Awakening:Recon - The Game

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Has I told you before (http://fatmanproductions.com/why-fatman-productions/), during the three years we, at FatMan Productions, spent learning about the gaming industry, we developed our first product, a sci-fi miniature war game called Awakening: Recon.
http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=16947&d=1453289616

Both me and Miguel are fans of a lot sci-fi movies, tv series and books, so we thought doing a sci-fi game inspired in the sci-fi culture of the 80’s and 90’s . About the rules we had somethings in mind during development that we really wanted to see in a miniatures game: Fast paced (30-40 minutes per game with about 40 miniatures per player), classic sci-fi looking miniatures (almost cartoonish), and with dynamic mechanics. Right now we have an alpha version of the rules, that we hope our contributor during the Indiegogo campaign help perfect and make definitive. It’s a d10 based system, with alternate activation of units, using a system of “command points”, hidden to your adversary. The four initial factions have a unique way of playing, so that in addition to the looks of it, the player may choose their faction based also in the game mechanics of it.

Story wise Awakening: Recon is a miniature game set in our galaxy thousands of years in the future. The Awakening was the arrival of the Ipse to our galaxy, a species completely alien to all of our galaxy’s life forms. The races now compete for the ever scarcer resources of the galaxy, sometimes coming into conflict with one another. This is the main focus of the game, the initial skirmishes between the mysterious Ipse, the human coalition of mega corporations called The Consortium, a tribal race of amphibious aliens called the Dagonians, and the hermit like Alphas, the remnants of a fallen civilization.

In the next article we will talk about the four races, history, looks and game mechanics.

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Following this series of articles about FatMan Productions and our first product, the game Awakening: Recon, we will, in this article, talk about one of the factions, the Dagonians.
When we first thought on making the different factions for the game, many different concepts came to my mind. Humans, robots, insectoids, etc. But there was always the wish to do a maritime race, I just love the concept. In the meanwhile I contacted a friend’s friend, Carlos Pinheiro, to start making the concept art about the game. Carlos has this cartoonish drawing style that I love and wanted to see in our miniatures. He immediately started making sketches of several “maritime characters”. Until we got this fellow here:

http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dagonians-draft.jpg

More developing sketches were made in order to reflect the game rules we had idealized for them. We also started contacting sculptors and 3D modelers to start making our first Dagonian.

sculpting attempts:

http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/daGONIANS-SCULP.jpg

After several attempts, we “hit home” with Juan Castillo, a Spanish modeler that has the talent, ambition and patience to deal with us.

http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/12557831_10208258268592298_1591154261_o.jpg

Talking about game play, the Dagonians are THE close combat specialist army. All of their games rules point towards a clear specialization and supremacy in close quarters fighting, and although they have some ranged units, these only provide some support shooting. You can also expect quite a few models when building this army.
Finally, in terms of universe context, the story of Awakening: Recon will be told using mainly the view of the Dagonians, and their various clans, as Alexandre Silva (main writer) is telling us. He views the Dagonians like a neutral civilization that is just trying to survive the complex universe of races and factions interactions. And doing it in style: drinking, brawling and making their ancestors proud!

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Awakening: Recon - Factions: Consortium!

Continuing this series of articles about the factions of Awakening: Recon, in this one we will cover the Consortium. After careful planning (a lot of Shower time) I decided that we had to have humans. Well, like it or not that’s us!! But I did not want just another humans’ army… I wanted our first humans’ army to be “special”.
This was the most complicated faction for us in terms of concept art. Every sketch we received was not quite hitting the mark. There was always something that was not right. It took 2 years to get from initial drawings to the final concept we wanted.
Below are some drawings of the evolution:

http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/11997479_10204146387013760_1208167954_n.jpg

This evolution eventually got us here, with the help of Luís Filipe Gomes, Carlo’s cousin:
I was radiant with this concept, because like I told you before, I wanted Humans, but with a twist… Luís then presented the final colored draw of the basic Consortium model:

http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/12115788_10204436135857300_4018643428101106929_n.j pg

