January Development Update
A lot has happened in Good Earth in the last month! While still under construction, the world is coming together rapidly and we’re incredibly excited to share some updates with you. As always, we here in Good Earth encourage you to come to our Discord and join our community where we talk Kaiju Cards, gaming, frogs and penguins, and offer more glimpses of what’s to come.
Introducing $GEMS, Our Utility Token
$GEMS is the in-game currency of Kaiju Cards. This token will be rewarded through a multitude of in-game activities. These tokens are extremely important, as most in-game costs and fees are paid in $GEMS. They will be used when summoning new character NFTs, upgrading card talent trees, crafting item and equipment NFTs, and much more. $GEMS is the token backbone of the Kaiju Cards in-game economy.
We’re excited to announce that our Genesis Quests module will give Kaiju Cards NFT holders an initial distribution of $GEMS and access to a special opportunity to earn utility and infrastructural NFTs. There will be no IDO of these tokens, they will be distributed directly via gameplay. Players interested in getting a head start, organizing guilds, or those who simply want to collect more NFTs, this is a good limited-time opportunity for you.
What Are Genesis Quests?
Genesis Quests are designed as an idle gameplay experience that provides cardholders an opportunity to participate in an initial distribution of important game assets and tokens. You’ll be able to send your character(s) out on a multitude of quests and will earn $GEMS as a bounty for quest completion.
Genesis Quests are available for a limited duration. There will be multiple phases, with additional content and features added during each phase. As we progress through each phase, the Kaiju Cards ecosystem will expand and more important features will be released leading up to the main game’s launch.
Soon after Genesis Quests launch, we’ll be launching our Items Marketplace. Here you can purchase equipment and utility NFTs which will aid you further on the second phase of Genesis Quests. More details about this soon.
Within Genesis Quests, you’ll get boosts to your base $GEMS rewards based on how long you’ve held your Kaiju Card and what rarity level it is. If you’ve been holding for a while, there’s a bonus in Genesis Quests for you.
What is the Kaiju Cards game? A Card-Game?? An RPG??
It’s been a while since we’ve talked about the game. At its core, Kaiju Cards is a deckbuilding RPG card-game. If that’s a little confusing allow us to explain.
Character NFTs
Current character NFTs are considered Gen 0. Each gen 0 character has several attributes assigned to them, some which are unique to each character and some which are unique to different variants.
Gen 1 will be summoned by Gen 0. Gen 1 characters will have many generative elements presented visually, which each correspond to specific attributes. Each of these attributes represents either a character effect (typically modifiers to a character’s stats) or a card that becomes available for your deckbuilding. The deck you construct is your arsenal in combat. Strategic deck composition and synergies will be of the utmost importance to successfully progress through the game.
Both Gen 0 and Gen 1 characters will possess attributes that pertain to cards to be used in a player’s deck. What attributes a character has is defined by things like rarity, race, and primary class. Primary classes are assigned to Gen 1 characters at creation, and gen 0 characters will soon be given their primary classes as well. Secondary classes are determined by user choices, and how they build their characters via gameplay progression. The combination of primary and secondary classes creates a hybrid class system, and each class has their own unique potential.
Character and Card Progression
While your available cards are partially determined by your character’s attributes and character classes, there are a plethora of ways to upgrade, customize, and add cards to your deck. Some ways this happens are (but are not limited to) talent trees per individual cards, character trees, equipment NFTs, and equipment modularity.
We believe that combining elements commonly seen in RPGs, MMOs, and deckbuilders actually works together quite well, and there are popular games that are beginning to implement systems which allude to a game like this, but so far we’ve only seen singular features and small modules within larger games exploring this approach. We feel that the level of customization and variation within deckbuilding alone lends itself to a high degree of replayability, depth of strategy, community-building, and fun. Combined with a parallel character and card progression system, this creates a unique blend of challenge and reward that both card-game and RPG players will understand.
Character Sprites
We’ve been creating sprites for every single character. In the coming month, these sprites will be animated and turned into game assets.
We take pride in the Kaiju Cards NFTs and are reaching for the same level of quality in our character sprites. Beyond just creating individual character sprites, we’ve been taking many things into consideration, drawing from our roster of animators. Things like the relative sizing of one character to another, the neutral positions that characters are in and how they look and feel, and optimizing each individual sprite for animation. The following images are WIPs from our work earlier this month. Note that the final product will differ from the images shown below, as these aren’t final drawings.
Level Backgrounds
We’ve moved from concept art to final art for 2 of our initial battle levels, and the other two are sitting at 85% completion. The level backgrounds will be generative — when you finish a battle, and move on to the next battle, the background of the level will change every time, by randomly selecting pre-made assets we’ve created to fit into the foreground, background, and plane (see the image below for an example of backgrounds changing). Foreground elements on some levels will change as well, as well as various props not included in the images below.
Let’s talk about the things we completed in January:
Game Design
- Battle system design upgrade. As detailed above, our battle system has undergone a substantial upgrade. We are now introducing those changes into our original battle system web prototype
- Classes — modular hybrid class system. We’re introducing procedurally generated core classes for the next generation of Kaiju Cards, which will be summoned exclusively by holders of the Presale and Alpha cards. How you want to customize and build your secondary class to create potential hybrid classes is up to you
- Magic damage!!
- Energy consumption as it relates to ability card usage
- 4-Stat System that applies to all cards
- “Talent Trees” for most individual cards
Game Art
- All character sprite prototyping
- Two dungeon level backgrounds, with multiple prop and background possibilities to be randomly generated as you play
- Final art on several characters
- Initial animation prototypes
Genesis Quests
- All art direction
- Timeline
- Rewards structure- Lots of Functional NFTs!!
- Quests detail and structure
- Working prototype
- Final background art and character art
Things we’re focusing on in February
- Launching Genesis Quests
- Moving deeper into prototyping dungeons and the battle system, working towards final code as we go
- The new generation of Kaiju Cards, summoned exclusively by cardholders
- Specifically their art, attributes, and permutations. They will be generative characters of a specific race each. More details soon!
- Continuing to develop tokenomics to be robust but fluid enough to accommodate changes as needed. Tokenomics have been evolving alongside game design so far. Our stance is that tokenomics are ALWAYS a moving target, and the system we build needs to account for iterative changes on an as-needed basis
- Character sprite animation (with plenty of WIPs to be shown along the way)
- Finishing up the remaining level backgrounds, wrapping up game asset animation, and moving into art for features and products that we haven’t revealed yet
2022 is going to be explosive. Keep an eye out for our EOM Medium posts, and join our Discord to chat with other holders.
All details noted here are about a game and product that is in development and are subject to change
