From Pixel to Block: Chainmonsters

When NFTs began to develop on Ethereum, some projects became famous very quickly, others were adopted with a little more discretion, and many others saw several twists and turns during their development.

Among these projects, there is the game Chainmonsters which wishes to take up the challenge of creating an RPG using the mechanisms of Pokémon but with the use of NFTs in addition.

The ambition is set up at a high level: creating a whole game that takes place in real time with other players online and an economy based on what the Web3 has to offer. 

Since the end of 2017, the founder Maximilian Weber has carried the project through thick and thin, experience after experience while regularly offering the community demos or future progress of the project. Today, the technical choices are made, Flow is the chosen blockchain, the Kickstarter is very successful and the project is in its alpha phase!

So where is the project now and what are the next steps going to be?

1st game on the FLOW blockchain

Although FLOW is best known for NBA Top Shot or its creators Dapper Labs, this ecosystem is still very young: the VIV3 marketplace is already launched and it is already possible to exchange Chainmonsters assets there, soon to exchange CryptoKitties but for the moment, it is more used for artistic NFT drops.

The Trading Card Game Dark Country is also interested in this blockchain but is still in the pre-sale stage at the time of writing. We are therefore going to take a look at Chainmonsters, which offers a demo accessible to those who participated in the Kickstarter or bought their entry ticket on VIV3.

Since the early versions of the game, the graphics have undergone several major evolutions with the progressive aim of moving away from the style of Pokémon. The unique Chainmonsters visual identity really took hold after the end of the Kickstater and was given a facelift.

Certain mechanisms are inherent in this style of play, for example statistics, attributes or family.

“Alpha leak”

The game is currently in an alpha phase, so this means that the various interactions with the blockchain are still on the testnet and that the interface may still be modified in the future. But there’s more to this alpha than giving the community a chance to acclimatize to the game’s atmosphere and mechanics before anyone else.

As mentioned above, Chainmonsters uses the mechanics of turn-based RPGs to bring a more strategic dimension to combat. Here is the essential information that frames the Chainmon:

Base stats

• HP (Health Points)
• Attack
• Defense
• Elemental Attack
• Elemental Defense
• Speed
• SP (Stamina Points)

Elements

• Pyro
• Hydro
• Nature
• Electro
• Air
• Cryo
• Geo
• Crystal

Traits

Each Chainmon can have up to two traits, which grant very specific bonuses. Here are some examples of traits:

• Arcane Intellect (increases crit chance)
• Hasty (slightly increases speed gain on levelup)
• Brave (slightly increases attack gain on levelup)
• Relaxed (slightly decreased speed gain on levelup)

Of course, the effects will vary widely and will not necessarily affect the base elements of your Chainmon. It could be protections from poison or paralysis, the ability to not die all at once from a critical hit early in the game …

The Kickstarter rewards are NFTs with several uses: get access to the alpha but also exclusive costumes, and most importantly, a mysterious ticket or the Crystal Starter Chainmon.

These last two are particularly interesting because while the mysterious ticket grants you time-exclusive access to an island at least 12 months in advance to capture legendary Chainmons, crystal allows you to have a “chainmon starter” (ie one of the first three monsters that will be possible to choose at the start of the adventure) which is rarer and with better characteristics. 

While it may play into the balance of a battle, this style of gameplay also relies on the strategic aspect of the combat actions chosen by the players. Since NFTs are supposed to guarantee immutability once they are created, it is important to think carefully about how they will be used in the long run. 

Too much bonus would cause imbalance in the game, but the reward must still match the support of the community.

What are the next steps?

Knowing that the game is already available in a test version on PC, Android and IOS, the porting stage to different platforms is already well advanced, but the work is far from over. Indeed, for the moment everything is taking place on the testnet, the various objects or Chainmon present in the game are therefore not yet live on the mainnet.

Although the combat architecture and graphics are already well thought out, there is still a lot to discover. There is of course the discovery of all the Chainmons (there are only 34 that have been revealed so far) but also how the players will be able to interact with each other.

It is indeed already possible to meet other players in the game, which brings Chainmonsters into the category of MMO games … and who knows, maybe soon a Metaverse?