[Article] Onchain Games I Played This Month: November

Table of Contents

Researcher

Moyed

1. Introduction

It's November, and we're back with another edition of our "Onchain Games I Played This Month" with Iskra. First, let's take a look at this month's games.

Drawshop Kingdom Reverse is a new game from the series' sponsor, Iskra, that's also available on mobile.
Star Symphony caught my eye as a Web3 rhythm game, and I ended up playing it.
As for Drawtech, Network States, and This Cursed Machine, they're the latest offerings from FOCG studio Small Brain Games.

2. Drawshop Kingdom Reverse

2.1 Game Introduction

Drawshop Kingdom Reverse (DKO) is a drawshop tycoon game currently available on both mobile and PC. It uses Klaytn as the underlying chain and allows players to run their shop and enjoy various contents such as PvP and festivals.

2.2 Team Background

The DKO team is composed of experts from the traditional gaming industry and the blockchain industry. Tailer, the managing director, has extensive experience leading game development and blockchain projects at Krafton, and Jade, the lead game developer, has over 10 years of experience in the industry and has contributed to major game projects. Other members of the team have gained expertise in various startups and DeFi projects.

2.3 Gameplay

In DKO, players begin their journey by learning the mechanics of the game in their own land and progress to the world land where they can open their own draw family and interact with other players. The main elements of the game are listed below:

Avatar NFTs: Avatars are an integral part of participating in the DKO world, representing players in the metaverse and allowing them to explore and visit other players' lands.
Machines and Dolls: Essential to running a drawshop, machines are used to play the game and earn in-game currency, while dolls add strategic depth with synergies and buffs.
PvP Arena: A mode where players compete against each other using a combination of machines and puppets, with seasonal events featuring map changes that require new strategies and combinations, and rewards players with JOY tokens and other prizes based on their performance.
World Festival: A major event held in a World Land, offering more interaction and higher earning opportunities. Players can earn more JOY tokens during the festival, and owners of festival lands can receive significant rewards.
World Lands: By owning a World Land NFT, you can open a drawshop, attract other players, and earn revenue. World Lands include festivals and events that increase interaction and revenue.
Pixel Art: Players can decorate their shops with a variety of pixel art, some of which offer special effects to enhance the gameplay experience.

Here are my personal impressions of the game.

First of all, the fact that the game is available on mobile is a big plus. Of course, it's not available in Korea, but you can download it from the Play Store, and the gameplay experience itself is natural, without feeling like a Web3 game. My only problem is that players who do not know web3 elements cannot enjoy 100% of the features such as Arena and World Lands. Also, the Web3 onboarding process was much easier than I expected, especially the method of creating your own wallet, DFK Connect, which allows you to easily create a wallet with a combination of alphabets and six digits.

The gameplay itself is no different than any other tycoon game, it's just that it's a draw shop. As you can see in the picture below, the main fun is in the process of building up your shop, placing the lottery machines in it, and adjusting which dolls to put in it.

2.4 Onchain Elements

Source: DKO

DKO includes many onchain elements.

Introducing NFTs: At the core of DKO are NFT elements such as avatars, vending machines, dolls, and world lands.
The $JOY token: $JOY is the native currency of the game and is used for various transactions, including minting NFTs, participating in festival events, and participating in NFT valuations. It also plays a pivotal role in game governance, allowing players to vote on game development and changes.
Governance: The game operates as a DAO where token holders can propose and vote on major decisions that affect the direction and updates of the game.

2.5 Economic Model

DFK's NFTs are currently available for trading on an NFT marketplace called Hypermarket, and $JOY is the main currency of DKO, used for various in-game transactions as mentioned above. Players can earn it by completing PvP events or quests. By staking $JOY, players can also earn a portion of the game's revenue, aligning the incentives of the stakers and the game.

2.6 Conclusion

As you can see, DKO is a tycoon game with a drawshop theme that uses multiple NFT elements and $JOY to create incentives for players to play and interact with the game. Unlike other games, DKO is playable on mobile and has a wide variety of content. However, the downside is that there is only a limited amount of playable content without NFTs.

2.7 References

3. Star Symphony

3.1 Introduction to the game

Star Symphony is a subculture-based rhythm game that uses the Tezos as its chain. It currently has an alpha testnet and can be played on the website. It's a rare web3 rhythm game that stands out from the crowd.

3.2 Team Background

Core team members include 0xShark, who created the largest gaming guild in Malaysia and Singapore, 0xSteph, who has a background in esports marketing, and Reacoelmer, who has worked on various games including Final Fantasy. Advisory board members include Guitar Hero co-founder Kai Huang, Team Secret CEO John Yao, and Sandbox Head of Marketing Rachid Belrihti.

