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It looks crude and goofy now, but the first Alone in the Dark game got a few jump scares out of me back in the day, along with a really immersive feeling of dread throughout.

Carrying around two utterly useless items that you'd have no interest in other than once you combine them, the result is something you can't live without. (I use this puzzle in several of my own games).

Hello again, Moving Thread.

Another year come and gone. How were your holidays? Did you make any resolutions for the new year? I did. I've also moved to a new town. Things have been busy for me in 2018. By the way, any word on the apocalypse? Is the world still scheduled to end on time?

Your pal,

P

Anchorhead always makes me think of Star Wars.

w00t!

So what you're saying is that you wait for your alcohol level to reach a certain hight and then you'll start writing. Got it.

Precisely. Expect something incoherent and poorly spell-checked to arrive late on New Year's Eve night.

The trick is to let the magic genie in the alcohol bottle to do all the work for you.

Holy Snickerdoodle! A Podcast!!!

Sweet biscuits, you're right! And just in time for Christmas!

Happy b-day wishes to Cat, Baron, Sinitrena and anyone I missed. And thanks for all the Ponchday wishes, guys!

I have unfinished stories for at least six of those themes.

Ah! A new post! Surely there's a new podcast!

Sorry for the false hope, BCT-fans.

oh...

Good topic suggestions, though. I don't know about GrundlBen, but I load all my games with debug codes to make my life (and the lives of my playtesters) easier.   Just remember to disable them before you make the game available to the rest of the world.

Damn, I miss feelies.

Nice trophies, Mandle!

Best Use of Traditional Wall of Text: Sinitrena
Special Achievement in Post Editing: Baron
Meritorious Effort in Serialization: JudasFM

Well done, everyone!

Wow. I hadn't thought of that game in ages. I remember playing it back in the day and liking the art style quite a bit. But other than a few annoying pixel hunts, I can't say I remember much about it. I'll have to watch your video and see if any memories are shaken loose.

How this is different from any other day in Canada I'm not sure, but they seem to enjoy it.

The other days of the year, Canadians say "sorry" to everyone they meet.

Night of the Linen Dead?

[Canadian]

It's Canadian Thanksgiving right now, so I won't be properly sober until Monday.

Canadian Thanksgiving? I don't know. It all sounds awfully made up to me. A likely excuse, if you ask me. I'd be careful if I were you, Mandle.

And I just finished reading Ponch's story which was amazing!

Thanks! As soon as I get home, since the contest is open for a while longer, I'm going to fix a couple of typos. I swear, one day in the future an autocomplete related misunderstanding is going to bring about the end of the world.

Done!

Me too!

[His Stories]

[This space reserved for a FWC entry coming in a day or two]


His Stories

Outside the little window, it began to rain. It had rained every day since he had come to live here, or so it seemed. His bones ached from the damp. He sighed deeply, feeling his age. A choir of bullfrogs raised their monotonous chant somewhere behind the house. The sound did not bring a smile to his weathered, deeply lined face.

Wrinkled, bare feet shuffled wearily across the living room floor, worn smooth by many years of footsteps too numerous to count.

The music player was hidden inside the thick shelf of the mantle above the fireplace. A cunningly devised panel, blended perfectly into the swirls and grain of the wood, yielded to persistent fingers that knew just where to pry and push. The old man carefully set the panel aside and switched on the device. Music began to play. A woman, most likely dead by now, began to sing soulfully about hard times to come.

The old man smiled wistfully. The singer had been right. Hard times did come. The sunshine was gone. Only rain now, every day.

He needed a drink.

Behind the potted plants in the corner, another hidden panel concealed a mini-bar. He pulled the big, barely tended plant away with a grunt, nudging the leafy fronds aside with his foot where they spilled down onto the carpet in a thick, green spray. Groaning softly, he eased down onto one knee -- something that was getting harder to do with each passing season. With a well-practiced tug, the panel hiding the mini-bar popped loose. He opened the little door and cold, refrigerated air spilled out. He smiled for just a moment. Then he heard the compressor rattle into life behind the wall.

One of these days, he thought glumly, that thing's finally going to die. And getting a repairman I can trust to come all the way out here is going to cost me an arm and a leg.

He pulled the jug of cold ale out and reluctantly closed the door of the mini-bar, trapping the rest of the cold air inside, where it couldn't escape.

He took a deep breath, readying himself for the hardest part. Cursing a steady stream of the foulest profanity, he forced his knee to lever his body back up to a standing position.

Trudging stiff-legged through the small house, still cursing softly, he made his way into the kitchen. There, mixed in among the innocuous little bottles of seasonings on the spice rack over the sink, were the only secret treasures he didn't feel the need to hide away. They were hidden in plain sight. And why not? Who ever bothered to really examine someone's spice rack?

