Alien Worlds has evolved considerably in recent years but the mining game is still central to the ecosystem, the reason why many players first came through the virtual doors – and why a large percentage of them stuck around.
Mining for Trilium treasure on the six frontier planets (Kavian, Eyeke, Naron, Neri, Magor, Veles) using a strategic NFT tool rig continues to hold great appeal for Explorers, even if some have become more focused on seeking election to the Planetary Syndicates and governing interstellar affairs.
DappRadar’s recent WAX Dapp Ecosystem Q2 2024 Report underlined the popularity of mining, with a quarterly total of 6.6 million unique active wallets making Alien Worlds the most played game on WAX. Needless to say, most wallets are used exclusively for mining: over 10 billion transactions have been made since the game launched in 2020!
A range of mini games have also debuted in Alien Worlds over the last 18 months, from Battledome and Kavian.World to Battlefleet Armageddon, with more in the pipeline. The list of forthcoming titles includes Milky Way Miner, created by experienced gaming studio Double Coconut. Already a popular web2 game, and available in web3 form as a sideloaded APK, the fully revamped version will soon be available in app stores.
Miners’ Paradise
A retro style idle mobile clicker, Milky Way Miner compels players to dig for ore and unlock a succession of mine floors. Given Alien Worlds’ mining core, Double Coconut CEO David Fox felt it would be perfect to bring the game to the metaverse.
“We’d been playing Alien Worlds for a while and knew it was a good game,” explains David. “Obviously it’s a science-fiction mining game so the lightbulb went off, ‘It seems like a very good fit.’ A lot of work went into this version of Milky Way Miner, probably a year of development, a lot of beautiful art. It is just a really fun, simple idle game, very easy to pick up and play. Our team tried to be as minimal as possible, I like to think it has its own unique look, especially in the genre of games like that. You’re trying to optimize a mining operation, going from planet to planet – and these are beautiful, luscious, crazy planets with crazy environments. But really it’s just about optimizing your operation by digging deeper to get more ore, upgrading and really thinking through your supply chain so that there’s no block points.
“It’s fun and very casual, and it actually has some surprising depth to it: once you get into the different planets, there are different ways to optimize the mines and planets which players can argue about and pursue different strategies.”
In a way, Milky Way Miner is a gamified version of the core Alien Worlds’ mining game which is, after all, about optimizing operations by using tools of varying rarities. But as Fox explains, there is a lot more to the new release.
“I think we really transformed the game, making it not just a single-player game but putting in a multiplayer tournament mode. I’m really excited about that because as a single-player game it’s fun, but after a few months of play it becomes repetitive unless we, as developers, put in effort to organize many events. With the multiplayer mode though, anybody can sponsor a tournament for small or large amounts.”
Trilium Tournaments
These weekly tournaments, run via smart contracts, will provide more use-cases for both Alien Worlds and NFTs, according to Fox. For example, those who own NFTs can use them to gain boosts in tournaments: the rarer the NFT, the greater the advantage.
“The way the tournaments work is we, as a game developer, are not sponsoring them: we want to put it out as tools for the community, in the spirit of open source and decentralization. There will be a leaderboard each week, not for players but for tournament sponsors. So anyone who wants to can sponsor a tournament, give as much Trilium as they want and update their bid up to the last moment when the tournament starts. Whoever has donated the most TLM to the tournament wins, and what they get as a benefit is any picture or logo they want, any text, in the game for everybody to see that they’ve sponsored it.
“I expect and hope that Syndicates will compete with each other to sponsor these tournaments. That should be interesting, but I think down the line It could be a little more formalized, where it won’t just be a tournament with a bunch of individuals and a leaderboard, it’ll be more clan-based and where different Syndicates can compete against each other week by week, or tournament by tournament, maybe over longer seasons to triumph and get a share of the pot.”
Initially, there will be an NFT or set of NFTs that players need to stake for the week, which is returned at the end of the tournament. “So there’s actually no cost essentially to enter the tournament,” explains Fox. “It’s free. You just need to stake your NFT. I hope that over time the weekly tournaments can become very different, have different stories, different races, and really different goals. So that different play styles can succeed and you’re not just coming back and doing the same thing every week, but really have to think things through.” So what can players expect in terms of prizes?
“All the prizes are Trillium. If you place in the top 50% of the leaderboard, you are guaranteed to win some TLM, which is fantastic. And hopefully not too hard to do. Obviously the very top players will get the lion’s share and much more. The bulk of the TLM goes back to the players. So, people who sponsor the tournament and put in 10,000 TLM or whatnot, most of that will go to the players. There is a small rake Double Coconut will take as developers to maintain the game and pay for hosting costs, etc. The plan is to see how that goes and grows over time.
“We really want to make this as hands-off as we can, from our point of view. Our mindset is to build really cool tools and lego blocks that can make a cool experience as things go on over time.”
Such words will be music to the ears of Alien Worlds community members, who have become accustomed to steering the ship as far as game development is concerned – principally through voting for Syndicate proposals. A recent survey of players found that 77.8% regarded decentralization as important or very important; and when queried on the types of projects they wanted to receive more Syndicate support, the most popular response was ‘game development.’
Lore Lego Blocks
Games launching in Alien Worlds are increasingly likely to incorporate elements of official lore, particularly in view of the new Tokenized Lore voting mechanism that empowers players to manage official canon. It’s a development that hasn’t escaped the attention of Fox.
“One of the things I like about Alien Worlds is the direction it’s going with its lore, it is really trying to democratize it and not have a canon that’s tight. But really have many different stories that can play into the characters in the worlds and the races.
“You’ll see as you play Milky Way Miner that there’s a very light story – we actually have a deeper backstory which we may reveal over time – where you have Altans who you can hire as bosses to do supercharged things from mine to mine, and they’ve kind of set up along with the humans this trading operation, because there’s a crisis in the galaxy, it’s running out of Trilium, etc. And the cards are really the main focus. So they’re in these mechs doing the mining. We were able to use that same style and put in Alien Worlds’ characters and races and lore. I think it visually looks really nice together.”
Fox started Double Coconut 12 years ago and has released a variety of titles since, including casino and casual games. All in all, he has been working in the space for a quarter of a century.
“A ridiculous amount of time,” he laughs. “Out of university I founded a company called iWin which was one of the first casual game companies, one of the first to make games for the mass market – not just gamers but middle-aged women. I also had some adventures at places like Telltale, Digital Chocolate. We got into blockchain pretty early before the first big boom, working with Splinterlands, helping them build out their mobile experience. Since then we’ve done all sorts of work including projects with Sky Mavis and we did our own major tower defense game on top of Splinterlands, too…. We’re geeks. We are game developers, but we also really like the blockchain stuff and to get our hands dirty.”
As Fox mentions, Milky Way Miner is currently available as a sideloaded APK that does not feature the Trillium-based tournament. The full version of the game is expected to hit app stores soon.
Alien Worlds offers a truly unique decentralized platform where players are more than mere participants; they’re active stakeholders influencing both the present and future of the game. Whether you aim to create services, tools, games, or other platforms, the community stands ready to embrace and utilize them.
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