From the Co-Founder of Zynga (FarmVille) comes a new game. And this time a blockchain game!!! đź‘€
*New updates at the end of article.
Hello All
If you have ever played Farmville and got addicted to it from the first play itself, then this article is certainly for you. Eric Schiermeyer, who is one of the Co-Founders of Zynga (parent company of Farmville) has launched a blockchain venture called Gala blockchain.
First a bit about Gala blockchain
Gala blockchain uses Ethereum blockchain as the base chain and ERC-1155 token standard for NFTs (tradable game items). ERC-1155 is a token standard developed and popularized by Enjin which has benefits like batch transactions, lower fees etc.
Gala blockchain is based on soft node model, where even mobile devices can participate as node operators. As a node operator you’ll get Gala coins and NFTs based on transactions your node processes. It will also act as an ecosystem of Dapps. Sandbox games is the first publisher which has already launched the first ever Dapp on Gala project, named Townstar. And this is where the fun begins!
Townstar
Townstar is basically a farm-town building and management game. It starts like Farmville with crops and animals and then evolves to industries, nuclear technology and so on. Game is currently in early Beta. Registration is email-password based but you’ll also be given a seed phrase and encryption password. Please write them on a paper or store them on a pen drive. New blockchain gamers might find it as an irritating step but these are essential for recovery or playing on other devices.
https://gala.fan/jWdao3z13 [Get free 100 Gala coins upon signup]
Once you have made the account and logged in, you’ll be given an option to upgrade to Gala+ membership. It costs just $10 for lifetime membership, but gives you many benefits like gold tag and a private access to gala gold channel in discord, where you get leaks of new updates beforehand and lots of GALA games discussions with devs; access to early builds of new games and most importantly a gold tier NFT for each new game.
Check out this video for Alpha gameplay of Townstar.
Early Beta is open to all and mainly serves as a “training center” for players and of course to iron out bugs and some game logic. Even though it is early Beta, it works super smooth and bugs or issues are really hard to find. Just as it should be. This is sure worth appreciating. We see too many games with Alpha and Beta tags, and they are simply unplayable. I’m not just talking about blockchain games but also many AAA games!! Probably it’s because of the fact that the game development is led by Mike McCarthy, ex creative director on FarmVille 2. Around 10 devs are already working on Townstar.
In above paragraph you might have wondered why I used the phrase, “training center”. Well, the reason is that from late Beta onwards, there will be a weekly leader board system and top players will be rewarded with NFTs (maybe even Gala coin and box coins), with the most exclusive being Farmbot.
Farmbot allows the holder to mint the premium in game currency called box coins. And if you have played any free to play game, then you would certainly know how much valuable (or money sink holes!) these premium currencies are. In fact, Eric is so confident about the role and popularity of these farmbots, that he has priced them at $100,000 each!!! Quite expensive I must say. At current rate it is around 14.68 BTC!! Maximum supply of these farmbots will be limited to 1000 only. Many of these will be rewarded to first spot winners in the weekly leader boards and other top players will get parts of farm bot. If someone has all the parts, he/she can create the full bot. I suppose there will be quite a demand for these bot parts in the player marketplace. One can also buy individual bot parts priced at $10 per lootcrate. Lootcrate gives you 1 random bot part of varying rarity. So the stakes are much higher in Townstar. It is much more than feeding your cows and collecting the milk!
The thing that makes Townstar really different from other similar games though, is the serious attention to the details. It tends to mimic the real world in terms of game logic and concepts. This is visible from the first step on wards that is choosing the location. A real world map is presented to you with all the countries and their different terrains. You can choose 1 spot and start building your town from there. Location is very important. Spots near oceans provide with water transport (ships to transport goods), faster brime (can be processed to salt) production etc.
Plains provide more pastures which are good for the initial animal farm setup. Your farm animals can actually go out in the pastures and feed themselves reducing load on your workers and also the feed costs.
Forests have lots of ponds which can be cleared to get extra game funds. Probably the only natural tiles, which when cleared gives back money. Don’t clear them all though, as ponds are very useful for your town as you’ll read further. Forests also have lots of trees which provide easy wood, though the random trees might be a hindrance in town planning. But don’t worry, as everything that exists can be destroyed!!
Deserts are pretty much barren but have oil seeps, so fuel becomes a lesser issue. I haven’t really tried this terrain though, so don’t have much more info about it.
