sea Dracula. What kind of game is it? How do you play it? What is it about? Fair enough. Here's a description.

Sea Dracula is a farce courtroom drama. Players take on the roles of animal lawyers and participate in Animal Cities bizarre legal system. This unfolds in two parts. The game starts with the Crime Scene, where players describe a crime that has been committed, and create evidence and witnesses. After the Crime Scene comes the Opening Statements. This is where the trial begins. Each player introduces their animal lawyer, telling the court who they represent and what theory of the crime they will be proving during the trial. The trial continues during the Court Scene, with each player taking turns calling witnesses, introducing evidence or requesting recesses. Successfully taking these actions gives the players lawyer Points. Other animal lawyers can interrupt proceedings by objecting to new evidence or recesses, or by cross examining witnesses. Conflicts between lawyers are decided through dance. Sometimes lawyers challenge each other to dance. Sometimes the lawyers are challenged to dance with each other.   Once a lawyer rests his case the trial comes to an end. The Jury votes to determine a winner. If the Jury can't decide, the lawyer with the most Lawyer Points wins!

That's a pretty brief description, and doesn't even cover teh Sea Dracula oath, Boss Fight, Parties or several other important bits. The important thing to know is that Sea Dracula thrives on ridiculousness. This is a party rpg with a performance based conflict resolution mechanic.

Does that help? I hope that helps.

Jake

I've been meaning to add new work to my portfolio for like... 2 years. So I did. I'm not a huge fan of the layout, but I figure I'll fix it when I have more time.

I'm looking for some music for my Yeld project. I want Yeld to have some official theme music. Something similar to the music from the early Final Fantasy games, the Zelda games or other similar games. What I'm looking for is royalty free mucic that I can use with this project. Anyone have any suggestions?

One of my students will be graduating from high school this spring, and asked me for advice on where he should attend next Fall. he was, unfortunately, rejected from his school of choice, Cal Arts. He wants to be an animator, or possibly work in video games. I didn't go to art school, so I'm not sure what to tell him. Can anyone suggest some West Coast schools with good animation programs? Or just good art programs in general? Most especially anyone who went  to school in Portland. Right now he's looking at AI and PSU, but he doesn't feel really great about either. Mt. Hood Community College just set up a new animation program, but he doesn't know much about it.

Any advice? My intent is to do as much research as I can this week and come back to him with a few suggestions. He's asking a bunch of people for advice, but I want to make sure I have good information for him because I feel like I'm one of the few people who really understands what it is he wants to do.

Sea Dracula is now available for sale on RPGNOW. See it here!

Lukas created some really cool reference cards for his recent game of Yeld. These cards contain all the info for each of the 8 Heroic Jobs, and are a great reference for players who are choosing jobs for the first time. Lukas must have read my mind, because he used character art from Final Fantasy 2 to illustrate the cards. Good stuff! Thanks, man!

Click the link above, or right here.

So after a two week break, I'm back. My intention was to try to do some double posts over the next few weeks, to make up for the two pages I missed last month. i still want to try, mostly because I feel better and more connected to the story when I'm doing more work on it. On the other hand, some stuff has come up recently and I'm finding myself with a lot less available time then I anticipated. So we'll see.

Hey, this is page 20. That's 20 pages! That's a very small milestone.

Paul Robertson has finished his new animation. It's called Kings of Power 4 Billion %, and it's about 12 minutes of pure love.

Download it here. Really. Do it. It's totally worth the effort.

GameStorm is Portlands game convention. It was held last weekend at a hotel in Vancouver , Washington (just across the river from Portland). After GameStorm last year I accepted the responsibility of joining the GameStorm planning committee as the indie games liaison.  Outside of the committee, I worked with Travis Brown, Matt Schlotte  and Christian Griffen to organize our Indie Hurricane (the indie games booth, events and presence for GameStorm). This is my report on the convention.