"Shit biscuits," he muttered with a smile, in better spirits now even though his knee was still aching. "Little motherfucking cunt waffles, where are you? You little dick pickles... Shove you up a half-priced whore's -- Ah ha! There you are!"

From the irregular rows of little glass bottles, he deftly plucked two: One filled with brown sugar, and another almost half-full of nutmeg.

He walked over to the sink, carrying the spices and the cold ale, droplets of condensed water already beginning to appear on the surface of the glass jug. He thought about using the microwave hidden in the floor at the foot of the bed, but decided to spare his protesting knee the abuse. Besides, he would need his knee later to get to the especially well-hidden stash of porn inside the walls of bathroom linen closet.

He smiled at the thought of all the self-abuse that lay ahead of him tonight.

"Friday night," he said to the empty house. "Daddy's gonna beat his meat like it owes him money."

He chuckled, pouring the ale into the old pot hanging just above the flames in the fireplace. He mixed in a generous amount of spices, stirring it with a wooden spoon. Once the aleberry came to a boil, he could get a nice buzz going. Once his inhibitions were down, he would be able to look at his very best porn without feeling guilty about it.

The aroma of spiced alcohol began to waft through the small house. The old man smiled. It had been a while since he had treated himself to such an extravagant night.

"Gonna sleep like a baby tonight," he mused to himself. "Probably be sore tomorrow, but that's what I get for buying the 'Big Daddy Buttplu-'"

He stopped mid-sentence, his smile suddenly brittle, frozen in place. Over the din of the frogs and the other animals outside, he could hear, very faintly, the distinctive sound that spelled the end of his special evening.

Engines.

"Fucksticks," he hissed, then more loudly, "Shitpiss!"

He scrambled through the house, as fast as his old legs would go, trying to get everything hidden again. The whine of the engines was getting louder. He threw the pot of simmering liquor out the open window. The hot rain of booze finally silenced the frogs.

"Cum guzzling ass sniffer!"

The mini-bar was hidden behind the plant again. He dashed over to the music player and shut it off.

"Stupid boy! Twatlapping cocksucker!"

He fumbled with the mantelpiece panel, trying to get it back into place without breaking it.

"Hillbilly turdburglar! Can't an old fart get his fucknutting rocks off in piece?"

The thought of his best porn going unused in the darkness of the linen closet made his old heart ache deeply, just like his balls. Outside, the engines idled loudly, dangerously close.

"Fucktard!" he grumbled as he dug through his junk drawer, trying to find something useless but shiny to distract the person who was going to walk through the front door any moment now.

"Flaming cockwad!!" he spat out as he shuffled to his spot in the middle of the living room. He stood, intentionally stooping a little, trying to look more wise and less horny, trying hard to think of something to tell the boy.

"Fuck off, you little cockwipe. Daddy's got things to do," he mumbled to himself, turning the widget he had pulled from the drawer of junk over and over in his hand, hidden behind his back.

He sighed, forcing himself to adopt the proper attitude.

"I'm worried," he said, practicing the words he would say. "There's a cloning facility on... No, no, no. Say it right you old goat. Say it right."

He cleared his throat and began again.

"Worried am I. A cloning facility there is, on the forest world of Narsa." He nodded to himself. "There it is. Daddy's still got it."

Outside he heard the boy's voice. "C'mon, Artoo. Let's find Yoda."

"You're gonna find my dick in your ass in a minute, you party pooping sonofabitch," the old man grumbled. He rolled his eyes in these last, precious minutes before his guest arrived. "Find my dick in your ass, you will. Party pooper, are you."

He felt the weight of the old power chip from a broken nav-unit in his palm. It was a pretty crappy quest item, he had to admit.

But it's not like this hick kid gave me much time to prepare tonight. The boy never does, really. This kid just shows up unannounced all the time, looking for me to give him something to do.

"Get a job you should, shitpickle. Be useful, youngling, instead of just sexy, why not?" Yoda muttered to himself just before Luke entered the house without knocking, as usual.

The boy let himself into the house, dripping water all over the floor. Tonight, it was very easy for Yoda to look grim and serious, and his loose robes hid the shape of his disappointed gherkin. Why did the boy have to be so damn sexy?

Only reason I let you drop by all the time, he thought to himself. An ass that won't quit, have you, hmmm? Yes. Powerful ass.

The boy looked at him expectantly, as always.

"Worried am I, Luke," Yoda began, spinning a new story.


(A bite-sized story for a bite-sized game. My game, of course, was the second greatest game in LucasArts' "Desktop Adventures" series: Yoda Stories.)