"Matching Reds causes neighboring dots to light on fire. They'll burn for awhile, and then disappear.",
"Matching White Dots, like Black Dots, doesn't do anything. So you're probably better off ignoring them. That's not allegory or anything, it's just the way it is.",
"Matching Black Dots, like White Dots, doesn't do anything. So you're probably better off ignoring them. That's not allegory or anything, it's just the way it is.",
"Matching Blues causes an explosion that scatters dots around and off of the screen.",
"Matching Greens pops, splats, and roots neighboring Dots. Great for keeping the center clear. We tried to sell green to the LAPD, but they said it only worked on dots.",
"Matching Yellows zaps random dots around the screen with electricity. We think it's DC, but it's hard to tell.",
"Matching Purples shoots purple lasers like \"PEW! PEW!\" out of each one. IT IS AWESOME.",
"Matching Oranges mutates neighboring dots into other colors. It's a gamble, but it often pays off.",
"The big 3 means that while this powerup is active, you only have to match three of a color to get an effect.",
"The big 5 means that while this powerdown is active, you have to match five of a color to get an effect.",
"The Nuke sign needs no introductions. Every effect gets an explosion added to it, and Blues/Greens get HUGE explosions.",
"Uh-oh. Slippery Dots means you'll drop any Dot you're holding if you move it too fast. Slow and steady!",
"This powerup increases the duration of the match pulse, so you have more time to make bigger matches. It doesn't work while the alarm is going off, though.",
"You just collected a powerup! You might not need it right away, so it's been saved for later use. Click on it's icon to activate it next time you're in a jam.",
"Powerdown! For the next 10 seconds, you have to live with the conditions of the powerdown. You can cancel it early by clicking a powerup. Then again, you get more points while powerdowns are active.",
"The points you've earned in this session are being tallied here. Try to get 'em all!",
"Dots that get killed by effects give you 10 points. It'll add up, trust us.",
"Dots with powerups that you throw off of the screen give you 100 points.",
"Throwing Dots off of the screen earns you 50 points. Because it's hard. Sorta.",
"Making matches earns 100 points, but each extra Dot multiplies that number by 2. (AND effects? What a deal!)",
"It's game over if this alert reaches the outer circle. Get the Dots out of the center to stop it.",
"Nice! You survived until the timer reached zero, so you get to go on to the next level. Yay?",
"Your brain enjoys putting things in order, so do it! Use your mouse to pick up Dots and match them with 3 other Dots of the same color.",
"You can pause the game by hitting any key on the keyboard. Try it, it's fun!",
"If you miss some of these, there are in-depth instructions in the pause menu.",
"By the way, don't forget you can throw powerdowns off the screen and they won't activate.",
"Did you know you can hover over these messages to keep them from disappearing while you read them? It's true. That said, there aren't many left after level 11.",
"Ok, maybe there's a few more messages. One per level, in fact.",
"This is the IndieCade build, you can tell because there isn't a pile of debug info everywhere. Also because this message says IndieCade. Yay for IndieCade!",
"We were going to add a killer guitar track as background music, but then realized we only know how to play video game guitars.",
"This game can be used for exercise if you project it on the floor and use your feet or face instead of a mouse.",
"This would be pretty fun on a Wii, right? Multiplayer ColorDots where you try to... out-match... your opponent?",
"There weren't always icons on the dots, but a friend who is colorblind explained to me that he couldn't tell them apart. So I made some terrible art for him. Now everyone suffers.",
"I'm starting an internet petition to get everyone to agree that if this game were a rock star, it would be David Bowie.",
"This game has been a ton of fun to build. If you have the opportunity, you should make a game. I think you'd enjoy it.",
"If you do make a game, let me know in an email so I can play it. colordots.team@gmail.com Try to add funny level messages. People tend to like those.",
"Still playing, eh? That... is awesome.",
"This is about the point where I start losing, so I really have no way of testing these messages.",
"I guess I could tweak the variables myself and win automatically, but where's the fun in that?",
"OK, I set it up so that if you type 'steve is awesome' you'll automatically win the level.",
"Wow this is much easier when I just type 'steve is awesome.'",
"Ok, you got me. Typing 'steve is awesome' doesn't actually do an auto-win. Good job for not trying it.",
"Level 31. The greatest level ever.",
"We start adding new features at level 33.",
"I may have been lying earlier. No new features at level 33. Same features, slightly harder.",
"I guess we could call a slightly harder game a new feature. Oh, hang on one sec. No? Ok, the lawyers say no, we can't do that.",
"We don't actually have any lawyers. Those were imaginary lawyers. I have a very litigious imagination.",
"So no lawyers, no new features, pretty much everything here is fake. These dots you're moving around probably aren't even real.",
"Can't type, still laughing at that last joke.",
"So what keeps someone like you going? Are these messages just playing on your OCD at this point? I'm curious. colordots.team@gmail.com",
"39 is a lovely number. 3 times 13, and 3 squared is 9. Great all around.",
"I guess the greatness of 39 is just another reason to be depressed when you get to 40.",
"In the vastness of space, no one can hear you move little dots around with your mouse.",
"No Hitchhiker's jokes in this game, sorry.",
"Man, that no hitchhiker's thing is really starting to depress me. Something quick, get swallowed by a dog!",