3.3 Gameplay

At this point in the alpha testing phase, only the practice mode is playable, and it's not much different than a typical rhythm game. Most of the soundtrack seems to feature songs from Japanese and Thai artists. Currently, the tournament feature seems to be accessible only if you have an Elder Pass, an NFT from Star Symphony. While the rhythm game itself isn't bad, I'm personally looking forward to the features and modes that will be added in the future. First of all, the features that are currently expected to be added are character summoning, story mode, and multiplayer rhythm battle mode, and I am especially looking forward to the multiplayer rhythm battle feature.

3.4 Onchain Elements

Source: Star Symphony

Star Symphony currently has an NFT pass called the Elder Pass. With this Elder Pass, community members can get early access to Star Symphony and currently enjoy the tournament mode. They will also have whitelist-like prioritization for many of Star Symphony's upcoming NFT launches. Aside from these economic factors, Elder Pass holders can also vote to influence the game's storyline in the future, as well as vote for their favorite tracks and artists, giving them a say in the overall direction of the game. In terms of IP, the holders of each NFT will be able to fully own the IP of the character and use it as they wish.

3.5 Economic Model

According to the updated roadmap on Star Symphony's discord, a seed round for a native token called $SYMP is planned for Q3 of this year, although it is not yet known exactly what utility the token will have.

3.6 Conclusion

Star Symphony is a rhythm game that I'm looking forward to seeing more of in the future, especially with the addition of story and competitive modes for each character. Of course, the utility for its own NFT collection like Elder Pass is not clear at this point, but it's early days, so we'll have to wait and see.

3.7 References

4. Drawtech

4.1 Game Introduction

Drawtch is a game launched on November 1, 2023 by Small Brain Games in which players become painters and color tiles on a shared canvas. Each tile costs money to paint, with the cost determined by demand, and is currently running on the Base mainnet, an Ethereum layer 2 solution created by Coinbase.

4.2 Team Background

Small Brain Games, the creators of Words3, are a community of developers and players who make FOC games, including Drawtech, the PvP scramble game Words3, the turn-based MMO strategy game Dark Seas, and the battle royale chess game Ape's Gambit.

4.3 Gameplay

Source: Small Brain Games

In Drawtch, players are faced with a virtual canvas consisting of 35 x 35 tiles, which is constantly expanding. Gameplay consists of coloring these tiles, each of which has a price based on the demand for that tile and the activity of the players, and players are rewarded for maintaining ownership of their tiles while other players color other tiles. When a new player paints on an existing tile, it takes away ownership of that tile, so players make strategic choices about which new tiles to claim. The frontend is currently open-sourced and charges a 6.23% fee for each transaction.

Source: @gtmcknight

Drawtech is the first mobile FOC game, and similar to Frientech, the game is played in a PWA fashion. The game's UX is very user-friendly and intuitive, but since it hasn't been live for very long, there are still issues with periodic login errors and failed transactions. There are several ways to play Drawtech, for example, you can increase the number of tiles you own by attacking the outer tiles, or you can paint your tiles a similar color to the surrounding tiles to make them less visible to other players.

4.4 Onchain Elements

Drawtech is a FOC game, meaning that all game logic and mechanics are implemented on-chain and can be found on its GitHub. In fact, prior to Drawtech, Small Brain Games developed an open source starter kit for mobile FOC games. The starter kit uses Lattice's MUD framework for smart contracts and client management, and privy's social wallet service for onboarding.

4.5 Economic Model

There is no separate token-based economic model. The price of tiles is determined through a mechanism called VRGDA, which was proposed by Pardigm and has been used in games like Art Gobblers and 0xMonaco.

4.6 Conclusion

Drawtech is significant for being the first mobile FOC game, and its intuitive gameplay and strategic gameplay have garnered a lot of attention within the FOC community. However, many players are currently playing the game for economic reasons, similar to Friendtech, so for long-term growth, we need to make sure that players are interested in and enjoy the gameplay itself. The current UX issues are likely to get better over time.

4.7 References

5. Network States

5.1 Game Introduction

Network States is a fully on-chain game where players build a story as they expand their faction, and has been in playtest since September 11, 2023. It's still in beta, so it doesn't appear to be deployed on any specific chain.

