I just launched a kickstarter

[zl]

And I did the video in flash, the first animation I've made in a long time

Not that there's anything too impressive going on there, it's just image tweens and text shenanigans, but it's still a good familiar feeling to have finished something in flash. And the program was surprisingly well-behaved, only crashed a few times, never lost much work. It felt like...coming home.

...And I'm realizing now that I wasted an opportunity to slip a clock into there.

[RobClock]

I look forward to the Clocktopia murder mystery

[zl]

thank you rob you made today awesome

[BilliardBall10]

this will be great!

it seems very impressive; i will support it.

[miracle fruit]

u make the coolest things that i would never play

[RobClock]

congratulations on nearly doubling your goal in like one day

[zl]

this will be great!

it seems very impressive; i will support it.

Thanks, BB10!

u make the coolest things that i would never play

Thanks! haha

After this, they'll be a video game about goblin diplomacy, and a board game about dogs fighting zombies. Indie RPGs are pretty much the tiniest niche for gaming

congratulations on nearly doubling your goal in like one day

I was crazy anxious about this project, it's a huge relief to see it going so well!

[PhantomCatClock]

Goblandia and Dogeatzomblandia are already trademarked by patent trolls, you fool

[SockpuppetClock]

good luck out there

[zl]

We just got tagged as "Project of the day," it looks to me like it's the project that pops up when you go to kickstarter.com

ohman

[Topcatyo]

Wow, y'all are hitting paydirt! Congrats

[BilliardBall10]

those are great news, ZL! i wish you the best of luck in your projects!
you do nice art.

[Topcatyo]

Clocktopia Noir

It was a night just like any other, but in the end it really wasn't.
I had a bottle of whiskey in my hand. Over time I had drunkenly broken every glass in my office in a subconscious effort to streamline my lifestyle, so now I just drank straight out of the bottle.
And I did it often.
The rain hit against the window with extra percussion tonight as I stared at my window at the red car parked kitty-corner of my office. I stared with a groggy eye as a striking figure leaned daintily into the trunk and emerged seconds after with armfuls of baggage. She strode across the street with what looked like 50 pounds of luggage effortlessly and kicked in the door to the building I was in.  This was not her first time doing this.
I heard determined click-clacks up the stairs and not long after they had ascended, my door flew open and the woman strode right in with her eyes closed, mascara crying right down her cheeks, announcing "That's it Vivian! I've given it up. I've given it all up! He's out of my life and now I have nothing because I should have done this long ago!"
My silence threw her off and then she opened her eyes, saw me, and jumped back in shock.
"Oh my," she said. "I fear that I am having a nervous breakdown."

"Sit down, lady, I'm not Vivian but maybe I can help you out." I motioned with my bottle to the general direction of where I think my seat looked like it was.
She started picking up her bags in a haste. "I don't mean any offense when I say this but in the interest of my own safety it's probably better that I don't stick around in a stranger's house."
I kicked my hat up above my brow with my index finger. "Ma'am, I ain't a stranger." With drunken bravado I outstretched my arms to my shitty, smelly office. "I'm a business! And this isn't my house..." I swirled my finger to direct the eye, "...this is my office. And you came in here looking for help. Well, ma'am, that's exactly what kind of business I run. A helping business."
"What are you, a Dick?" she said.
"YOU'RE THE DICK!" I yelled back, and then I remembered that "dick" was another name for a Private Investigator. "Oh, I mean, sorry, yeah, I'm a "Dick". I'm a Private I.
She sat down in the chair. "Okay", she began, trepidatiously. "My husband of 13 years has been a mob hitman this whole time and it turns out all these years of my life, our whole relationship, everything has all been one elaborate cover story. He gets 'made' on the job and all of a sudden I'm holding a vase with flowers in it telling me in code words what's happened. For all I know he's in Acapulco! On top of that, because of his involvement with the mob, and because of his involvement with me, I'm fairly certain I'm a target now and I have to go into hiding. Vivian wasn't the best escape but it would be a start, and now I've just remembered that Vivian moved to Santa Barbara 3 years ago!"
She took a deep breath, and shifted her attention from nothing over to me. She calculated for a moment before she said "Is that a bottle of Jake's Whiskey in your hand? Does it still have some left?" I nodded that it did. "Can I have some?"
I passed the bottle over and she almost gulped the rest of it down before passing it back. "Oh where are my manners", she said as she choked the last of her sip down. "Don't want to just drink the rest of your bottle."
"It's cheap bullshit whiskey that could corrode metal, drink as much as you like." I sat back in my chair and really consider the load of information she had just dumped on me. Perhaps getting involved with the mob could be hazardous to my health. But here was a poor woman at her wit's end over something that didn't appear to be her fault at all. Guilty of falling in love. Guilty of being there. Guilty of not running a background check.
"What mob was your, uh... ex, working for?" I finish the bottle and place it in a bin with others just like it.
"I don't quite know, but I know they're at war with another mob. I think they're called "ki1o", but that sounds like nonsense to me. The gang they're fighting is some local crew, a bunch of street rats known as the Clock Crew. They're a colorful bunch but they haven't really done a whole lot more than mischief and robbery."
This "ki1o" organization gave me chills. How are they such a mystery if there's an undercover hitman working for them? Hitmen are like cockroaches, if there's one, there's thousands living in the cracks of your walls. If I got involved in this case, I wouldn't know who to trust, the crosshair of ki10 would start to focus on me and they'd be itching to pull the trigger. Could I risk it?
"You got cash, lady?"
"Yes, I'll reward you handsomely if you help me out of this somehow."
On the second hand I do like a good mystery, and ki10 sure was one hell of a big mystery.