"Something very satisfying about a number with only one unique digit. Moreso when it's more than one digit long.",
"Not that I have anything against single digits. Some of my favorite hand signals involve just the one.",
"I'm surprised you made it past my hand pun. Truly you are the chosen warrior. But chosen for what? I wonder.",
"Closing in on the halfway point.",
"It's still been less than an hour, you can quit now and not feel too bad about yourself.",
"I hope you aren't so sick of the game by the time you get to the last level that you never want to play again. That would defeat the purpose of moderately funny level messages.",
"At a certain point, depending on your CPU speed, but usually around level 50, the game stops getting harder.",
"It stops getting harder because it's mostly frame-based animation, so if the framerate drops, your relative mouse speed increases, making the game easier.",
"So really at this point you're just trying to find out how many of these messages I bothered to put in.",
"But you see, it takes a lot less time for me to type a message than it does for you to play a level.",
"If one person plays a level to read a message, it's worth my time to type out a new message.",
"If two people do it, it's worth my time to write 2 messages. Times like 4 messages per minute, so 8.",
"What I'm trying to say is that if you want to read all the messages, you might be here awhile.",
"I mean, it's one thing if we were recording these all in voice-over. That would actually take work and increase our bandwidth costs. But text? Pfft. May as well do a million.",
"I guess the question is, is anyone going to keep playing just for these messages?",
"Maybe if you know how many there are, it'll be easier for you to continue. Like a goal. The game needs more goals anyway, so why not.",
"There are 100 levels total, so you'll be done once you've played this game for about an hour and a half. That's not so bad, is it?",
"I once spent an hour and a half staring at a wall. At least this is a bit entertaining.",
"To be fair, I was thinking at the time. I don't usually look at walls for longer than 30 seconds or so.",
"Depending on the wall, I suppose.",
"Well, I guess I could start giving away secrets about the full game. Did I not mention already that this was just a work in progress?",
"Yep, this is just a teaser for a full game that uses this mechanic in a larger, epic-story game. That's why it says 'in space' even though it's clearly not in space. It will be in space.",
"Ideally, it won't be called 'ColorDots (in space)' at that time. Hopefully we can come up with a better name than that.",
"Hmm, no ideas yet.",
"Angry Vagrants in Space with Dots? Would people buy that? Nah.",
"It just turned midnight while I was writing these. I'll try to write some more tomorrow.",
"30 seconds later... Oh, I guess midnight is already tomorrow. Back to work, I guess. /sigh.",
"I once told an icon of game design that I'd never played any of his games. This was at an interview for a design position. He took it pretty well.",
"No, I didn't get the job.",
"27 of these to go. I should probably get back to stuff about the rest of the game.",
"It's going to be great, by the way. You should play it when it comes out.",
"This, by the way, is the definition of guerilla marketing. Hide your marketing so well that no one will ever notice until it jumps out of the bushes and shoots them. With popup messages.",
"It's going to be like this, but with other stuff to do. Those are the best games.",
"It's also going to be a comedy. I feel like there aren't enough comedy games out there.",
"Maybe comedy games are too hard to make. Maybe it's tough to get the pacing right. I mean, I'm trying to get away with a joke every 10 levels here. That's not exactly efficient use of time.",
"And if you put jokes in a game, you can't always even guarantee that the player will see or notice the punchline.",
"I could put all the jokes in a cutscene I guess. Or hire some guys to sit behind the player and tell them what to do.",
"Hiring people could get expensive, though. Maybe I could hire HypnoToad. Does he still do contract work?",
"Turns out HypnoToad doesn't exist yet. :(",
"I just saw Blazing Saddles for the first time a few days ago. Marvelous. Just... just thought I'd throw that out there.",
"At level 84, you might actually lose during the few seconds that you waste reading this message.",
"Never thought you'd regret having a fast computer, did you? The people playing on their Pentium 2 laptops are just breezing through these levels. You might want to run some other programs in the background to make this level a little easier.",
"Eighty-SIX? WOW. You are really really good at this game.",
"Eighty-Seven, straight to heaven. Yep, I'm really reaching here.",
"Oh, I was going to give out hints for what's next, wasn't I? Sorry, I forgot to do that.",
"We're putting in some plot stuff. It's in space, that's a big point.",
"There's a time machine. Why bother going to space if you're not going to bring a time machine, that's what I always say.",
"And each 'level' is a quest-type thing. Maybe we'll call it a 'mission' to keep the gritty feel we've been trying to cultivate. BwahaHAhaha.",
"Well, you're on the home stretch now. If you haven't lost yet, you're probably not going to.",
"If you have lost, you might notice that you stopped gaining points. Can you imagine how many points you'd have by now?",
"Send all comments to colordots.team@gmail.com please. We like comments.",
"This is a test of the emergency last level system. If this were actually the last level, you'd almost be done with this.",
"Kinda funny that the slower the game goes, the worse the slippery powerup is, huh? Yeah, I thought that was pretty awesome too.",
"Wow, you can almost taste it, huh? Are you curious what I'm going to put in the last level? Me too.",
"Whew, my hands are getting tired. It's been a pleasure, though. Thanks for playing.",
"OMG! 99! LOLypops!",
"Oh thank god, you're probably saying. Yeah, so am I. High five time now, me to you. /smack.",