Crypto Space Commander

4 min readMay 10, 2018

When Old School and New School Unite

Old School

Christmas of 1985, my sister and I got a combined gift of a brand new Nintendo Entertainment System. Ever since that day I have officially been a gamer, playing thousands of games for an unfathomable number of hours. Super Mario Bros, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Sonic, Wolfenstein, Doom, Shogun, Sins of a Solar Empire, just to name a few. Over time my taste in games has evolved, recently I spend more time playing management style games than any other. However, I have not been truly excited about a new game release in about a decade, instead I fill most of my spare time watching Sci-fi or “hodling” crypto. When lo and behold, I came across an article titled something like Blockchain Game of the Week: Crypto Space Commander, I have been super stoked ever since.

Crypto Space Commander (CSC for short), in a lot of ways reminds me of a game I used to play back in the early nineties called Star Control 2, and that is really saying something because Star Control 2 was deeply awesome game. It was a 2D, top-down space exploration game, complete with real-time multiplayer starship dogfights and alien interaction, all set in a sandbox universe. If you remember it, you probably loved it as much as I did. CSC has taken all the things that I loved about Star Control and rendered it with the Unity 3D engine. The company that is developing CSC, Lucid Sight, has also taken the multiplayer leaps and bounds further, by making it an MMO. The developers have stated that the game client will be playable cross-platform through your browser (via webGL), and through native Android and iOS apps.

New School

Beneath the real-time space action, another level of gameplay exists in CSC’s player driven economy. Supply and demand of ships, modules, resources and whatever else exists within the game, is all created by the players. If you are familiar with the economy of EVE Online, CSC’s seems to share many similarities. Players are responsible for mining and refining resources, crafting assets, transporting and then selling them at localized markets. Incoming players, instead of buying the game software or paying a monthly subscription, will need to purchase a ship in order to play. It is too early to tell how much ships will cost after launch, but right now ships are available for purchase for roughly 0.05 Eth (about $35 USD), and up. After buying a ship players are free to explore the galaxy in search of glory, riches, fame or simply fun. Although many aspects of the game economy may seem similar to EVE Online, CSC is able to dial up the economic intensity by using blockchain technology.

EVE steers clear of real world financial liability by banning the sale of game assets outside of the game. CSC developers have chosen a very interesting alternative. The in-game native currency is Ether, the crypto currency used in the Ethereum blockchain. Ether is easily interchangeable with hard currency, giving real value to game assets. This actually makes it possible to pay your bills by playing video games, how great is that. At the same time it will make the CSC experience significantly more hardcore; space pirates will not give you your money back.

CSC Present State

As of writing this article, alpha play-testing is still a few months away. Buying a ship, right now, includes an invitation to alpha/beta test, which can give players a significant advantage once the game fully launches. I suggest getting in and buying a ship now before the prices go up. Lucid Sight has not been very active in the marketing arena just yet, however they have stated that alpha gameplay trailers are about to be released, accompanied by a marketing media blitz. That’s why I would buy one now, before word really gets out.

Presently, Lucid Sight is opening up mini-games for all ship captains, even prior to alpha. In fact, the first mini-game titled Mining Expedition Alpha begins today! Get in there and claim some resources. They will be sent to your Ethereum wallet, and stored until you are ready to craft or trade.