$AURY The Next Solana Blockchain Game Studio?
Introduction
Aurory is a turn-based tactical RPG game that is being developed in the Solana Blockchain. Aurory’s Team goal is to set the standard for the play to earn games by creating innovative and attractive gameplay that also cultivates the virtual in game economies.
The amount of TPS and the cheap transactions available on Solana makes it one of the best candidates as a platform to scale games to the masses.
Yes I know Solana is not performing as it should lately, but I am bullish on their tech and pretty sure they will solve all the issue they are currently facing. I will link this blog post that might give you more clarity on how fast Solana can get.
Online games need to be played by a community to be fun, so having a blockchain that can support a lot of players is already a strong plus for Aurory in our opinion.
What is exciting about all this is that the Aurory team not only is planning to release a game, but their long term vision is to build a real blockchain gaming studio that will ship multiple games within the industry. Now this all sounds exciting and we all know how bold is their goal and how difficult it is to reach, but we have had people that have already made it in the past (look at what Fortnite and Epic games have done), so why shouldn’t they be making it too?
The universe of Aurory also called Antik will have Nefties at the center of the adventure, the feeling is a “similar pokemon game” where the players roam the game world discovering new Nefties and use their wallets to catch them. Every species of Nefties has their own strengths and abilities, giving them multiple strategic roles in combat.
The Game
The Team intends to launch first their desktop game, and later on capitalize on the rapid growth of the mobile gaming environment with their smartphone version of the game.
Aurory will have two different game modes PvE (Player Vs. Environment) and PvP (Player vs Player).
The amazing aspect of Aurory is that it is basically a Free to Play game through both PvE and PvP features (up to the tournaments of course), with just the single player campaign you will be able to access competitively in the PvP environment.
The PvE mode will be useful to the player to learn about the workings of cryptocurrency and blockchain guided by a story rich single-player adventure. This mode gives you the opportunity to acquire your first Nefty and immerse yourself in the Antik world.
Pve is the gateway to ultimately reach the competitive PvP mode.
The PvE world is always open, and the Aurory team will continue to release new episodic adventures with new locations, new Nefties to discover, new characters, and new quests!
Furthermore the solo game mode is based on a J-RPG type in a retro-futuristic universe. Fully hand drawn in 2D animation, it is a side-scrolling video game where you will follow the quest of Helios. Fulfill quests, talk to NPCs and defeat many opponents in order to advance in the plot.
The solo PvE game mode will incentivize players with NFTs of the creatures they just defeated, and by winning $AURY once game chapters are completed. To encourage players to try out multiplayer modes, weekly and monthly leaderboards will reward the best performing player in terms of both playtime and skill. Players are also encouraged to spend $AURY on the marketplace for better items and Nefties, thus stimulating the in-game economy.
Aurory team managed to upload on their official youtube channel a short video of what will be like questing in the PvE game, link down below:
Aurory Alpha ‒ Locate Sato’s Sword mission #1
Aurory Alpha ‒ Locate Sato’s Sword mission #2
The PvP mode is for those looking for the competitive aspect of the game, after forming your dream Nefties team you will compete with other trainers around Antik.
Battles feature a draft system that allow you to predict your opponent’s strategy and react accordingly by finding the right counters.
Also here we have some video of the multiplayer mechanics straight from their official channel
Aurory Alpha ‒ Multiplayer Mechanics #1
Playing the PvP mode of Aurory will give you access to Tournament and Championships, as for the first one it’s required to stake $AURY token, this will allow you to participate in the tournament and win even greater rewards. Monthly tournaments will reward the top players and will be tiered based on skill level and games played. Special elite arenas will challenge veteran players, with even greater rewards. Funny thing is that even those who spectate might be able to win rewards.
The annual Aurory Championship Tour offers opportunities to win rare items, significant cash prizes and imprint your own design on future Nefties. However, this comes at a risk, any defeated Nefties will disappear and be gone forever. This allows top level players to continually nourish the ecosystem as they improve via strategic experimentation in their battles. Meanwhile, it also creates more fair opportunities for up-and-coming players.
A golden ticket is required to enter the Aurory Championship tour, which is earned by either:
1) being victorious in ongoing tournaments
2) being one of the lucky few PvE players
As you can imagine the golden ticket to enter the annual Aurory championship Tour is an NFT, and guess what? You will be able to sell it to another player if you wish to.
Your team will consists of 3 Nefties that will compete against your opponent’s team in a turn-based tactical RPG-style battle. Victory goes to the first player to successfully eliminate all Nefties in the opposing team. Each Nefty has their own set of special abilities to utilize and with every action taken, advanced versions of these gradually unlock, introducing new devastating effects and strategic options to the battlefield.
For more sneak peak I’d suggest visit their discord and you are able to spot the progress made by the devs almost day by day.