And of course how can we forget the high risk high reward mountainous terrain. Mountains provide ore (currently iron ore), which can be used to make steel, which can be further used to make….. well you know. Setting up mines and refining ore and then building factories is obviously expensive and slow process. Players trying to rush may find themselves stuck if proper planning is not done. Or then maybe have to spend on box coins to get out of that situation. You need funds to pay your workers, and to sell items you need to send truck/boat etc which costs some fuel. Also there is minimum amount of items that have to be loaded into the vehicle before you can send it to the market. So one can find themselves in a difficult situation when they don’t have enough funds to pay salaries or fuel or minimum number of items. Between, fuel can be produced in game itself, so once you build the oil pumps and refineries it’s not a big deal. Funds are what get burnt way too fast if you are not paying attention to worker salary or try to build too many buildings, but without items to process. Just like your typical real world!
Other than the terrain, you have productivity details. And these are what surprised me the most!! For example, pollution can increase plant growth time. Also well refill time. Makes sense right? Pollution and nature don’t go together. Then you have these wind mills to produce electricity which work best in empty areas. If crops and animal houses are around a pond or a marsh, then they require less watering by the workers. Brime production is faster on sea coastline. Workers move much faster on roads. Animals can feed themselves on pastures. Free range farming anyone? Forklifts to speed up industrial items transfer and tractors to farm crops and transport them to storage faster. Power plants provide electricity to adjoining factories automatically. Of course there are lot more details which are yet to be found. I suppose, all the early players will be at good advantage when the beta launches. In case you are stuck somewhere or just want to restart with better planning, then feel free to eradicate your town from the surface of virtual map. Devs, especially the game dev is quite active on discord. Even asking for your town screenshots and suggesting you the improvements to rank better in leader board! So what are you waiting for? Join the game and perhaps be a part of the gaming revolution!
Website: https://gala.fan/jWdao3z13
Discord: https://discord.gg/CxZ4AC2
Please feel free to post your game feedback or opinions regarding the whole project in the comments below.
Cheers!
Siddartha
Updates:
1) Gala coins on Ethereum chain.
2) Farmbot parts and some other NFTs on chain. Can be viewed and traded on Opensea. https://opensea.io/assets/town-star
3) Gala account portraits now appear in Townstar map, leaderboard tables etc.
4) Faster versions of rancher and lumberjack added.
5) Gala nodes are online and provide Gala and NFT items to the node owners running them.
6) Ability to earn Gala by doing daily tasks like referring, running Gala nodes etc.
7) Gala node cost increased to $2000.
8) New bot for Townstar launched. Cranebot helps to speed up the construction of buildings. It is much less rarer than a Farmbot. Total 10,000 Cranebots will be available vs. just 1000 Farmbots.
9) Limited time offer to buy a node for 2M Gala along with normal BTC payment option. 19 August, 2020 to 3 September, 2020.
10) ERIC and Townstar game devs AMA session:
11) Gala listed on exchanges Bittrue and Uniswap on 14th September. Bittrue is centralized exchange while Uniswap is one of the most popular decentralized exchange. Along with this, Simplex is also supported in gala accounts as fiat on ramping tool.
12) To celebrate Bittrue and Simplex partnerships, 2 special NFTs have been launched. One is Bittrue themed which you get by purchasing 10,000 GALA on Bittrue and withdrawing to your Gala account. And second is Simplex themed for purchasing 10,000 GALA via Simplex. As usual, lucky node owners can get these NFTs in their daily NFT distribution.
13) Gala listed on Digifinex exchange on 18 September, 2020. Digifinex NFT revealed.
14) Partnership with one of the most played blockchain games, Splinterlands on 19 Sept, 2020. Gala token Holders can now buy card packs on Splinterlands using the Gala token. More such game partnerships to be revealed in near future.
15) Gala nodes can again be purchased with Gala and this time price will fluctuate based on Gala price.
16) GALA token passes a comprehensive security audit from AnChain.AI on 23 September, 2020.
17) First version of Gala internal NFT store unveiled on 25 September, 2020. Right now only Cranebot parts can be bought, but soon rarer Farmbot parts and other NFTs will be available for purchase.
18) New Gala game poster leaked in discord.
19) You can now buy Axies and other NFTs on Opensea.io with GALA tokens.
20) Land sale for Gala games second game, Mirandus (MMORPG) has begun on 3rd Oct, 2020. Concept looks amazing. More info here: https://gala.games/welcome-to-game-2-the-revealing/
21) Gala nodes only purchasable via Gala token now. Current price is 2 million Gala per node.
