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Granted, but it's replaced by neo-neofascism.
I wish for the next season of Twin Peaks to be amazing.

Granted. You also find yourself knee-deep in guano and afflicted with rabies.
I wish for a renewable energy resource with no environmental side effects.

It's a testament to your system that I tried to click on the mug when it lit up.

I agree with what has been said before and will also toss out that you might want to consider using the shadows functionally to draw attention to the vital parts of the screen.

Front page of Reddit yesterday, too!

Man, I can't even make a game where one guy walks around a couple of rooms and doesn't make sound when he talks.

I think the game should focus on getting a toddler to go to bed. Playthrough will be three hours at its shortest point. It will utilize TellTale style dialogue options, and the toddler NPC will remember every single thing you've said, trying to draw you into contradictions. The toddler will have a sleepiness bar, which you can build through assuaging them, but at a certain point, they become too sleepy to go to bed and spill over into furious fit territory. The parent / PC will have a frustration bar. This one will vary wildly depending on the given situation. The game will feature a false ending where you think you've gotten the toddler to go to bed, before hearing a call from their bedroom that they have to go potty. At this point, the game restarts itself.

Would be helpful to know what sort of intent you have behind the page. I gather that you want a sort of personal/casual look from the use of handwriting fonts, but handwriting fonts across a body of text are fatiguing to read.

Really enjoyed this. The aesthetic and tone reminded me quite a bit of Kentucky Route Zero, which has become one of my favorite games. I also second the request for looks at your process. The animation and (vector?) artwork are beautiful in this.

Sox's comment makes me wonder: are there multiple endings? I'm going to play it again regardless! Well done!

Len - Steal My Sunshine
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E1fzJ_AYajA
I love this song for some reason. One if the few CD singles I ever bought.

I almost made this my pick, and I too cannot explain why I like this song.

Good to see some Beach Boys!

The Kinks - Sitting in the Midday Sun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64XnI02Wh5c

What a wonderful thing to have sprung on me this morning. This looks great!

Sorry, selmiak...I started a cover, but life got complicated in the past few weeks! I'll try to get in on the next one!

https://www.joedolson.com/2006/08/on-the-readability-of-inverted-color-schemes/

What you need for readability is a high degree of contrast between your figure and your ground (i.e. your letters and your background). You can do this with brightness, hue, and saturation. That's why A works best (followed, in my estimation, by C).

Congratulations, Baron! Well deserved! Phil was my choice for second place as well, just a smidge behind Baron!

Would be nice if we could get some more voters, or at least some more readers! It seemed like everyone put a lot of work into their stories for this competition (which made voting pretty hard).

[Word Choice/Style]

Word Choice/Style -  "Young tarted-up ladies adorned the streets like unorthodox Christmas decorations...(monkey424);"

This was the exact line that decided my vote in this category too. Good work, Monkey!

[Atmosphere]

Atmosphere - Dadelus, special mention to Sinitrena
Word Choice/Style - monkey424, but special mention to one sentence of Mandle's: "There was a cutter knife cast adfift amid some pads of flesh that looked bloody and fresh."
Character(s) and Pulpiness Level - Baron
Noir Level of Background World - PhilStrahl
Best Overall (Worth 2 Points) - Baron by a nose, with several close behind

[CHAPTER 06 â€" The Invader]

CHAPTER 06 â€" The Invader

The sun stabbed through the curtain-less windows and lay harshly across his eyelids, recalling Havelock from the dreamless black solace of sleep. His half-waking mind found the overdue words to finish the conversation from the night before, and he spoke them now trance-like to the empty space where she'd sat begging for his reply: "It was never really my promise to keep." She was surely miles away by now, and in any case, they weren't the words she wanted to hear anyway. Havelock sat up, spit in the floor, thought better of it, and rubbed it into the wood with the bare heel of his foot.

Grogginess receded and a cocktail of regret and hunger filled the vacuum it left behind. He ambled to the basin of dirty water and splashed it against the grit of his cheeks. Rivulets of grey trickled down the deep-cut lines around his mouth. The water was already warm as the air in the room. He checked the clock. It was almost noon it said, but it wasn't set right. A liar, he thought, just like everybody else in this damned place.

