New Frontiers

Mars Station is my attempt at putting together many of my talents and interests into one project. Namely, miniature painting, miniature set construction, robotics, programming, video gaming, board gaming, science, science-fiction, and storytelling. I have a grand design in mind that will require a lot of work and money. I intend for Mars Station to be a fully interactive game featuring a 28mm scale space station set on Mars. Upon taking up this goal there are a few points I will be making sure are included.

Hard Sci-Fi

I hope for every element in the game to be as grounded in reality as possible. This station should be able to exist. It needs to feel real. Granted, this is very hard with the current availability of miniatures, but I will do the best I can to keep this in mind with every design decision.

Multi-culturalism and gender

I am a white male aged 18-49. So is nearly everyone else in the board and video gaming community... or so many of us believe. This completely is false. Every walk of life enjoys games and should see their people or culture represented in these mediums. The sad part is that most sci-fi prominently features white males. So much so that I have had a hard time finding miniatures of non-white people. Why don't you just paint them whatever color you want? Many times I do but ethnicity is far more than just skin color. Facial structure can play a much larger role. Nothing looks more awkward than Captain MidwestUSA in black-face. Also, there are more ethnicities than white and black. Many sculptors are not capable of this subtlety at such a small scale. I have had some success in finding a few non-white miniatures.

Furthermore, representation of women in sci-fi is terrible. Though, there are lots of good examples out there. Finding miniatures of females in sci-fi type clothing and settings without sexualization is very difficult. Again, I have made head way thanks to some very good miniatures companies out there.

Non-combat

Nearly all sci-fi games revolve around combat. Hell, nearly all games revolve around combat. Sci-fi seems to be worse though. The easy stories are those that involve killing all the aliens, zombies, robots, or human bad guys. I aim for this game to be more puzzle based.

Science and Technology is not bad

If the enemy is not a horde of creatures then the enemy is mankind's over use of technology. I hate this trope in popular sci-fi. Science and technology are the ways in which we overcome natural obstacles. Our clever manipulation of our environment is what has lead us this far and will propel us further out into the universe. Mars station, a real Mars station, is our next step. I want to show exciting that can be.