Story wise, humans came from an ancient planet in a far solar system called Earth.
Earth was never found, and Humankind's birthplace was in the stars as far as the other races were concerned. They are adaptable to most environments, they are industrious in their endeavors, and they are the economic power behind the Consortium. Where most other races in the galaxy are united by their governmental system, Humans found solace in profit. They have owned most industries for as long as the Galaxy can remember, and their only goal is to generate more income. The Consortium is as close to a Nation as they could get. The various Corporations that comprise it do not openly compete against themselves. The scarcity of resources in the known planets led The Consortium to explore new worlds, and the Corporations each tried to stay out of the others way. But the greed of the Humans is often stronger than their bond as a species. No one knows exactly where the humans came from, but if there is profit somewhere to be made, rest assured that is where they are headed.

In terms of gameplay, Consortium is the shooting army for excellence. They will have a “standard army organization” where various shooting options are available. They will have a unique army composition and organization of “command points” that will give the Consortium player many strategic viable options to keep their adversaries at bay.

Finally, we’ll leave you with the work in progress of our first consortium unit model, made by our modeler Juan Castillo:

http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/12391914_1068514196515712_3077726553060524045_n.jp g

If you like, you can read a short story of the origins of the Consortium in our site.

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“Life is an illusion… An ephemeral event and like all lies it must be put to an end! There is only IPSE” You have to love who talks like that.

The Ipse were imagined to be the game’s bad guys. Not just “Capone bad”, but really bad! The kind of people that just wanted the Universe to burn, kill all life, kick old ladies in the sidewalk kind of bad!

In game the Ipse will be an army composed by “elite like” units, where each unit is the best of the game is one specific role. This will make the construction of a balanced force of Ipse an interesting challenge to the player.

As for concept art and later 3D modeling, Carlos envisioned them in a “marshal/solemn” kind of models. Using high tech crystals to focus their technology. Several attempts were made in order to get to the final sketches of Ipse units that we liked, and below you can find our final version:

http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ipse.jpg

After this step, we proceeded to the 3D modelling of one of the Ipse units, making 5 different poses:

http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/12620615_10208258267472270_1331008751_o.jpg

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The Alphas represent a long gone civilization that declined on the prime of their scientific achievement. These small grey beings accomplished, scientifically, what other known races can only dream of.

Our idea for the Alphas was to make them this kind of “one man army”. Where the player chooses one machine, in which the Alpha goes to war, and then chooses several other small machines that boost the Alpha’s abilities. This was our general idea behind the Alphas during development.

http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/alpha.jpg

In terms of design, we wanted all the Alphas war machines to have one common feature, in this case we chose the head, while the rest of the machine had to be quite different, in aspect and game wise role. The result of these guidelines was the Juggernaut, Mammoth and Valkyrie, three different machines on which the Alphas fight their enemies. The other models are these kind of bots, which help the Alphas, in boosting their abilities or playing a more active part on the battlefield.

http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/12625601_1091953837505081_1662026187_n.jpg
In terms of army construction the Alphas differ from the other faction, being each Alpha considered a Force Commander on its own, posing a very interesting challenge in terms of gameplay.

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The quality of our miniatures is, to us @ FatMan Productions, a priority!

On our process, we first try the 3D’s on a basic stance and print to check if quality and all details are looking good! All humanoid models have 44mm (They may, however, suffer slight variations depending on each stance).

The 3D model:
http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/12391914_1068514196515712_3077726553060524045_n.jp g

The 3D prints:
http://fatmanproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/mini44.jpg

All our miniatures will be casted in high quality resin.

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Hello everyone!
We just want to say thank you for all the support and, to the ones that may be interested, announce that our CrowdFunding campaign is now live @ INDIEGOGO.

Check here: http://igg.me/at/awakening-recon/x/12950318