Overall impressions: Everything went pretty well! People seemed generally excited about GameStorm and very excited about what we were doing there. We sold a lot of books, ran a lot of great games, met and spent time with a lot of great people and had a lot of really good conversations. There was a very vocal desire to see Indie Hurricane return to GameStorm, and an equally vocal desire to see it split off and become it's own thing. That's something we can talk about over the next few months. Special thanks to Tyler Tisnley, who produced and designed the excellent Indie Hurricane shirts we were all wearing. I know Tyler still has some, so if you're interested in one please let him know!

Booth: The Indie Hurricane booth was packed, both in front and behind the counter. We lost our demo space on the second day, but that didn't stop a regular crowd from forming in front of our booth for most of the time the dealers hall was open. We sold an impressive amount of games, including 2/3 of the stock sent by IPR. We had a lot of local products on hand as well, including The Cross Roads of Eternity by Travis Brown (with art by me!), Beast Hunters by Christian and Lisa Griffen, Big Big Battles by Tyler Tisnley, Better Angels of Our Nature by Matt and Kim Schlotte, Bliss Stage and Polaris by Ben Lehman and my own games Panty Explosion, Classroom Deathmatch and Sea Dracula (which at one dollar was the #1 seller at our booth). As I said, our booth was packed, with people browsing the racks, asking questions and (when possible) getting demos pretty much non-stop for the entire weekend. I spoke to several local retailers who are very excited about carrying indie games. One of them, Rainy Day Games, is already having a lot of success with indie games from the IPR catalog. Right now, after the con, I'm thinking the same thing I did last year: Portland gamers will buy indie games if given the chance. Special thanks to April Brown, Mike Sugarbaker, Joel Shempert and Willem (I don't know your last name). None of you had a financial stake in the booth at all, but each of you spent more time there then I did, and did a fantastic job of getting attendees excited about our games and community. Thank you so much!

Games: It seemed like there was a constant stream of people coming to the booth or stopping me in the hall to talk about the amazing game they just played. We scheduled about 2 dozen indie games for the weekend, and we had several pick up and spill over games as well! My own string of games (as a player or facilitator) included Anima Prime, The Magical Land of Yeld, Bliss Stage, Sea Dracula, Deaths Door and my Panty Explosion/Gundam hack. Special thanks to everyone I played with, most especially the Sea Dracula attendees (who had no shame) and James Brown, who took time late on Saturday night to teach me how to play Deaths Door. Extra Special thanks to Travis Brown, who came in extra early on Saturday to handle the spillover from my Yeld game!

Food: I can't remember eating anything the entire time I was there, except for the enchilada I had at the Mexican restaurant down the street on Saturday afternoon. Special thanks to Nick Smith for buying me lunch that day!

Community: Our local community made a good showing. Dozens of local indie game players came out to help work the booth, run games or just have a good time. We grew our community this weekend by looking cool, being smart and having fun! Every game we ran drew a crowd of  onlookers (my Panty Explosion game had 4 observers, and Sea Dracula had 13 (who we drafted as jury for the game)! All through the weekend I saw people I knew talking up our community, telling people about our games and inviting them to join us at our site and at our next game night! Our local designers made a good show of it, running an exhaustive series of games and panels, participating in other games and spending as much time at the booth as possible! Special thanks to Ben Lehman for coming down from Seattle to join us! Shit, special thanks to everyone who came from out of town!

More special thanks: I want to say thanks again to Travis and April Brown, who organized the booth and transported everything we needed for GameStorm. They also provided transportation for myself, Nick and several other people over the weekend. Thanks guys!


Jake

Sea Dracula, a game that is so many things to so many people...


is now on sale.


Thanks to everyone for the help and support.

Thanks especially to Willem, Ben, Joel and Pol for making Sea Dracula look sexy at GameStorm this weekend.

Here are the Wave 1 covers for Sea Dracula. Brilliant work everyone! These will be available to order on Monday, March 31st from the Atarashi Games store. Single copies of the game (random cover) are available for $1. The entire Wave 1 set is available for $6. Wave 2 is coming soon!

( See Wave 1 here... )