See, what I'm doing here is posting this comic on Thursday afternoon, so it looks like it's early, and not a week and a half late. I am so clever.

I don't like the first panel here at all. The rest is... okay, I suppose. And that's all I have to say about that.

But wait, I'm going to try and make it up to you for being so very, very useless recently. I'm going to link you to a game! I didn't make it or anything, so basically what I'm doing is offering someone else's hard work as an apology for my own shortcomings. It is good, though.

Mighty Jill Off is a game that apparently made a big splash in the indie game-maker community last year, and as with most cool things, I have discovered it a while after everybody else stopped talking about it. I'll say right away that the game isn't exactly work-safe, but if you've read this comic, I doubt it's going to offend your sensibilities. It's a tribute to the 8-bit Mighty Bomb Jack, wrapped up in an unconventional yet strangely adorable story. Our hero, Jill, is the short, chubby and extremely eager-to-please slave of a BDSM queen who resides at the top of a very tall tower full of spikes, fire and giant poisonous spiders. The gameplay sees Jill employing her signature ability - jumping very high - to get to her queen. Opening and closing cutscenes aside, this could pass for an authentic NES-era platformer, albeit one with minimalistic controls and some very smart level design. A lot's been written about this game and how it's a commentary on the masochism inherent in gaming, and it's certainly pretty challenging given its length... but at the same time, it never seems cheap or overly unfair. It also seems custom-built for speed-runs. Oddly, the game it kept bringing to mind was Drill Dozer, a platformer I fell in love with a while ago. Both games introduce a single, core dynamic - jumping in Mighty Jill Off, and drilling in Drill Dozer - and employ them in every way imaginable, demanding that you master them completely for the trickier bits. They also both have main characters called Jill, but you probably can't take the story similarities any further than that.

I won't spoil the ending, but it really gave me a smile. It's prompted me to look at some of the other works of the game's creator, Anna Anthropy, aka Auntie Pixelante, who is a downright astonishing individual - and I mean that in the nicest possible way. I'm sorely tempted to send her some Mighty Jill Off fanart, but I'm a bit scared of her.