The Land
As we mentioned in other previous reports, the land is a system that works like any other NFT asset in the game, most of the time Lands gives you benefits or access to particular features in the game that are specifically restricted and profitable for the lands owners.
For example:
other players can enter your land and based on their actions (whether it’s trading items or battling one of the dungeons made available in your land) they will pay a small percentage of fee that goes straight to the land owner.
The Aurory team has already announced the availability of Lands in their upcoming game and gave us more specifics on the features that comes with it: Lands can be used for respawning or teleporting, allowing you to cover great distances within a short amount of time. Additionally, owning land unlocks the ability to generate dungeons for you and other players to explore. Dungeons will appear on the world map and are generated randomly every week.
Every plot of land will have its own rarity and custom traits that determine the types of rewards it will contain as well as the odds of a dungeon appearing.
These land rarities are classified into:
• Common
• Advanced
• Rare
• Legendary
The Lands are not yet available for sale, which means that these will be available soon. As you also can see on my screenshot below, I managed to steal some of that information that you can use at your own advantage regarding the upcoming Land sale. Basically via “non-official” rumors we can now determine that the Land can only be bought via $AURY token.
The Aurorians
You might be wondering how to obtain Aurory NFTs?
Well here are couple of ways to get your hands on one Aurorian:
• Playing the solo game mode (PvE) and defeating creatures.
• Purchase them from the marketplace or from other players.
• Buy card boosters from the Aurory Marketplace with $AURY token.
• Staking $AURY tokens to be eligible for random NFT drops.
These avatars are planned to have several functions inside and outside of the game.
Avatars will:
• Act as a player’s visual identity within the game via 3D skins in the
solo game mode and also in future multiplayer game modes.
• Verify that its owner was an early supporter with a Badge of Authenticity that will appear on all leaderboards.
• Give owners early access to play in future game modes before they are made public.
• Improve the game experience allowing access to some special modes with boosted rewards. Balance and fairness will be prioritized at all times so as to not overly advantage holders.
• Grant owners eligibility for free NFT airdrops (both collectible and functional in-game NFTs) during the game’s development.
• Reward their owners based on the total volume of Aurory’s in-game marketplace.
• Allow their owners to vote in the DAOrory’s decision-making process.
Aurorians are currently available on every secondary Solana NFT marketplace such as Solanart, Magiceden, AlphaArt with a floor price of 23 SOL at the time of writing this.
There was an error from the team during the initial sale and unfortunately the Aurorians price was mistakenly set for 1SOL instead of the 5SOL initially planned. While this raised some general negativity, the team managed to keep their head down and kept working to deliver results on results.
The DAOrory
The Aurory team plans to launch its own DAO that will include all the NFT holders (or so called Aurorians). The goal of this DAO is to invest in Solana NFT projects through Aurory treasury.
As per token allocation the DAOrory will receive 10% of the initial Aurorians sale proceeds (1000 SOL), and 1.75% royalty fee coming from each and every Aurorians secondary sales.
As it is clear by now every major decision will be done through governance approval from the NFT holders itself.
The Token
Aurory game will have at the center of its ecosystem the $AURY token, which will be used in almost everything concerning the game, and so:
• Buy and sell NFT creatures, items, cosmetics and cards
• Reward players for advancing in the solo PvE mode
• Reward players for winning battles
• Pay out staking rewards from the treasury for players to earn passive returns
• Enter the battle Arena via staking protocols
• Integrate the virtual economy with real-world economies via centralized or decentralized exchanges
A percentage of marketplace (in-game marketplace will be powered by Serum, one of the most used DEX of Solana) fees will fund the Aurory Treasury for continued game development. Deflationary measures for removing AURY (burned or otherwise) are still being developed.
Staking is already available through the AURY platform at the following link (https://app.aurory.io/staking) with the lock and unlock pools currently sitting at some juicy APR yield rewards.
Please pay attention as per screenshot below, the locked tokens will only be redeemable after the 26th of May 2022.
The fixed date is applied because the Aurory team is planning to include the utilization of the token with the release of more gamification features, which means the token will be utilized for the first time in their game.
Big up for the team as the staking dashboard has been updated with some major improvements in a matter of days since they started the program.
There is another thing I want to point the attention towards, quoting from the official medium the team says:
6) Will the rewards from the locked staking pool always be higher than the rewards from the flexible staking pool?
Yes, the distribution of $AURY will always be higher for the locked staking pool with a minimum of 2x the APR compared to flexible staking
Although from the screen alone you can see that the APR it’s not 2X, this is clearly misconceiving for the investor that locks their $AURY on the locked pool. I managed to point that out in the official discord, and one of the community leaders said that he will contact the team and keep me posted on the matter. Percentage wise the discrepancy isn’t much (should be 72% vs Actual 66%) but we felt it was important to mention.
