Greetings programs! Welcome to another blog.
I’ve been drawing Funnies strips for over three and a half years now. Even with all that experience under my belt, I still have trouble with certain simple things, like figuring out who should be standing where.
I don’t remember where, but I once read that logically, people will read all the word balloons in a panel from top to bottom, left to right. It therefore stands to reason that you should always place the word balloon that needs to be read first so that it’s the topmost and/or leftmost balloon in the panel.
Keeping this in mind I try to place the characters in a scene from left to right in order of who speaks first. If a scene is exactly one strip long, this works well enough. Alas, a lot of scenes will carry over from one strip to another. The character placement for one strip may not suit the dialogue order for another. For example, just because Tomaw speaks first in the first strip of a scene, it doesn’t mean that he’ll be speaking first in every other strip. If I didn’t care about continuity, I’d just rearrange the characters to suit the dialogue. But if Tomaw was standing to the left of Red Rich in the first strip, I feel that he should still be to the left in the following strip unless a) I’ve shown Red Rich move over or b) it’s clear that there’s been some time that’s passed. This isn’t always possible so sometimes I have to break things up in ways I feel awkward, like placing a response in a separate panel or juggling where the word balloons go.
Okay, so this all seemed much more interesting before I started trying to write it. I don’t know how well I expressed the problem I’m having. It’s a work in progress.
I played three new games this past weekend: Linko, Wazabi and Pandemic: The Cure.
Wazabi is a cute little dice game where everybody is trying to get rid of the four dice they start the game with. One side of the die allows the player to give the die to someone else. The other sides allow the player to draw or play cards. The trick is, as some cards require you to have a certain number of dice, so the less dice you have, the less ways you have of getting rid of your dice. I’ve only played the game with two players and while it was fun, I think it’d be even more interesting with more players as there’s more dice to pass around.
Linko is a card game where the goal is to empty your hand while keeping the most cards on the table. Everybody starts with thirteen cards with values ranging from one to thirteen. Each turn, you can either play one card of any value or multiple cards of the same value (example, three fives or six twos). Each round’s cards are stacked above the cards of the previous rounds. After you play your cards, you look at the top cards on each other player’s stack. If you’ve played the same number of cards AND your card value is higher than theirs, you snatch. As the snatcher, you have the choice of picking up the other player’s cards (useful if you have cards of the same value which you’ll be able to play in a future round) and force the other player to draw the same number of cards from the deck, or giving the other player the option to either pick up his cards or discard them and draw the same number of cards from the deck. When one player empties their hand, all players count how many cards they have left on the table and subtracts the number of cards left in their hand to determine their score. The highest score wins. Again I think it’s probably more fun the more players you add to the mix.
Pandemic: The Cure is a cooperative game based on the original Pandemic where each player takes on a different role to try to eradicate four diseases before they cause a global pandemic. Whereas the original Pandemic is played with cards, Pandemic: The Cure is played with dice. Each role has a different set of dice which makes each player better at certain tasks. For example, the Scientist is best at discovering cures while the Dispatcher can send other players where they’re needed. The players need to send disease dice to the treatment center so that samples can be collected. The more samples of a disease the players collect, the easier it is to cure. If too many disease dice of the same colour are in the same location at once, it causes an outbreak. Too many outbreaks and the players lose. As players roll their dice they also run the risk of rolling contagion results. Contagions cause the propagation track to advance. If the players reach the end of the propagation track, they lose. Oh and if they run out of disease dice, they also lose. That means there are a lot of different elements to keep track of. Something I found weird is that the more players there are, the easier the game is. You can start further along the propagation track to add more challenge though so it’s likely just a question of finding the right balance so that things are challenging without feeling hopeless. I played one game with two players controlling one character each and were wiped out within just a few turns. I also played four games with both players controlling two characters and won two. After only a game or two to learn the ropes, a full game plays in about thirty minutes.
Of the three, I enjoyed Pandemic: The Cure the most. Wazabi and Linko are good filler games to round out an evening though.
So that’s it for this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday! Carja V.
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