FAZA now has a mascot! It’s an autonomous animatronic robot dressed up to look like one of the extraterrestrial aliens from the game. She comes with us to board game conventions and interacts with people.
Here’s a quick montage from creation to convention:
Fonzie was built with:
An Arduino Uno to control the servos and read the potentiometers from the gearboxes.
A Raspberry Pi 2 B to take webcam images and process them in realtime to detect motion and translate the motion it sees to servo locations and eye movements.
OpenCV and Python on the Raspberry Pi to process the images and translate them into servo movements.
A Raspberry Pi Touchscreen to display her three eyes, which also blink!
A webcam to see what’s in front of her.
2 speakers located in her head, so she will say things like “exterminate!” and “resistance is futile” and occasionally sing daisy bell. She is voiced by my wife and comes with 50 cheeky sound bites.
6 Continuous Rotation Servos to power the shoulders and neck.
6 Servo Gearboxes geared at 5:1 to amplify the torque from each of the continuous rotation servos. These gearboxes also unload all shear and loading forces onto the gearbox so the servo won’t experience these forces.
Aluminum Frame to provide a skeletal structure to the robot.
Chicken wire mesh wrapped around the aluminum frame to give the body and appendages volume.
Orange fabric hand sown to make a costume for the robot.
Quilt batting between the chicken wire mesh and the orange fabric to give it a soft look under the skin.
A homemade 3s 12p Lithium Ion Battery providing 126 Amp Hours at voltages ranging from 10V to 12.6V. This battery also includes a 3s battery management system that keeps the Li-ion batteries safe while charging and discharging. The battery was sized to allow Fonzie to operate for a 4 day convention (about 8-10 hours a day) without having to be recharged. I used a battery kit from Vruzend, since it didn’t require any spot welding.
Lots of wires, solder, thread, and love 🙂
To help with traveling and transport, she comes apart at the hips. So the lower and upper body can be split to easily store her in my apartment and transport her to board game conventions.
On September 29, 2018 my brother and I went to Boston Festival of Indie Games to showcase FAZA. The day was intense, it was non-stop demos from 9 to 5.
The booth we set up included an animatronic FAZA alien, dubbed Fonzie, which would do motion tracking. It would turn its head to look at people as they walked by and its arms would move up and down when people walked up to it.
Here’s a brief video condensing the entire day into 45 seconds.
Around 5:30 they closed down the tabletop booths and reorganized the space for the awards ceremony where they recognized both digital and tabletop games.
Since games come in all shapes and sizes, games were grouped and judged based on different categories. For tabletop games, the categories included: Best in Show, Audience Choice, Most Dynamic Game, Most Innovative Game, Best Hobby Game, Best Family Game, and Best Game in Progress. You can see the list of games garnering awards for each category on Boston FIG’s site.
Going into this, I didn’t expect FAZA would be recognized for any of these categories since there were so many great games accepted into the showcase. To have FAZA selected as the best hobby game of 2018 blew my mind. I’m immensely grateful to have all the hard work that’s gone into this game be recognized by the community.
What’s next for FAZA? Kickstarter coming in early 2019!
Thank you for reading the article and making your way here. We’re preparing for kickstarter and will be launching ours very soon. Send us your info and we’ll get in touch when it’s ready.
In my spare time I occasionally think about human culture, art, and entertainment and how the stories we tell ourselves reflect how society feels as a whole. There’s a particular trend I wanted to point out, since it’s relevant to FAZA. I don’t think I’m the only one to notice this, there’s a trend in the past few decades where stories have become distinctly apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and dystopian. In this post, I want to think about apocalyptic science fiction, explore what it means, and scratch below the surface of the same-old future hostile environment, society, and economic condition forcing groups of humans to barely survive.
I don’t believe apocalyptic sci-fi stories will play out as portrayed in the movies, video games, and novels because real life is far more complex; at the same time, I do think science fiction is a kind of history of the future. Science fiction creators are able to tell compelling stories about human nature in future (and alternate reality) settings because they borrow from history. A great example of this in a written medium is the Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov. Asimov borrows from the collapse of the Roman Empire as a framework for the fall of the galactic empire in his trilogy. Since the Roman Empire regressed technologically and forgot how to make concrete, so too did the galactic empire with their use of advanced nuclear power. They were still able to service and maintain their infrastructure, but could no longer develop anything new. Asimov even borrows from the rise of Christianity and the resurrection of Christ (and how he reappears to his followers), which is paralleled in the cult that forms around the science of Psychohistory and the character of Hari Seldon (who also reappears to his followers).
When sci-fi creators borrow from history, it allows them to form compelling stories because human nature usually stays the same, with the caveat that external factors can influence them. These external factors can be environmental and socio-economic changes.
