Humor is hard. Except when it's easy. When you have a funny character like Ali Fakir or Gnome Ann, you let them do the talking. It just comes out funny. That doesn't happen often. If I sit down to "write something funny," forget it. Good Humor (mmm, used to love their ice cream) comes spontaneously, or not at all.
We'll have lots of funny stuff in Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption, and we have no idea yet what it will be. The humor comes out almost by accident during the writing. Like last night when I was thinking about lockpicking and ended up with the Sherlock Holmes joke in Update #15. I wanted a good name for a really secure lock, and "the Surelock 1700" popped out. Then I strained to make it work with "homes". Then I changed the model number to 221-B, Holmes's Baker Street address.
Many of my infamous puns come from mishearing or misreading something, then playing on the result. I'm not the only one. Marc Hudgins told us that the "Awful Waffle Walker" Easter egg in Quest for Glory 3 happened because he misread an animation list as "Eggo Walker" instead of "Ego Walker". Everyone at Sierra called the player character the "Ego".
Some things are inherently funny. Words with "w" and "k" tend to sound amusing. That's why Quest for Glory 1 has an Antwerp, and there's an Aardvark in QfG3. (Actually, there are at least four reasons for the latter. Maybe five or six. Our company name is FAR Studio, where "FAR" is short for "Flying Aardvark Ranch".)
It's funny – or not so funny – that when Lori and I talk about the story line for a game, it's almost always a serious discussion. Until I derail it by making a bad joke about something Lori just said. Probably I have ADHD (Attention Deficit Humor Disorder... "Ooh, Sparkly!"). Humor comes when you least expect it.
