New Frontiers
Mar 2026
Do you ever get an idea that just stays stuck in your brain? You don’t just feel excited about doing it, you get something almost like vertigo. I have that.
It’s fair to say I’ve been obsessed with tabletop games and minis for nearly 30 years, but for a while now that has been focused on wanting to make something of my own. That’s kind of why I started making minis, that and it was really good for my mental health. I have already made some stuff, including some universal rules, and used them for a few different games. But that was more about playing games with my kid than about trying to put something out. I’ve also made a few other things just to get a taste for it, and I guess that worked because I really have a taste for it.
I’m excited because I think I have something here that I want to keep coming back to, keep playing, keep expanding on. I’ve been working on it for a while but it’s really starting to take shape.
So I am making a game called Hyperspace Frontiers, and I am going to be putting up more stuff about it soon. What really clicked for me is when all the things I love and have loved for a long time really started to click into place as the inspiration for the game and for the world it’s set in. I want to keep some of that back for now. Suffice to say it’s a sci-fi skirmish game, it is minis-agnostic (though I will be putting out minis for it if you want them), and it is about big characters and epic stories.
I am excited about it for two major reasons.
The first is simple, I think I have worked out a really good set of rules. I kept thinking about something I’d heard from the development of Doom (2016, not the classics). My memory of this may not quite match the reality but it inspired me all the same. That game really began in the wrong way and nearly turned into another Call of Duty, but they eventually had the guts to throw that away and get focused on a specific feeling. They kept iterating and comparing things to the core idea, of feeling like an absolute beast as the Doom Guy, if the mechanic didn’t feed that then it had to be changed. I won’t claim to have been that ruthless but I would play my game, decide something didn’t feel right, then redesign it. It is a little more tempered now. There is a version of my rules that honestly went too far which, one day, I’d like to try to make work because they were so wild.
What is here now feels like marketing speak when I describe it. It is familiar, it still feels like a skirmish game, but it feels cinematic. The action is dynamic. It’s really good and that’s important because it is just a foundation.
The second thing that has me excited is how I’ve decided to go about releasing it. Making a game takes a long time. Making miniatures takes time. Creating art takes time. There’s a theme here. But I realised I would have way more fun, and the game would be far better, if I leaned into the sci-fi tropes I love so much. So it will be an anthology. It will have seasons and the seasons will have episodes.
Each episode will be something like a zine. They will be relatively small releases, and each will have its own focus. There will also be miniatures along the way, maybe they will be connected to an episode or maybe they will be their own thing. The point is, this will be an ongoing project where I can indulge my creativity and curiosity, and bring you loads of new stuff for your games. Each episode will be different and you won’t need to collect them all. Some might be full of new rules, new scenarios, new characters, while others might be more focused on art, lore, and providing more inspiration for your games.
I’ll be doing all of this myself: rules, art, miniatures, stories. Which is sensible in some ways and completely ill-advised in others. This won’t arrive as a polished, complete product. The foundations are there, but this is unapologetically indie. It’s a project that lets me focus on creating something amazing without losing focus of my mental health and autism needs. It’ll grow as it goes and you’re invited to come along.
-Callie