Now, to avoid writing a philosophical treatise on human nature (there are plenty of other philosophers you may refer to), let’s do a quick thought experiment. If all human needs are met, then humans will tend to live peacefully with each other (excluding psycho/sociopaths). While the constituents of human needs seems to be up for debate these days, if any human need isn’t met, there will be suffering and humans will try to remedy the situation cooperatively and competitively. To connect this to the context of science fiction creators, when they borrow from history, they already have a template for human nature in a specific environment, society, and economy.
Science fiction is a history of the future.
Since Asimov already knows how the collapsing Roman Empire has behaved and how some individuals within that empire have also behaved, he can then use that as a skeleton for the stories and ideas he wants to explore. Ironically, in his trilogy, he also invents an idea called Psychohistory, which is the science of predicting future behaviors of large human groups. The larger the group of individuals, the more predictable the future behavior of the group. While this definition of Psychohistory is very similar to the Ideal Gas Law replacing individual particles with individual humans, it also seems that Asimov is drawing attention to the fact that science fiction is a kind of history of the future.
This statement, science fiction is a history of the future becomes more poignant when considered from the perspective that history repeats itself. Since human nature changes based on external factors, history repeats itself because those external factors also repeat themselves. This doesn’t mean the same event will happen twice, instead on historical time scales, history rhymes and behaviors of large human groups (civilizations, empires, nation-states, corporations) begin to look very similar.
History repeats itself apocalyptically.
My favorite example of historical repetition is the systemic collapse of almost all civilizations in the Late Bronze Age around the time period of 1177 BC. If you have the time, I highly recommend checking out Eric Cline’s lecture below about his book, 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed.
This is particularly relevant to all 7+ billion of us because there are several similarities between the external factors and civilization stressors from the Late Bronze Age and today’s globalized 21st century. The Late Bronze Age around the geographic area of the Eastern Mediterranean included the Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Cypriots, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Assyrians and Babylonians. They were interconnected and had complex trade networks with economic and military partnerships. They had embassies, embargoes, had to deal with border security, economic inequality, internal rebellions, a sudden drier climate resulting in drought and famine leading to refugee migration and political unrest, earthquakes from fault lines that run through the area, and war. It was the perfect storm of the external factors, many of which are paralleled in the 21st century. The only thing we don’t have in today’s world is the mysterious invading force known as the Sea Peoples (I wonder if I’ve unconsciously created the FAZA as a stand-in for the Sea Peoples, the final stressor that will collapse civilization). One by one, all of the Eastern Mediterranean civilizations collapsed, except for Egypt. Eric Cline presents his book as a warning, the complex global society humans have built is not invincible. External factors such as famine, rebellion, war, and death lead humans to desperation. It’s historically repetitive; it’s apocalyptic; it’s consuming the sci-fi stories we’re telling ourselves.
Apocalyptic science fiction is a history of how humans will suffer together.
Given that history repeats itself apocalyptically and science fiction is a history of the future, it seems to follow that apocalyptic science fiction is a history of how humans will suffer together in the future. The portrayal of human suffering through the creation of apocalyptic science fiction stories becomes a socio-economic, environmental, and technological thought experiment. If done well, it captures our dreams and fears for the future. Sometimes these stories will also give a glimpse of how to overcome the challenges ahead since something similar to it was already faced in the past.
Now let’s apply this to FAZA: What external factors are historically repetitive in this sci-fi story? How will the players suffer together? And is there a glimpse of how to overcome the challenges ahead?
While I don’t believe hostile extraterrestrials will actually invade and destroy Human life (more thoughts on this in future posts ;] ), FAZA’s apocalyptic science fiction story gives people a format to work together to overcome a challenge in a non-zero sum game. A zero sum game refers to games like Chess, your win will be my loss. Your +1 is my -1 and together they add to 0. While human society is a blend of competition and cooperation, I intentionally set aside competition between players and instead placed them in competition with the technologically advanced FAZA. Over the course of the game, the FAZA are taking land away from the players, placing them in a weaker position the longer the game continues. Their invasion also comes with enemy troop placement across the board overwhelming the players. And as the game progresses, they’re eliminating player outposts, which are the bases for recruiting friendly forces and a space for respite to heal. Does this story sound familiar?
Historically, an invading force with advanced technology taking away land, resources, and killing natives has repeated over and over in every story of colonialism. The longer it continues, the worse it gets for the natives. I can’t recall any native force successfully repelling their colonizers, but for the context of this game, FAZA is not an impossible game to win, it’s just really, really hard. These are the external factors I’ve drawn from, repeated in FAZA’s apocalyptic sci-fi story. It sets the stage for how the players will suffer together, but is there a glimpse of how to overcome these challenges throughout this sci-fi story?
