March 2024

There's always a weirder fish

I would like to direct your attention to the brilliant game “Space Weirdos” by Casey G. on itch.io, a skirmish game for about 5-10 minis of just some absolute space weirdos. It’s pretty cool. Also I just discovered it and boy does my game sound similar. Which is fine, except it’s just not sitting right with me since I found it. I want my game to be something else, something more unique I guess.

I hit another little slump after finding Space Weirdos, I know that everything has already been done and that his game is a set of rules without miniatures, there’s definite differences. But I can’t help but feel the need to pivot. I’ve been thinking about it for days and here’s what I’m thinking.

Scrappers

I have this set of minis that have started to feel like a complete misfit crew in a sci-fi setting, so maybe a solo / 2 player game of scavenging a scrap planet. A quick game of collecting loot with high randomness in encounters with alien enemies and unexpected glitchy technology. I really like the idea of a sci-fi universe that is very like Star Trek on the surface, all post-scarcity, endless opportunity, clean, but under the surface there are plenty of misfits that just don’t benefit from all this that have to make do with the scrap left behind by these amazing civilisations.

I’m up to 5 completed minis, and I really feel like this is boosting my skill and confidence with Blender. Some have taken longer than intended but not by much, and I have another 2 started so I’m mostly on schedule, I’m aiming to get about 8 total for the game and then do a bunch of enemy bugs.

I’m particularly pleased with my robit, who I have called “Ditto”, I really had this vision of something between a Star Wars droid and some old Robby the Robot style retro robot and this is exactly what I pictured. I’m happy with them all to be honest, I didn’t expect this to go so well.

-Callie