Curate of Curiosities

Normally, this is where we would discuss the second volume, but since the whole comic has been region blocked, that simply won't be an option for the time being.

As I've mentioned before, this comic has an official website, with all sorts of goodies. Promotional videos, wallpapers, fanart...but what we're really focusing on here is the games.

There are four games in total, all of which were made in Flash, of course. Of course, since Flash died a few years back, the games are currently unplayable on most browsers, but there's nothing stopping you from downloading the SWF files and using Ruffle to play them, as I did.

If, for some reason, you don't have Ruffle installed, then the games have also been made available on the Internet Archive.

The very first flash game on the site is called Dance Dance Jenny, and not only was this clearly a clone of DDR, but it's also clear that it was published very early in the comic's lifespan. Press the arrow keys vaguely in time with the music to awkwardly shift from one heavily-pixelated JPEG of Jenny to another.

I've played a lot of Stepmania, so it irritated me that there wasn't an option to change the scroll speed. But then again, the early DDR games didn't have this option, either, so maybe the developer was just working with what they knew? At least, that was what I thought before I actually played the game for more than ten seconds.

After you hit enough notes, the game will actually get faster, and play different background music to match. So it's like a cross between DDR and Tetris.

Three more flash games were published on the site in 2009. The first one is called Acnophobia.

The object of this game is to help Murphy use a miracle tonic to get rid of his acne. Simple enough, right? Not quite. You can only rub off two or three zits before you have to reapply the tonic, in the meantime, you see three or four of them pop up while you're trying to do so. Oh, did I mention that the zits take away from your score if you keep them on screen for long enough?

The second game's called Oh! Style! Here, you must help Karine get a new look...by copying it straight from a magazine. Now that i think about it, a dress-up game is just the right fit for this comic.

It's a memory game. The only real challenge is the time limit, and screenshotting the game removes the burden of actually having to memorize the model's face. Moving on.

Last one: John John Racing. Help John John ride his motorcycle to his hot date, dodging bugs and traffic along the way. Unfortunately for him, it's rush hour, so the road will often be packed wall-to-wall with cars, leaving him with very little room to maneuver, especially at high speeds. Did I mention you also die if get too many bugs on your helmet?

I've only managed to finish this game twice.

So that was all four games on the comic's website. And yes, I will do the rest of the comic, just as soon as I find a non-region blocked platform that hosts it.