The pan yielded ham and a bitter mix of grits and red-eye gravy. Havelock filled his mouth and left the plate barren, savoring the lingering taste for a count of twenty, then replacing it with a swig of sour mash bourbon and the dry burn of stale tobacco. He tipped the emptied glass on its side, stood, and took stock of the room: The girl was gone. The bag was gone. The money was gone. His gun was gone. His shoes were gone. Right then, he felt plum relieved she'd left the pan and the grits and the bourbon. He poured another glass. He lit another cigarette. He missed the girl, but for what it was worth, he missed the gun more.

Six stories down, the cars sprinted up and down the street, occasionally finding space at the curb to rest. The sidewalks were clogged with harried people, elbows touching as they passed in the narrow spaces behind sidewalks and paper boxes. Havelock watched them half-interested from the window, glad to be above them and not down in the scrum. The shower was cold, a relief today. He dripped off the excess water and slipped an undershirt over his head. He kicked around a pile of dirty shirts until a pair of trousers revealed itself. He was one leg in when the pounding at the door began. He was both in when the lock was pushed through the jamb.

By the time he looked up, the mook had cleared half the distance between him and the door. The mook was tall and wide, and cast a shadow across the bed were Havelock still sat, pants cinched around his naked thighs. The mook's hair was blonde and close-cropped, his features were rounded by fat, and his face fair but tinted red. The mook wore a cheap-looking suit and a poorly knotted tie. The mook's feet slapped a loud 4/4 on the floor boards as he closed the rest of the gap to Havelock. The mook's fist was high above his head. Then it wasn't anymore.

Havelock rose again from the dark of unconsciousness, but this time swallowed any words that threatened to spill out. The taste of blood was in his mouth; the feel of blood was on his face. He was down on the floor, on his back, with a size 13 Florsheim refusing to let his chest rise.

“People said you was a tough feller,” the mook said. He put his weight forward and Havelock's lungs clicked like a gear that wouldn't catch. “Y'all ain't seem so tough to me.”

“People lie,” Havelock said, with the last bit of breath he'd been hoarding. The mook's foot moved slightly, and the air flooded back into him. He lay drinking it in until his chest no longer burned.

“You have a girl here with you last night?” the mook asked, stepping over to look at the ruffled blanket on the bed. Havelock sat up to his knees, pulling his trousers up the rest of the way and buttoning them for good measure. He really missed the gun now.

“I don't rightly recall seeing anything in the tenant's agreement that forbids it,” he said.

The mook picked up a matchbook from the bedside table, and idly flicked at it with his thumb. He offered, without looking away: “People said you was a smart feller too.”

“I ain't too smart,” Havelock said. “Just smarter than some.”

The mook lost interest in the matchbook, flicked it to one side. “A real smart feller would've answered my question the first time.” He took two steps, gripped Havelock's head in his oversized palms, and shoved it through the plaster of the wall beside the bed. Havelock felt blood splash in his ears, down over his eyelids, across the bridge of his nose as he was yanked back into the room. The mook threw him down to the floor, and Havelock scuttled back like a crab, tired of being beaten. He said as much out loud and the mook laughed.

“There ain't much you can tell me now I ain't already figured out anyway,” he said. “I know she was here. I know she ain't now. And I know that probably stings you more than anything my fists could do.” He paused to watch the grimace spread Havelock's blood-painted face. “I got one more question for you, and you better play straight with me on this or I'll beat you six ways to Sunday, boy: do you know where she went?”

Havelock rocked a loose front tooth with the tip of his tongue and shook his head. The mook laughed a deep and knowing guffaw.

“Well, I'm glad to have finally got some truth from you, tough feller. Or was it smart feller?” He laughed again, and made slowly for the door.

“What about the mess you made?” Havelock asked him.

“What mess?” The mook feigned a look that was plum angelic.

“You busted my damn door,” Havelock pointed. “And you put a hole in my wall.”

“I'm muscle. I ain't no carpenter,” the mook said. “They pay me to break things. They ain't paying me to fix them. And besides, I seem to remember it was your head done that to the wall. If'n you look closely, you'll see that hole is you-shaped.”

The mook backed out cautiously, pulling the door to behind him. He made a show of trying to get the latch to catch, but it was no good. The door was off its hinges. He laughed himself down the hallway.

Havelock submerged his face in the brackish water of the basin and rinsed away all the blood that wasn't still bleeding. He drew a slug of bourbon, then one more, then one more until the bottle was drip dry. There were two ways to go about this, he thought. He could kill the mook and find the girl. Or he could find the girl and kill the mook.

In his estimation, the order of the sequence didn't matter all that much. He did wish she'd have left his damn shoes though.