Doing anything on a regular schedule is hard. A friend of mine, who's also a regular reader of this comic, asked me recently what was harder: Coming up with one-offs for the comic, or coming up with story arcs? Its a tricky question. The one-offs let us experiment and play with ideas more, but the story arcs come with the challenge of how to serialize a story across multiple strips without losing too much of the pacing. At the end of the day, what's easiest is whatever pushes The Cliff farther away. 

The Cliff is that date in the future when we run out of material ready to be posted, and have to scramble to write scripts or draw comics. Every script I write or comic Allison draws pushes The Cliff that much farther away, but every comic we post draws us that much closer to the edge. Its exhilarating. Its terrifying. It feels kind of awesome. In this context, story arcs win, because we can do a bunch of them up front stay well ahead of the cliff.

Today's strip ends our second major storyline, and we hope you enjoyed the ride as much as we did. There won't be any major story developments between now and the end of the year, but we have some real doozies scheduled for 2014. 

Speaking of story, this week's Philip Reviews Games is commanding you to go play Kentucky Route Zero. Or at least give it a chance. Unfortunately (but understandably) there's no demo version, but there is a trailer you can watch. If that doesn't convince you, let me say this: Never have I felt so immersed in a game world in such a short amount of time. Everything about this game, from the art to the music to the way the scenes are broken up gives such a strong sense of selfhood that the world seems more alive than some AAA blockbusters I've played. If you enjoy story, if you yearn for the pinnacle of what adventure games could have been and might be again, go play Kentucky Route Zero. 

Thanks,

Philip