22) Around half of the land deeds sold as of 11 Oct, 2020.
23) Early node governance launched with ability to vote on proposals. Right now only test proposals exist, but eventually anyone can create a proposal and the votes will have a huge impact on the direction of Gala games.
24) New bot called Tradebot is launched for Townstar which allows players to automate their market sales. Quite a handy tool. This one will be of legendary tier, that is only 1000 tradebots will ever exist. Parts of this bot are being distributed to node owners on daily basis starting from 22 Oct 2020.
25) All Bitrue wheat stands of 5 different rarities dispatched to eligible participants wallets.
26) Simplex sugar stands can be obtained till Dec 7th.
27) Mirandus first update revealed. https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-the-first-scroll-816554160495
28) New chest system launched in your Gala account. Now all your new NFTs will remain offchain in your account treasury, until you decide to mint them on blockchain. https://gogalagames.medium.com/awesome-changes-coming-to-the-gala-games-platform-14f46c4a3317
29) Mirandus second update with fresh new teaser. Massive Minotaur on his throne with treasure all around him. Seems like a dungeon boss. https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-the-second-scroll-818d07005777
30) Long term vision for Gala nodes. In summary there will be 3 types of nodes. Grandfather nodes limited to 50K units and will grant NFTs for all games in Gala ecosystem. Rental nodes limited to specific games and there will be monthly rent to operate them. And free nodes which everyone can run but only a fraction of rewards will be given to free node operators.
Also the whole Gala game ecosystem will be decentralized. Even the storage space for the game servers will be decentralized. https://gogalagames.medium.com/the-gala-games-node-ecosystem-9760d8156af7
31) Node owners will now receive tier 2 land deeds aka shops like taverns, brewery, forge, mill barn etc. on weekly basis for a few weeks. Nov 22, 2020
32) Cranebots can now be assembled! A big milestone indeed. Nov 26, 2020. You can play the Townstar game, click an empty plot and then your treasure chest. There you’ll find the option to assemble your cranebot. It will require some gas fees which is independent of the amount of cranebots you want to assemble. So try to assemble the maximum you can in 1 transaction. You can buy full cranebots or individual parts from the opensea also. https://opensea.io/assets/town-star?search=%7B%22collections%22%3A%5B%22town-star%22%5D%2C%22includeHiddenCollections%22%3Afalse%2C%22stringTraits%22%3A%5B%7B%22name%22%3A%22tokenRun%22%2C%22values%22%3A%5B%22crane-bot%22%5D%7D%5D%7D
Cranebots speed up the construction of buildings in Townstar and they are speculated to do so in upcoming Mirandus game also.
33) TownStar Winter competition starts from today. Dec 1, 2020. $5000+ worth rewards in ETH/BTC available for winning.
34) Gala + BAT partnership announced. You can buy limited (100) laser engraved Minotaur statues from Brave store right now. Also a limited duration discount on tier 2 land deeds if you purchase them with BAT token.
https://brave.com/brave-and-gala-games/
35) Mirandus latest teaser involves a video where the concept of land deeds is explained in much more detail. And it’s certainly worth giving attention to! Also floor plans of all the deeds are revealed now. Citadels are not included as they will be custom built with the citadel owners. https://gala.games/gala-games-and-brave-present-mirandus-shops/
36) Winter championship starts from 2nd December, 2020 in Townstar game. $5K+ rewards in BTC, ETH, GALA and NFTs.
37) Eric Schiermeyer features in a Venturebeat detailed on Gala games ecosystem and vision. https://venturebeat.com/2020/12/04/gala-games-paves-path-for-blockchain-games-in-a-deal-with-brave-browser/
38) Land deeds, shops, nodes etc. can now be purchases in BAT and ETH also. Earlier they were purchasable only with GALA. 5 Dec, 2020.
39) New seasonal bot ElfBot launches in Townstar game for the Christmas event. This bot doesn’t have cap like earlier bots but is more of a collectible bot. You can get 1 by inviting your friends to play Townstar and after progress bar is full you will win the ElfBot. Kinda like Farmville friend invite system used to unlock new features in the game. 10 Dec, 2020.
40) Simplex sugar stands of different rarities distributed to eligible players. 10 Dec, 2020.
