Breaker Childern - Art by Filip Dudek The Children of FerrumSky  Childbirth is strictly manipulated by the corporations. A spike in births can devastate the supplies on the colony ships or within the colonies themselves, or at least that is the statement continuously fed to the Tracted. Those who wish to bring new life into the world have two options. One is to increase their workload in order to pay for the additional resources needed to provide even the most basic provisions to the child. The other is to enter the Gen-Mod program. The child will be given up to the orphanages at birth, but a couple can bring new life into the world at limited expense to themselves. The children raised by their families are put to work as soon as they are able to lift or carry objects. During feeding times the children bring buckets of food and water to the work sites, and more children carry the buckets of waste away. When a child is old enough to swing a pick or sift rocks, they will often be...

Ari Gaylen - the Breaker daredevil 3D sculpt by Tim Barry Its been another exciting week of development in the world of Broken Contract. Prototype figures are now in the hands of the caster and we are now eagerly awaiting our very first master models. We also had a batch of 3D renders from Tim Barry that we had sent back for revision, and two of them came back finalized on Friday. Those have now been sent off to VisionProto for prototyping! The initial model range is really coming together. Last week, I posted the new background and art for Overseer Billins . John Gendall 's next project is actually the last essential piece of art for the initial cast of characters - Kollis, the Breaker Crew Leader. He has all of the references in hand, so hopefully he'll be done sometime this week. Officer Tulson - the Prod gunner 3D sculpt by Tim Barry A couple of days ago I showed a snapshot of a page from the rulebook . That same night Sam sent over a brand new mock-up Stat Card...

My array of newly printed Character Stat Cards, Equipment Cards, and Initiative Cards. Lately I've been really anxious to both get out and demonstrate Broken Contract to the masses, and also allow people the option to "print and play" so that they can play test at home. Over the past several days I decided to take matters into my own hands and try and flex my very rudimentary Photoshop skills. I spent a half dozen hours or so making mock ups that people can play with that aren't completely embarrassing. Luckily, Sam created cards that weren't so elaborate that they made any hope of editing them impossible. At the same time, they don't have the polish, nor the subtle variation, that even his early work has had. This is okay though since these are just for play testing purposes anyway. Talla Kellerman mock up character card. Initiative Deck and prototype "card back". The above cards were a mock up Initiative Deck that Sam threw togethe...

The first 24 hours are just about behind us and we're off to a good start but we've got a long way to go. Everyone involved is working in their free time to produce more art and graphic design work to show you that this game project is a work of passion that we want to succeed. Remember, if you're on the fence about backing this Kickstarter, you can always just pledge $1 to have access to all of the Kickstarter Updates. Or if you're worried it won't fund, you have nothing to lose by pledging for exactly what you want. Here are some first draft Equipment Cards by Sam Alcarez. The borders and art are looking great if I do say so myself. These are used in conjunction with the Character Stat Card to keep track of your gear. If this is looking cool please pledge to the Kickstarter. You can find it here: Broken Contract - Deep Underground Kickstarter Thanks! -Nick

Breaker concept sketch by Geng Gendall based on Nick Tape of the hardcore punk band, Coke Bust. Breakers are workers that have raised their tools as weapons and thrown off their shackles for a chance at freedom. As oppressed and subjugated workers, they needed to be easily identified as such. Several of my friends have commented that they wished the characters in Broken Contract looked more "from the future" which I feel is tough to do without making them either "high tech" with mechanical suits or skin tight compression pants covered in protective pads similar to how Infinity models look in their fitted armor. For myself, the indentured "mudders" from the Jaynestown episode of Firefly or the downtrodden forced laborers from the Seam in the Hunger Games really exemplify how I envision the potential future portrayed in the game. Carhartt gear might not seem very sci-fi but the term "overall" for protective clothes put over other clothes is th...

