Author: FaultProofBen
Gm!
Before we begin, I want to make one thing clear: This is not another Friend Tech newsletter!
I’m sure your inbox is filled with breakdowns of the social app that’s taking crypto by storm.
It may have been overshadowed by the Friend Tech frenzy, but it was also a big weekend in onchain gaming and autonomous worlds.
On Friday, August 18, history was made as the clan [WE] held the first-ever Sky Strife tournament!
I was able to participate, although I did not emerge victorious.
In fact, I lost in a humiliating fashion.
But from defeat, comes insight.
Today, I’ll break down the tournament, how I scored an own goal for the ages, and why I realized stories like mine are an example of a content genre that autonomous worlds are well suited to popularize: Onchain Lore.
Now, let’s dive in!
Sky Strife 101
We’ve talked a bit about Sky Strife over the past few weeks, but here’s a TLDR of the game for those of you who aren’t familiar with it.
Sky Strife is a turn-based, real-time strategy (RTS) game built in MUD by the Lattice team.
The goal of Sky Strife is to destroy other players’ settlements while protecting your own. You do this by spawning and deploying units, which are knights that you can move around the map during each turn.
There are five different types of units, each of which has varying degrees of strength, health, and mobility.
New units can be purchased with gold, an in-game currency that you can earn in the beginning stages of the game by capturing mines, structure that emit gold and are spread throughout the map.
Sky Strife is in its early stages, as it currently is only holding weekly playtests. But it’s already a lot of fun.
Gameplay is intense, as it oscillates between slow, suspenseful unit build-ups, to fast-paced, frenetic combat.
This pacing coincides various elements of strategy, as you have to determine which units to allocate your gold to, if you want to be offensive or defensive, and decide which (if any) secondary settlements you want to capture.
The Tournament: A Tale Of Self-Rugging
The [WE] tournament began bright and early in my timezone, at 6:15 am PST.
I blame all of the following on that and that alone!
(Just kidding)
There were 16 participants, spread across four different matches. The winner of each would then go on to face off against one another in a final’s match to determine the champion.
Although there was a bracket created ahead of time, it was quickly abandoned for more of a free-for-all approach where everyone hopped into the first available match they could find.
I wound up in Match 3, facing off against IPFS, MephewC, and ARB.
ARB had issues joining, so it wound up essentially being a three-man fight.
The match began with an arms race. The three active players raced to capture mines accumulate gold, and build up our army of units.
I chose to stockpile my gold so I could splurge on a mix of the two most expensive unit types:
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Archers, the only units with ranged attacks.
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Pikeman, the units with the highest strength and health.
By doing so, I thought I’d be able to pick off other players’ forces from afar while having the muscle to shred them in close-quarters combat.
I spawned in the upper left quadrant of the island, while IPFS was in the upper right, and MephewC in the bottom left.
ARB spawned in the bottom right, and MephewC eventually took over his quadrant. This gave him control of the entire bottom half of the island, and he established a front across the middle to box in myself and IPFS.
For a while, the three of us remained in a Mexican standoff, continuing to grow our forces while waiting for someone to make a move.
Inexplicably, I decided to be the aggressor and end the stalemate. I don’t know why, perhaps I was just cranky from waking up early.
I moved all my forces from my primary settlement (the settlement I began the game with) to a secondary one on the right hand side of the island in order to take out IPFS.
Although I’ve played Sky Strife a couple times, I didn’t realize that if your primary settlement (i.e. the settlement you begin the game with) is destroyed, you effectively lose, as the game ends when all primary settlements are destroyed.
(I didn’t know this probably because I have never come close to winning.)
Someone pointed this out to me in the voice channel, and I then realized I’d pulled a GOB.
Chaos ensued, as MephewC quickly overran my settlement from the south while I engaged in brutal combat with IPFS’s forces.
At this point, I was completely flustered by my massive, public self-rugging, and the vast majority of my units were slaughtered by IPFS.
I would up retreating with just a handful of them, as MephewC ultimately managed to win the match, capturing IPFS’s settlement just before his final unit was about to be destroyed.
Ultimately, he and the winners of the other three matches faced off in the finals, with 9STX6 taking home the victory and winning the first ever Sky Strife tournamnet.
Afterwards, 9STX6 received a 1/1 NFT, and all players are able to mint an open edition NFT on Manifold.
Onchain Lore
So, why am I talking about this tournament, other than to provide you all with a bit of entertainment at my expense?
One reason is that I think it’s a strong bullish signal about the state of onchain games and AWs.
The space is nascent, yet community members find an early-stage game fun enough to where they’d organize and (in my case wake up at the literal crack of dawn to) participate in a tournament.
However, I also believe that my anecdote is an example of what will be a growing category of “onchain lore,” or content based on a series of transactions.
Every single action taken in my Sky Strife match exists as a transaction on the Lattice testnet, and a record of that will remain for as long as that network is live.
You can even view a log of the transactions and see how close my telling of the story was to the truth.
I’ll admit, maybe the story of my self-rugging isn’t Hollywood material.
But in the future, due to their permanent record of events, the openness of their IP, the attachments we form to assets, games, and communities, along with the never-ending drama that they provide, autonomous worlds will become a hotbed for new types of stories, content and lore.
For instance, imagine someone creating a political thriller based on the rise of SupremeLeaderOP in OPCraft.
In addition, maybe we see a Breaking Bad-esque crime drama chronicling the rise of a player to the top of the leaderboard in Roll Your Own.
We have an endless supply of content based on interpretations of history in the physical world.
In the future, I imagine we’ll see similar stories told inspired by what’s taken place in onchain ones.
The TLDR:
The hottest news and developments from the last week in onchain gaming.
Plays of the Week:
Three onchain games to try out for yourself this week.
Words from Frens:
The best non-WASD articles, videos, and conversations from the past week.
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Read: Perspectives for Readers with Zero Knowledge - Matt Dion
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Listen: AW Roundup & News: Words3, Shoshin, Sky Strife, & More! - The AW Space
Game Spotlight: Shoshin
Overview:
Shoshin is a fighting game developed by Topology and live on Starknet.
Shosin launched its public alpha on August 15 with two primary game modes: Campaign and Arcade.
In Campaign, players battle against CPU enemies by building what are known as “Minds.” Minds are sequences of different actions that a player’s character can take in a fight, including offensive attacks, evasive maneuvers, and movement.
Shoshin also has an arcade mode, which plays similar to a traditional 2D-fighting game as you use keyboard keys (like WASD) in synchronous combat to battle your enemy.
Under the hood, Shoshin is unique in that it is “TPS-agnostic.” The entire game lives in the Cairo VM, meaning that there no transactions take place, and players do not have to connect a wallet or pay any gas.
The WASD Take:
Although its its early stages, I’ve enjoyed Shoshin so far.
Creating minds to defeat your opponent is engaging, challenging, and fun. The combat system already has a lot of depth, with a ton of different parameters and moves that you can use to put minds together.
Although the game is a bit complex and intimidating when you start off, there is a great tutorial that can help walk you through the basics to help get you going.
Shoshin also has great UX, as due to its TPS-agnostic nature, you don’t have to deal with wallets, slow block times, or constantly confirm transactions.
The aesthetic of the game is also very impressive, with a great landing page and memorable character designs for the male and female archetypes.
Overall, I’m excited to continue playing Shoshin and see where the Topology team takes it over the coming months!
Thanks for reading!
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See you all on Thursday!