5.2 Team Background

The project is a collaboration of several teams from different MUD factions. Small Brain Games, 0xhank, and Moving Castles were involved in the project. Small Brain Games is a team that has made various FOC games such as Drawtech and Words3. In the case of 0xhank, while working at a traditional tech company, he visited ETHDenver in 2022 and became interested in the FOC game industry through a game called Dark Forest. While participating in the Dark Forest guild at ETHDenver, he became interested in the automation and compatibility of blockchain gaming and joined the Primodium team to continue his journey. Moving Castles is also currently developing and playtesting a Fully Onchain Game called This Cursed Machine.

5.3 Gameplay

Source: Small Brain Games

Currently, players can experience how the game works through the Network State website. The goal is for players to build their own network state, grow their population, and capture other states. The most important metric for a country is its population, which grows slightly every hour. Players can expand their nation in a certain direction, in which case their population is moved to the corresponding block and decreases by 1 for each move. If a nation encounters another player's territory, the nation with the highest population in that block will absorb the other nation's entire territory.

Another important feature of Network States is that the mainnet version will use GPT-4 to create an in-game lore based on the actions of each player. For example, if a player captures another player's country, GPT can generate a story around that action. In terms of gameplay, it feels similar to what we commonly refer to as a worm game slither.io, but the ability to strategically choose how to move your population from block to block and the lore that GPT-4 creates seems to be the difference.

5.4 Onchain Elements

As the game is still in beta, it is not deployed on the blockchain, but it is likely that the mainnet version will have some form of FOC game with all game logic implemented on-chain. The full code is currently unavailable, but a lite version of the code created when the game participated in the ETHGlobal Autonomous World Hackathon can be found on GitHub.

5.5 Economic Model

There is no economic model at this time.

5.6 Conclusion

One of the things I'm most excited about with Network States is how the AI will naturally build a narrative for each player based on their actions, but we'll have to see how that plays out in practice. The gameplay itself is intuitive, but there are no gameplay tutorials or guides at this time, which is a little disappointing. For now, there are only intermittent beta playtests, so we'll have to wait for the actual mainnet implementation.

5.7 References

6. This Cursed Machine

6.1 Game Introduction

This Cursed Machine is a Fully Onchain Game created by Moving Castles and is currently in Closed Beta for playtesting. It is a sci-fi horror genre game that has never existed before and offers a very unique feel.

6.2 Team Background

Moving Castles, the studio behind This Cursed Machine, is a game studio focused on autonomous worlds. Moving Castles is led by GVN, who has written articles such as 'Three Eras of World Generation' and 'Modular and Portable Multiplayer Miniverses', and has worked on various other projects such as Mascot Stream 3D, Eat Drain Arson, and Network States. In the case of Mascot Stream 3D, it was a Twitch gameplay channel with user interaction, and in the case of Eat Drain Arson, it was a FOC game based on a MUD. In the case of Network States, the game we featured this month, Small Brain Games and 0xHank collaborated on its development. Personally, Moving Castles has a visual, or sensibility, all its own, which is heavily emphasized in This Cursed Machine. It's hard to put into words, but they have a dark, weird, and uncomfortable feel to them, which can be seen on their are.na.

6.3 Gameplay

As mentioned earlier, the atmosphere of the game is sci-fi and weird. Once you start the game, you'll be greeted by an unrecognizable character in the terminal window, and the game begins. The story, as I understand it, is that you are part of some strange supply chain chain, producing and delivering materials requested by higher-ups to a warehouse. The game ends when your energy is depleted, and you must consume bugs from a bug dispenser to replenish it. The substances you create are pretty bizarre, for example, in the early missions you have to make caffeine slush and deliver it to the warehouse, which requires you to mix your own blood and urine. In addition to this, you'll have to make and deliver sludge, monsters, blood lipids, miso, and other unknown substances by carefully studying the recipe map.

As you can see from the recipe map above, the recipes for some substances are not publicly available, so as you progress through the game, you may have to infer the recipe for certain substances. For example, below is a combination of devices to make tobacco juice and deliver it to the warehouse.

6.4 Onchain Elements

It is expected that the game will be deployed as a FOC game when it is actually launched, but since it is currently in the playtest period, it does not seem to leverage the blockchain.

6.5 Economic Model

Due to the nature of the game, it is unlikely that a separate economic model will be introduced, but we will have to wait for the official launch to find out.

6.6 Conclusion

Since this game was created by Moving Castles, the company behind various articles and projects related to the Autonomous World, it attracted a lot of attention, but after playing the game, I can say that the aesthetic and play style of Moving Castles is definitely captivating. The gameplay itself is simple, but the various elements and settings add to the immersive experience. It looks like they had an offline playtest at the recent DevConnect event, and the response from those who played it was good, so it looks like it's a game to look forward to.

6.7 References

Thanks to Kate for designing the graphics for this article.

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