Hi SolChicks fam!
Hope you all had fun playing Dungeon Escape! Our team has been hard at work on developing the Alpha I version of the main game and we revealed a glimpse of that in the teaser video shared last week. So far, we have also revealed the background story, game/weapon systems and art direction — so this instalment of the blog aims to shed more light on how they all come together in the Alpha I version.
Let’s first dive right into the story. After the SolChicks arrived in planet Mellow and as a race, was chosen to be the guardians of the World Tree, they organized their society in a spartan like manner where strength and loyalty to the World Tree were revered and celebrated. Amongst the many traditions was the Proving, where the strongest fledglings would be chosen to participate in the annual ritual where they showcase their faith and abilities to the Elders and the World Tree at the Chicco Arena on top of Cloud Mesa, and ultimately become a Brave should they succeed.
Players would play as Talonyr, a young aspirant from the Lightfeather Village looking to join the SolChick Braves like his brother Saberclaw. Like every other chosen fledgling, Talonyr began his journey with his first baby steps at the annual Proving. Without giving away too much of the story, Talonyr, together with his companions, then embarks on an epic adventure across planet Mellow to discover his true identity and fulfill his ultimate purpose.
The Alpha I version of the game will be centered around Lightfeather Village, which is a quiet sleepy town near the SolChick capital city on Planet Mellow, Swiftalon City. This is also where the Chicco Arena is located — where the main characters will be introduced through a series of quests and back story.
Lightfeather Village will be part of the core Alpha I game experience, where players will be gently immersed into the world of SolChicks and its myriad of characters and their relationships with one another. Further, it will be a place where players learn and experience the many systems that we had previously shown such as the NPC system, blacksmith, classes and so on.
Subsequently, the heroes will journey across Brown Valley (and face many dangers and challenges!) towards Swiftalon where the Proving will be held. As per our previous initial bestiary reveal, Brown Valley is home to wolf bandits, corrupted flora and fauna, and rock golems. Here, players will be introduced to the battle system and be able to test their skills and wits against the various foes, each presenting different challenges with their own strengths and weaknesses. On this note, we have made several improvements to the battle system which we think will induce a smoother and cohesive gaming experience for our more casual player base. We will share that in greater detail over a blog post (or in a further updated version of the game paper) along with the Alpha One release of the game later in the month.
Speaking of battle system and weapons, we would like to take this chance to also give a sneak peak at what our art team has been up to with regards to the weapon NFT designs. As mentioned in a previous instalment of the blog, there will be 5 different classes each wielding a unique weapon type as part of their class identities.
We have painstakingly designed the look of the weapons to fit closely with the lore and ensured that they looked as good as they sounded. The NFTs will be rotating 3D representations of how we envisioned the weapons to look like, showcasing them in their true glory.
Whitepaper Update
Finally, some housekeeping matters. With the Alpha One reveal around the corner, we have taken the liberty to update the whitepaper to reflect the latest design and mechanics of the game (which will be further updated with more details upon the launch of Alpha I game). We also combined the whitepaper and the game paper into one whitepaper document, so everyone has one document to refer to for all information.
As mentioned in the previous AMAs, game design is an iterative process, and we as game designers have been lucky to be able to obtain feedback from our community and audiences along the way and improve on many game design elements since our initial reveal. However, that would also mean that parts of the game (sometimes even core design elements) might need to be radically adjusted if we strongly believe that the change will bring about a better gaming experience. The new whitepaper will have more details around the character and equipment systems, PvE gameplay, as well as the updated thinking around the NFT breeding system in order to better balance the trait distribution and prevent rampant NFT trait inflation which will no doubt devalue rare traits.
We have also been closely keeping up with the latest developments in the P2E community, and perfecting the game economy continues to be one of our key priorities. We have dedicated an entire team to familiarize ourselves with the various tools to help us better simulate our gameplay loop and economy (both rewards and sinks) to ensure we have properly considered the pros and cons of each design decision before committing to them. To this end, you may notice that we are light on the game economy section of the whitepaper — on purpose — to allow us more time to try and test each moving part before committing it in writing.
Game Development Milestone Payment
As our principle is to provide transparency to our community as much as possible about the game development process, and now that we are getting quite close to the release of Alpha I game, we would like to inform our community further about the distribution of the development token scheduled for our game development team (0xPlay). Last month, we announced that the first milestone distribution to the game development team took place on 14 March triggered by their initial delivery of the mini game Dungeon Escape (and delivery of the demo game in November). We clarified that distribution of development tokens to the development team is both milestone and time based so that the development team’s interest is fully aligned with the success of SolChicks.
In the near term as of today, there are two milestone distributions scheduled for the following milestones: (i) in this week — 0.25% of the total token supply for the mini-game blockchain integration and successful launch with play-to-earn functionality, and (ii) on 30 April — 1% of the total token supply for delivery of Alpha I game. Along with these milestone based distributions, there will be smaller amount of time based token distributions made on a monthly basis for the next 3 years until 2025. The amount of the smaller monthly time based token distributions will be dependent on the completed milestones.
As we continue to push for a timely release of the game, we hope to hear more from the community on your thoughts on the different elements of the game so we can take them into consideration in the subsequent releases. For now, we are all hands on deck for the Alpha I game, which we are extremely excited to reveal soon.
See you at the Proving!
Jun and Ben
About SolChicks
SolChicks is the fastest growing and largest P2E in the Solana ecosystem, with a team of over 150 members, including a blue-chip game development team who have previously brought to market titles such as MapleStory, PUBG, Dungeon Fighter and Tera, and a business management team from institutions such as Wharton and McKinsey & Company.
Join the #SolChicksFam:
📫 Telegram: https://t.me/solchicksnft
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🌲 Social Media: https://linktr.ee/SolChicksNFT
📰 Game Mechanics | Whitepaper | Pitch Deck: https://www.solchicks.io/papers