While the FAZA can be a stand-in for any challenge a group needs to face together, the glimpse of overcoming the challenge present in this game is about how well the team cooperates, reaches a decision to move forward, and how the team deals with failure even if they make all the right moves. I think the process of making group decisions, experiencing personal anxiety through group conflict and debate, reflecting on group dynamics, and becoming comfortable with failure are vital skills to hone in order to function in a healthy team (if you’re into psychology and want to learn more about this, I’ll refer you to Paradoxes of Group Life: Understanding Conflict, Paralysis, and Movement in Group Life by Smith and Berg).
I hope FAZA becomes a game and story people can use to reflect on and explore the roles they naturally fill. I hope it gives players the opportunity to debate, discuss, make decisions, fail, win, survive the apocalypse, and most importantly, have fun. 🙂
A question I’ve asked myself many times, has anyone else already made a game that’s similar to FAZA? And I think this stems from my desire to add new ideas and fun experiences to the corpus of games that have come before.
To answer the question, there are multiple ideas and game mechanics I can point to when brought together make FAZA a unique and fun experience.
A Communal Turn
The player’s all share a communal turn, which means actions can be used in any order that is advantageous to the group’s strategy. As a result of the communal turn, the game facilitates strategic group discussions, creating the feeling that everyone is a tactician preparing for skirmishes and war.
The communal turn was designed into the game as a solution to reduce the amount of time that it would normally take to complete a round. The action point system is designed into the player cards, and creates a self limiting system. Any player can do any action at any time since there’s a limited number of player cards. Designing for self-limiting actions sets the groundwork for simultaneous play.
Diversity
The variety and diversity of characters represented in the game makes for the empowerment of different ethnicities, ages, sexes, and species.
The Algorithm
The algorithm that defines how the FAZA motherships move across the board creates a challenging game where the enemy dynamically adapts to the actions players take against them. As the FAZA retaliate, players will feel overwhelmed as if all hope is lost, but by working together they can overcome the challenges ahead.
The Art
I’ve been very fortunate to work with Scott Chantler. His amazing work has breathed life into the game. He has a style that uniquely captured the retro science fiction theme.
Replayability
Finally, there’s a high degree of replayability, which stems from the number of characters players can choose from, the board that is setup differently every game, and the way the motherships adapt to player actions.
The short answer: the idea for FAZA developed over several years as it slowly came into focus, starting with my frustrations with competitive games and was refined through prototyping and playtesting.
The long answer: working on FAZA developed from two major frustrations. The first frustration is that many existing cooperative games feel too much like a puzzle, eventually making subsequent playthroughs not as interesting once the optimal strategy is discovered.
First Iteration of FAZA
The second frustration that motivated me to start working on a cooperative game was my one major issue with competitive games, like Settlers of Catan, Monopoly, Risk, and the like. When I play these games I end up in last place, or near to last place, and I’m left with nothing to do during the game. The rest of the players continue getting ahead as I then sit by myself, sip a drink and ruminate over the rule book to see if there was something I could of done differently. Was it my luck? My inability to strategize? Maybe a bit of both.
I was introduced to the cooperative game genre, back in 2011 with a board game called Defenders of the Realm. At first I was drawn in by this game’s attention to detail, visually stunning renderings and beautifully crafted backstory setting the stage for the players. Then, I was blown away by being able to get feedback on my strategy as a newbie from other players and also coordinate my moves with teammates. I personally enjoy dialogue, discussion, and debate when there are competing ideas and strategies, and cooperative games provided one such outlet to engage in it.
Ever since I learned about cooperative games as a genre, I was itching to design my own cooperative game. In December of 2015 I began designing and testing it out with friends.
The metaphor and story for FAZA stems from my love of science fiction, and began to emerge immediately after I picked a few game mechanics I wanted to test. The story and game mechanics then began to evolve together and inform one another. And finally, the name FAZA came from Farsi and means outer space.
If you’ve been following the development of FAZA and I haven’t heard from you, please reach out or leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.
I’m blown away by how many people attend PAX East, it was at least 4 to 5 times the size of PAX Unplugged.
The majority of my time was spent in the tabletop area running demos of FAZA and met up with the wonderful folks from Unpub. They had extra table space to spare, so we set up in the Unpub ProtoAlley, an area dedicated to board games that are still in development. The ProtoAlley allows convention attendees to test out games that are coming to market and give feedback to the game designers.
I’ve condensed the three day convention experience down to a two minute montage of running demos, exploring the convention hall, and meeting tons of new people.
Now if you want to save the world from the FAZA, be sure to join the waitlist, so when the kickstarter goes live, you too can save the world! 😉