Kudos to the team instead for working on what should also be their “NFT staking system” that will be open-source later on. (News from Dec 1, 2021)
The Tokenomics
The IDO of the $AURY token was conducted on Q4 2021 and executed in three phases. The launch has been mostly similar to any initial offering you might experience through platforms such as copperlaunch. The Aurory team did not use any external platform but instead managed to do everything through their website.
In less words, the total amount of USDC deposited was getting divided by the 7,000,000 $AURY which was the amount allocated to the public sale.
We redesigned the token vesting schedule to comply with the latest update from the team regarding the extension of both cliff from Seed Investors and Team & Treasury, so here is the final result.
$AURY is currently sitting at a price of 11.0$, the descending price has nothing to do with AURY itself but with the general sentiment of the market lately.
AURY has actually performed in line with both ETH and BTC in the last 60 days, as shown in this simple table that highlight the past performance of these 3 assets.
I am confident in the potential of $AURY as a token, by reading through lines the team intentions are clear, and having $AURY as the only currency for the upcoming game is for sure a positive point towards the utility of the token. Particular point of attention to the 18% of the token allocation to the seed investors, aligned with other P2E projects true, and it’s also true that they have the majority of it vested for the upcoming months, although the percentage allocated remain relevant.
The Team
The team is composed by mostly Canadians (looks like the whole Ubisoft Montreal is now working for Aurory haha!) and French people with some fellow Aurorians coming from every corner of the world.
I spotted a lot of game industry veterans that have worked significant years for companies like Ubisoft, Warner Bros, Gameloft and many more. Also positive note on having a few high technical profiles (Blockchain Engineer / CTO and so on).
They seem to keep hiring people and expanding the team, this is for sure one of the clear signs that things are moving and in the right direction, you always want to look for these signals when valuing any “crypto startup”.
Considering that many projects out there have shady teams you gotta appreciate the fact that most of the Aurory team is public and with an open Linkedin profile, good job Aurory team.
I would also highlight two elements under the Advisors tab that have a major experience in the crypto space Darren Lau, Founder of the Daily Ape (@Darrenlautf) and Tristan Yver (@jackshaftoes) Head of Strategy @ ftx.us.
Investors
I don’t think any explanation on the investor side is needed, as you probably already know them well. Being backed up by such a magnitude of investors really gives me positive vibes on the overall scenario that Aurory is set up to.
I am honest, sometimes the first thing I do when looking at projects that have VC funds is going straight to analyze their investors, this gives me just a bit of confidence that some of these big guys know what they are doing and that the project is worth my attention.
Partnership
On October 1, 2021 Aurory designed four TSM FTX NFTs, for those who don’t know who the TSM are; they are one of the most valuable esports organizations in the world. TSM FTX seeks to provide maximum value through the competitive excellence of its teams and the creation of exciting, educational, and entertaining content that deliver the ultimate esports and gaming fan experience.
I have always been a gamer myself and TSM are pretty much everywhere when it comes to e-Sports.
While it’s true that the Aurory team did not yet go deep into heavy marketing campaigns, partnerships like the one with TSM can catch the eye of those gamers that are willing to have a taste of the P2E and Crypto world.
Some comments from the website of TSM regarding the parnership:
“Working with Aurory, whose mission seeks to encourage the global adoption of cryptocurrencies by introducing gamers to blockchain through incentivized gameplay, strategically aligns with TSM FTX’s innovative vision for the future. In June, the global gaming org announced a revolutionary $210 million, multi-year deal with FTX Trading Limited and West Realm Shires Services Inc, owners and operators of FTX.com and FTX.US respectively.”
We also saw Aurory partner with interesting projects such as @Fractal a new and trending NFT marketplace for Solana (created by the Justin Kan co-founder of Twitch.com) which you guys should keep an eyes on and was already covered by us in our previous article.
Conclusions
I have repeated myself quite often in other reports that we at Daolectic have published; We know how hard it might be to build such a thing, combine this with the fact that you have to include the blockchain technology and a real economy with your token and it might sounds scary, but this world is of those who risk and are willing to give it all to realize their dream, so why not?
Aurory has it all when it comes to investors, team, idea and token utility, it’s all in their hands afterall to make it work.
For those who follow us, you guys know I usually include a “Security” section in our report that covers the audit that third party companies do on the smart contract of the project we analyze, and so on. I was unable to find one for Aurory, not because they don’t have it but just because it might be the case that it is not yet shared, will keep you guys posted on the matter in case.
Disclaimer
This is not in any case financial advice, the goal of my research will always be to dive deep into projects and study it from different angles, I do include personal opinion based on my experience with similar projects that I have recently studied.
I am and will always be open to discussion.
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Please always do your own research before investing into anything.
