February Wrap-Up
March is here, and so once again we wrap up another productive month at Kaiju Cards! Below you’ll find updates about game development, game design, Genesis Quests, and more! As always, we recommend you join our Discord for more frequent updates and to talk all things Kaiju Cards.
Genesis Quests
The engineering work for Genesis Quests has completed, and now we’re going through a final QA stage for debugging and security testing before release!
In case you need a refresher, Genesis Quests serve as the initial distribution mechanism of our utility token, $GEMS, to cardholders. $GEMS will be the token you’ll use for just about everything on Good Earth! There will never be an easier time to obtain $GEMS than during Genesis Quests, so be sure to grab them while you can!
Game Development
During the month of February, one of our main development goals was integrating as many cards as possible into our game. We were successful! Now, all basic combat mechanics are fully functional, and many spells and utilities are working as they should. Our demo is working as snappy as a release-ready version of the game, and so now we can focus on the very important element of pacing which we believe is extremely important in card games, rogue-likes, and if we’re being honest, ALL games. This step will allow us to start fine-tuning and finalizing decisions about cards, classes, and enemies!
In addition, later in this article you’ll find some info about game animation. Soon the demo videos (like the one below) will have working character sprites and animation in them! The video you see below is not animation-focused, it’s code and functionality-focused. We look forward to showing you game videos with increasing levels of polish in the coming months!
Here’s a note from our game developer, Charlie, about what’s going in the clip above:
“Here I have a Mushroom Farmer with 112 health fighting a Matcha Gelatin Cube. In the current game build, Shield of Light adds [magic + 3 block] (9 + 3 = 12), Shield adds [dexterity + 2 block] (6 + 2 = 8), Sweep the Leg deals [strength + 0] (8) damage and inflicts one round of debilitate (-50% strength), and Body Slam deals damage equal to the owning character’s block.
So, for this deck and character combination, Body Slam is a very powerful attack, and it only costs 1 energy!”
Game Art
Level Backgrounds
In February we completed the remaining level backgrounds, which means that all of the four initial level backgrounds are done! As stated previously, we’re taking a modular approach to these level backgrounds, so that as you advance through fights the background changes. See some examples of what Hooligan’s Bluff may look like below!
Character Sprites and Animation
February saw us complete design of quite a few character sprites, and move them into the animation phase! They are now being pushed into the animation pipeline, which means soon we’ll have some attacking character examples to show you inside of the game.
Game Design
Now that the bulk of Genesis Quests work is done, we’ve directed our attention back towards Game Design. We’ve made substantial headway on a few key areas of the game that needed expansion. Our goal is to create a dynamic experience for all players, regardless of character ownership and skill level, with ample replayability.
Dungeon Levels and Bosses
The first dungeon to be released will be Hooligan’s Bluff, which will have a 3-act structure. Within each act there are a multitude of procedurally generated encounters, battles, and choices that players must make to survive until each act’s final room where players will face off against a unique act boss. Clearing an act unlocks rewards which scale up until the final act. Defeating act bosses won’t be the only way to earn rewards, as there are many encounters and features which offer opportunities to progress and grow.
Energy System
Each card has a certain energy cost, and every turn you have a certain amount of max energy available to you. The energy cap each player will have is not static. Other games of a similar genre tend to opt for more static energy systems, but we feel that there is a lot of room to be explored here in dynamic energy mechanics for more varied gameplay. By having your max energy ramp up during fights, we can design cards and encounters to have a wider range of exciting pacing and tempos instead of always having an energy hardcap.
A Bit About Classes
Every Gen 0 Kaiju has a primary class associated with it. This will affect the card composition of your starting decks, though characters can always progress and pick up more cards along the way. The foundations of classes are nailed down, and we’re now expanding their card sets.
Bards: The songs of a Bard have a colorful reputation on Good Earth. Protective harmonies and songs of power have guided the ears of many heroes, while violent cacophonies have plagued the ears of the Bard’s enemies. A skilled maestro will weave the bard’s songs and melodies into a boon will guide you and your party from danger.
Clerics: Natural leaders and fearless in combat, Clerics can integrate seamlessly into most team compositions. An armored support class, they can take a lot of abuse while helping the rest of your team focus on what’s important — surviving.
Knights: Aggressive and balanced, the Knight class specializes in combat, with potential to deal lots of damage and synergize well with support. Knights are a powerful all-around class.
Rogues: Deadly and cunning, the Rogue is known for their evasiveness and high damage output. But unprepared Rogues beware, as they can be very vulnerable in combat. A glass cannon, Rogues will reward high burst damage to those who can manage.
Wizards: Students of the ancient discipline, Wizards are adept at dealing magic damage and conjuring utilities for your team. What Wizards lack in armor and weaponry, they make up in unique combat abilities and spells.
Equipment
We’ve been working on the NFT art for class equipment — here are some mockups! Each of the 5 classes will have archetypal equipment, all of which will be fully upgradable! Each piece of equipment will have cards associated with them, and customization options within each individual equipment.
Those aiming to build a hybrid class may want to keep an eye on Genesis Quests for an opportunity to obtain some class equipment!
More on $GEMS
As we said in our January update $GEMS is coming. Because $GEMS is the token that fuels the economic engine in Kaiju Cards, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about game tokenomics and a lot of time looking at other projects’ token successes and shortcomings. You earn $GEMS by playing the game, you spend $GEMS to play the game. There are lots of strong incentives to spend your $GEMS, and optimizing your spending and progress in our game will be a complex challenge for players. In light of this, it currently doesn’t make sense to create a hardcap for $GEMS supply as the token needs to scale with the growth of the game’s audience; a hardcapped supply that makes sense for 10,000 users doesn’t make sense for 1 million. It also doesn’t make sense to emit tokens without proper incentives to spend them. The goal is to create a $GEMS ecosystem where inflation and deflation are within reasonable a balance to the benefit of PLAYERS, and the game can grow with the flexibility needed to sustain an indefinite amount of players. We’re building this system for long term sustainability and growth.
Technology
We’ve created something that is the first of its kind on Solana. We’ve tracked data from all the major NFT marketplaces, and are using sales data to determine exactly how long people have held their Kaijus, and giving them $GEMS boosts in Genesis Quests based on this data. It’s been quite the undertaking, but the system is finally done!
Our Summoning system prototype is nearing completion. More info on this soon!
In addition, the backend engineering (with full blockchain integration) for our leveling system has been completed! Now we turn our attention towards testing it within the context of our game, stress testing it, and finalizing the tokenomic designs of this system.
Here’s what we completed in February
- Character sprite drafts and final lines — we now move heavily into sprite animation
- First of its kind sales history mechanism
- All of the level backgrounds for our dungeons
- Initial $GEMS tokenomics
- Sales history tracking solution that allows us to place people into rewards tiers based on how long they’ve been hold
- Archetypal equipment for each class
- Many cards integrated into our game prototype
- All Genesis Quests development work (currently testing!)
Here’s what we’re looking forward to doing in March
- Finishing up stress testing Genesis Quests and opening them up for you to join!
- Distributing $GEMS to all Genesis Quest participants
- Distributing equipment NFTs to all Genesis Quest participants who opt-in (Phase 2 of Genesis Quests)
- Attack and idle animations for several sprites fully integrated into our prototype, with videos to show for it!
- Completing of many more in-game character sprites
- Moving beyond the foundational elements of our battle system and into game progression
The month of March will see the first Kaiju Cards product come out! As always, join our Discord for more frequent updates — we share sneak peeks of art, gameplay, and info about upcoming products often!