41) More info about stables is released. Basically stables will allow users to breed horses which serve as mounts in the game. It seems there will be different rarity tiers for the horses as well. https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-saddle-your-mounts-308b03bb03e1
42) NFT distribution for node runners resumed again. Earlier it was paused to work on a more fair distribution algorithm. 17 Dec, 2020 https://gogalagames.medium.com/gala-games-nodes-resume-nft-distribution-d5de76d9b75a
43) Gala sponsors 2020 year end tournament for Splinterlands, a partner blockchain game. https://gogalagames.medium.com/the-great-gala-gala-an-epic-battle-in-the-splinterlands-41b25854e60b
44) Node pricing update. In short after every 100 grandfather nodes sold, node price will increase by $100. Grandfather nodes are limited to 50 thousand units. After that game specific nodes will be released. https://gogalagames.medium.com/node-pricing-structure-update-23b5701e5190
45) A detailed view of a portion of Farming hamlet deed released. It gives us a good idea of the graphics and detailing of the game. Also hints of gameplay. It truly feels like a “lively” game world as Micheal mentioned once. https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-a-broader-view-of-the-world-5edc416f7844
46) Gala and Polyient partnership announcement. One of the happiest news of the year for GALA token holders as the price of GALA shot up by 5x within 24 hours of the announcement. Polyient and its capital partners bought a lot of GALA after seeing the potential of Mirandus and Gala ecosystem as whole. 29 Dec, 2020.
https://gogalagames.medium.com/polyient-games-and-gala-games-to-bring-gala-to-polyient-dex-ba197ee0fab4
47) Gala and Polyient also announced rewards for the liquidity providers on Polyient dex for the Gala-PGU pair. Apart from normal transaction fees, these liquidity providers will also be eligible to claim PGU token airdrops and exclusive NFTs usable in Gala games based on the amount of GALA they provided to the pool. 29 Dec, 2020 https://gogalagames.medium.com/earn-nfts-by-adding-liquidity-to-the-polyient-dex-74f397851058
48) Taking Gala-Polyient partnership ahead, GALA has broken the record of most expensive NFT sold ever. Polyient purchased the Citadel of Sun for whopping $800K, which includes banking rights in the Mirandus game. 04 Jan, 2021. https://gogalagames.medium.com/gala-games-and-polyient-games-join-forces-to-shatter-record-with-an-800k-nft-sale-8288b874cb83
49) Elfbots (Season 1) have been distributed to the elegible players. Total 200 elfbots exist and they have utility in townstar game. Mainly supplying materials to bakery and other food processing units. 05 Jan, 2021
50) Website to track NFT distribution from the nodes is launched by 3 community devs (non team). Ev, DNMK and Groove worked on it. A big accomplishment for the Gala community. https://galabase.io/distro/report_items/ 08 Jan, 2021
51) 2021’s first AMA by Gala team. This one was focused on Mirandus. 09 Jan, 2021
52) Mirandus will have first person view to make it truly immersive. Details: https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-a-shift-in-perspective-698923fab2d
53) Townstar AMA discussing new 64x64 town format with no resets, Boombot, Saltbot introduction and Farmbot auction. 15 Jan, 2021
Boombot adds a PvP element to the Townstar. It can hamper progress of other towns making it easier for you to climb the ladders of the leaderboard!
Saltybot is a limited period bot which helps in salt production and processing. It can be acquired by inviting 10 friends to the Townstar game.
54) 1st Farmbot sold for 19.5 ETH in the auction. Winner will also receive the first boom bot as a gift. https://opensea.io/assets/0xc36cf0cfcb5d905b8b513860db0cfe63f6cf9f5c/62271673146531738813797553160013582696448
55) Second Mirandus AMA. Discusses about Polyient vaults and their function in game in detail. Polyient vault will mainly act as extra storage slots, medium to rent your items and retrieve/deposit your items in different locations rather than carrying your whole inventory. 19 Jan, 2021
56) First Polyient vault sold for 30 ETH. https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/44207998723071561723172671384474819981772159034480987866210244264017252057089
57) Ark and Polyient partnership announced. Specific details of this announcement are still awaited. https://ark.io/blog/ark-announces-partnership-with-gala-games 19 Jan, 2021
58) Major website upgrade to make all the information accessible along with website design update. 22 Jan, 2021
59) Virtual Galacon announced! February 28th, at 11am PST. Mark the date. A lot of information regarding Mirandus will be revealed here.
