I made a quick and dirty website for Tigers On Vaseline, mostly because we had pins made and there was space on the back for a small amount of text. Also I wanted to have a demonstration model for a simple band website, that I could show other bands. Mainly we're looking for a list of shows, links to other profiles if relevant, and a way to listen to recordings, if any. Also if you have a band logo or font, it wouldn't hurt to have a nice big version for promotors to paste on to a flyer. All bands should do this, in my opinion. It's fun.

Anyway I did a great job and then while I was at it I decided to wing up a little bonus featurette, and I made a band-themed version of the game Snake, which you've probably played if you ever had a Nokia phone. You gobble up dots and each dot you gobble makes your tail longer, until it becomes a problem. Our version is called "Tiger Tail":

I didn't program the game, I just found someone else's work and adapted it. It was a cakewalk to get the stripes in the tiger's tail, and to make it kink a segment now and then. The movement is a little crazy because it doesn't move so much as it repeatedly grows a segment at the tail and destroys one at the head. You wouldn't really notice this if it was all one color, but how it is now it seems like the stripes stay where they are while the tail zags around underneath them, like a creature moving under dappled light, or a parasite squirming behind a colorful tattoo. It's a little distressing, and my mind moves constantly between a viewpoint from which the tail has agency but its stripes are blinking, and one in which the pattern is eternal and the tail just makes it selectively visible, a wave on painted water. If someone else asked me to make this for them I would imagine them filing a ticket about the stripe movement. But it's my idea and I like how it is.

Dropped a nice little Rousseau painting as a backdrop, we love him here. And it's really nice to have a wavy background under such a gridded game, it makes it more confusing. It's not always obvious that you're on the right path to hit the apple. Just like in real life!

I also made it so you can listen to our demo while you play :) I play "other guitar" and do not sing. I hope you like the recording IF you generally like this kind of thing: a basement demo of a very noisey punk band. If you don't like that sort of thing then I accept "not for me" as a value judgement. I would also accept "seems like you guys are having a lot of fun", which is a graceful response to something that doesn't do it for you, and oftentimes true.

But the big innovation here (with the game) is that I introduced (I think) a new mode, which I've decided to call "Refinement". Refinement starts off fast and gets slower over time as the tail gets longer. It kind of feels right, like of course its slower, you're dragging way more material now. But from a game perspective it's weird-- few games get easier as you play them. Or, they get easier because you're actually getting better. In this version, that feeling is manufactured devilishly. It gets easier on its own, and even though I'm telling you what's happening, you're going to feel a boost by thinking that you're getting better.

For this reason, Refinement mode is a little addictive. Getting better is a great feeling! Of course, addictive video games are Babylon material, straight up. But in my game, after you play for a while, and assuming you can make it past the first dozen stages, it gets slow enough that you kind of get bored, and then hopefully you quit. Again, if someone was paying me to do this they'd be like "make it so people want to keep playing it all day". But that's not what I want to do with my life. Especially as spring moves towards summer, I want "hmm, this is fun!" and then shortly thereafter "let's go get ice cream". Babylon down!

Beyond this pleasant consideration, there's another nice quality to refinement mode-- it really is difficult at first, so in order to play at all you'll (probably) have to start over, over and over. I think that's a good lesson! Anyone setting out on a novel enterprise should tolerate and expect massive amounts of failure early on, and if you want to achieve true success (in a video game, in stand-up comedy, in skateboarding, in playing the guitar) you should condition yourself to experience failure as a ticklish but mildly burning sensation. I know that we can't address every obstacle in our lives with this flavor of sparkling irritation, but when I look back on my most fruitful times of trial, even when it's me vs me, my most common refrains are in Moe Howard vox: "C'mere you", backed with "Oh, a wiseguy, eh???". If you wind up playing this game for more than a little bit, please take it to heart that small regular failures can be fun and enlivening, and bring this energy into your next endeavor.

The other life lesson I'm taking here is that as the game proceeds and your tail gets longer and longer, it stops being about simply piloting a shape and gobbling up apples. The real game is about simply not getting in your own way. Fail often, get nice and slow and old, get out of your own way. Peace everyone. Keep getting those apples.

links / misc

• Tigers On Vaseline website: [link]. The link to Tiger Tail is at the bottom. Attentive readers will note that I rolled out a new pseudonym for this project. :) We're playing this Friday at Ask A Frog [link], and at Myrtle in East Providence on the 30th [link]. Our new demo is out, and as is required by punk law, there are copies at Armageddon (shop).
• I'm starting a new thing in the castle where certain rooms will collect writing on a particular topic. I'll be putting all the posts about games in the games room, which is on the second floor. I'm thinking it'll be nice to see things pile up in various places. I mean that's a very reliable source of delight for me, to see things pile up in various places. Take the stairs up and it's the first door on the left, next to the haunted mirror.
• The orders for the Iron Maiden "Eddie With Ice Cream Cone" t-shirts really took off, thank you everyone!!!!! I'll be taking orders for one more week, till this Saturday the 23rd, then I'll be taking it down. Read about it here: [link] or order one here: [link].
• If you want to mess around with making a website for your band, I'd probaly start with neocities: [link]. It's free, and it seems like they make it easy to make a fun little website.
• No one asked but if you're looking for a nice little book on Rousseau, I really enjoyed "The Banquet Years" by Roger Shattuck, of which roughly a fourth is dedicated to our patron saint, le Douanier, Henri Rousseau, with further sections dedicated to his contemporaries Alfred Jarry, Erik Satie, and Apollinaire. It can be readily found in paperback form for single digits, and makes a great beach read.

Archives of previous posts is here, in the coat room: [coatroom]

To sign up to get these posts in your email for free, click here: [substack]

To write me a nice message, use the contacts page: [link]

To leave a little donation to help in the maintance of this castle, OR to simply hear the sound of a large bell, which is good luck, visit the temple area: [link]

As always, if you're bugging out or need a respite from endlessly scrolling the feed, you are welcome to hang out in the castle as long as you want. :)