Concept art by Sam Alcarez. Some tweaks and they would make a great Breaker. They're in some sort of nether realm between Breaker and Security Officer with that baton. Perhaps its stolen? When I envisioned the eventual kick off to Broken Contract and the type of boxed game I wanted to strive for it to be, I was really targeting the Zombicide model. They ran a Kickstarter for this large 12"x12" square box packed full of high quality game tiles, miniatures, and cards. I've studied both of their Kickstarters (and the games themselves) in depth and they really had a lot of the art development done and miniature sculpts in hand. Much of the development was done and they just needed capital to cover manufacturing to launch Season 1. I, on the other hand, have the game mechanics pretty well set and have stumbled upon sketch artists engaged in "realizing the dream," willing to work in hope of some form eventual reward - but I don't have money to pay sculpto...

Since we have a reasonable idea of what the Security Officers are going to look like, and Sam Alcarez was busy moving this weekend, I asked Geng Gendall if he would do something special for me. One of the Broken Contract play testers is a good friend of mine named Chuck. He gets a charge out of playing as the Security Officers during play testing so I asked him via text, "Hypothetically, if you, Chuck Hickey were a fascist security officer, would you carry a baton, shock baton, arc pistol, or repeater rifle? Would you be in charge or a grunt? Strictly hypothetical." He responded: "I like things up close, and hate responsibility, so I'd be a grunt with a shock baton. :)" This is Chuck standing hard at a grocery co-op, because as we know, co-ops are the hardest. I wanted to see Chuck in Security Officer attire so I sent a brief to artist Geng Gendall who enthusiastically accepted the request. It went something like this: "He'd like to be a lo...

Art by Geng Gendall I just added some links to the right hand side of the screen for Broken Contract on a couple of social media sites. There are now: Broken Contract Twitter Broken Contract Facebook And I'm sure some more to come. The above image was sent via Facebook to me by Geng Gendall, an illustrator who felt that the Security Officers should have more of a hard hat type design, and a light. Rather than simply describe it, he sent it in concept form, even adhering to the uniform that Sam developed. We're still sticking with the "western" hat but it was cool none-the-less, and I really appreciate him taking the time. If you'd like to contribute concept art like Geng did, please go ahead and send it. I can't guarantee it will be used for anything, but it will always be appreciated and noted! And you never know... Maybe you'll define something new? In the meantime, please go follow Broken Contract on Facebook and/or Twitter. Thanks! -Nick

We're still working to define the look of the Security Officers in Broken Contract. Sam has come up with a variety of looks and we're trying to nail down the one that both defines them and makes them interesting for others to eventually paint figures of and play in the game. I happened to notice that Sam has been using consistent posing while we've worked on the look, so I came up with the idea of making paper dolls of his art so that I could combine elements and find what works together. Standing in FedEx Office I printed out his art and then broke out the scissors and got cutting.and pasting. This was a new piece of art Sam provided to me after the last blog post. The goal was to define a much more fascist looking Security Officer. He looks like a loyal boot boy for sure with his high boots, high collar, fitted uniform, and clean cut hair. I was concerned he didn't look rugged enough though, with the horrible working conditions and disparity. Also, the diagonal s...

Security Officer concept art by Sam Alcarez. The other day I had a great meeting with Sam Alcarez, the new artist working on Broken Contract. One of the most important parts of developing a game like Broken Contract is defining the look and feel of the game. There are so many ways to depict security forces in the future, and they can go to differing extremes. You can go for completely tooled up, heavily armored cops with the greatest in technological advancements like Robo-Cop, some sort of mech, or just a heavily armored "super soldier" sort of look. Then there is the other extreme, like the stripped down, lightly armored but precisely uniform fascist looking peace keepers in The Hunger Games. Of course, in a sci-fi western like Broken Contract you can envision any manner of "space cowboy." So there is a huge variety of looks and feels we could go for. Katniss being led away by peace keepers in one of The Hunger Games movies. Its the future but they aren...