60) Gala Games partners with Flare for layer 2 solutions. AKA a blockchain which help Gala to provide cheap and fast transactions and thus allows for mainstream players to gain entry in Gala Games ecosystem. Gala token will itself remain on ETH blockchain. Flare tokens will be airdropped to XRP holders. More info here: https://docs.xrptoolkit.com/claim-spark-tokens
https://gogalagames.medium.com/flare-launching-a-signal-for-second-layer-scaling-for-the-gala-games-ecosystem-7fd50a456bbc 29 Jan, 2021
61) Glimpse into how Mirandus will mimic natural ecosystems. The closest game I could find with similar mechanics is Don’t Starve. https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-interconnected-ecosystems-38d8637e5e17 02 Feb, 2021
62) Bitbender’s AMA in $whale discord. One of the most prominent NFT communities out there.
63) Mirandus article focusing on how the game will be developed. In summary, to speed up the development process, highly detailed graphics will not be used. Instead origami style graphics which will make the development faster and at the same time give a unique look to the game. https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-redefining-development-62bfc9a0a0f6 09 Feb, 2021
64) Gala games looking for economists working in blockchain space to better structure the node rewards and incentives for new games on boarding in the ecosystem. 10 Feb, 2021
65) Erik Sundberg is hired as full stack developer in Gala games. https://gogalagames.medium.com/gala-games-welcomes-erik-sundberg-be6092d83dea 11 Feb, 2021
66) Bounty posted in ETHDenver to suggest ideas to massive scale Gala Games blockchain infrastructure for millions of players. https://www.ethdenver.com/post/gala-games 11 Feb, 2021
67) Chris Freeland hired as the first member of Gala’s dedicated Node Ecosystem development team. https://gogalagames.medium.com/gala-games-welcomes-chris-freeland-5b2186ee740d 16 Feb, 2021
68) Heavy weight hiring of Craig Matchett. 3D artist who has worked on several games including Dead Space, Battlefield, Obsidian Entertainment etc. https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-the-knights-of-mirandus-2be331bdd789 16 Feb, 2021
69) New Mirandus Monday released focusing on how Music will work in the game. It seems like music will be played only in some locations like tavern and not in forests. And it will be performed by some of the players using musical instruments crafted inside the game. Quite an interesting take on something that is often taken for granted in a game, AKA music. https://blog.gala.games/mirandus-monday-the-sound-of-music-3cd4c9540f1a 23 Feb, 2021
70) Big news. Gala games will now also support Binance smart chain which is taking a lot of volume away from Ethereum as a faster, cheaper chain. More details yet to be revealed. For token speculators, this could mean that Gala listing on Binance could be a reality soon!! https://twitter.com/GoGalaGames/status/1364585647428796422 24 Feb, 2021
71) Some updates regarding nodes. Mainly about introduction of node refund feature. One can buy and get refund of a node in 7 days, if they wish to. This is to make sure that no one buys nodes just for the FOMO or without knowing the system requirements, issues etc. https://blog.gala.games/gala-game-node-refund-information-fbd02bf27504 24 Feb, 2021
72) Virtual Galacon announced and event list posted. https://twitter.com/GoGalaGames/status/1364985100190904322 25 Feb, 2021
73) Few important streams from the Galacon. 27 Feb, 2021- 28 Feb, 2021
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1mnxeaEnRNaxX
https://www.pscp.tv/GoGalaGames/1ZkKzeypPbyxv
https://www.pscp.tv/GoGalaGames/1mrGmwgbPgLxy
74) Finally Mirandus’s first trailer revealed. And it is nothing short of extraordinary! 28 Feb, 2021
75) 2 Billion Gala reserved for funding third party games in Gala Games ecosystem. This is a huge amount. $50M at the time of writing this announcement here. To get the funding, visit gala.fund . 01 March, 2021
76) New game called Fortified announced by Gala. This is a tower defense game and also the first game from third party devs on Gala Games platform. Tower defense games have a large fanbase owing to their largely free to play models with more focus on strategy than anything else. Easily playable on browser, anywhere, anytime. Fortified will be released on Binance Smart Chain. More details to be released soon. https://twitter.com/GoGalaGames/status/1367087396995612676 03 Feb, 2021
Coming soon
1) Internal NFT marketplace for easier and faster trading.
2) Allowing sandbox coin mining in Townstar via Farmbots.
3) Gala economy.
4) More games under Gala ecosystem.
2) https://egamers.io/inside-gala-interview-with-eric-schiermeyer/
3) Discord Conversations
4) Personal experience of playing Townstar
